When VIP Convoys Come First

Three days.

That is how much classroom time Iloilo City just sacrificed so delegation vehicles could move through the city without hitting traffic during the 49th High-Level Task Force on ASEAN Economic Integration.

Mayor Raisa Treñas-Chu approved the suspension of face-to-face classes in all levels — public and private — from February 25 to 27. The police recommended it. The reasoning: ease congestion for convoys.

Here is what bugs us about this. Nobody asked whether the convoys could be rerouted, or whether private vehicles could be restricted on certain roads during peak hours, or whether staggered delegation schedules could work. But then again, the city has yet to adopt a viable and science-based traffic management system in the past two Treñas administrations, so the reflex to suspend classes rather than engineer smarter traffic solutions is hardly surprising.

Yes, the first and apparently only idea on the table was to pull students out of school. That tells us everything about where education sits on the priority list.

And the timing could not be worse. EDCOM II’s final report, released just last month, laid out in devastating detail what everyone already suspected: Filipino students are in crisis. Nearly half of Grades 1 to 3 learners — 48.76 percent — are not reading at grade level. By the time students reach senior high, proficiency drops to 0.47 percent. The Philippines ranked sixth from the bottom in reading and math in the 2022 PISA results. These numbers describe an entire generation falling behind.

And what is driving it, in part, is exactly this kind of thing. EDCOM II and the Philippine Institute for Development Studies found that 53 teaching days were lost in school year 2023-2024 alone — roughly 30 percent of the required 180. Not all from storms. Some from local holidays, non-teaching tasks, and yes, events like this one. A study published through the Asian Development Bank Institute found that each day of school closure depresses math and science scores by 12 to 14 percent. Multiply that by three days and ask yourself whether it was worth clearing a road.

The mayor’s statement urged schools to shift to online learning during the suspension. But DepEd itself has admitted that remote and modular learning cannot fully substitute for face-to-face instruction, particularly for younger students. And that is assuming students even have devices and internet access — which, in many public school households, they do not. The “shift to online learning” line reads well in press releases. It does not hold up in households that lack gadgets, much less a stable internet connection.

What makes this even harder to swallow is the context. Just weeks ago, Councilor Sedfrey Cabaluna flagged the damage that half-day schooling is doing to students in 14 earthquake-affected schools. He warned that compressed schedules mean rushed lessons, heavier take-home workloads, and learning gaps that could persist for years. He is right to worry. But it is a strange situation when the same city government that worries about half-day impacts can green-light a three-day shutdown without blinking.

We are not opposing the ASEAN meetings, which are important chances to showcase the city and province, even if the route uses only a portion of Diversion Road and passes by the delayed Aganan Flyover and the Sunken Ungka Flyover. The Philippines is spending PHP 17.5 billion on its chairmanship year, and hosting over 650 events nationwide. That is a serious diplomatic undertaking. But if we are going to host at that scale, with 1,707 security personnel deployed just for this Iloilo event, then surely we can manage traffic without locking kids out of classrooms.

The ask is not unreasonable: invest in traffic management, not class suspensions. Every school day matters — EDCOM II has made that case as clearly as anyone can. The question is whether we were listening.