Keeping 'Pisay'

THE CLARK Development Corp. ought to burn if only for this:
“Our contract with CDC ends 2013. Apparently, we could not see hope of renewal despite their continuing promises. Our students meet under the trees and sleep under mosquito nets… We have our budget for the infrastructure needed, but the site, as CDC promised a long time ago, is wishful thinking.”
Thus, before Gov. Lilia G. Pineda lamented Lilia Habacon, director of the Central Luzon campus of the Philippine Science High School.
“We are the Central Luzon campus of more than 540 scholars in the country, the best of the best, which honestly our Quezon City campus could no longer contain. We prefer to stay in Pampanga since it’s the best strategic point in Luzon,” said Habacon. “That is why we decided to seek the governor’s help in our situation.”
Even as the provincial governments of Bulacan, Bataan and Zambales had shown interest to host PSHS, Habacon said Pampanga’s being at the very heart of the region and the governor’s storied education advocacy made the province as “most preferred choice” for PSHS site.
The PSHS, it must be noted, is not under the Department of Education but is an attached agency of the Department of Science and Technology.
Signed in 2009, the PSHS contract with the CDC will terminate in 2013 with – according to Habacon – “no positive signs of being renewed as the campus sits on an ancestral domain site.”
It has been a year, Habacon said, since CDC promised to provide the PSHS a permanent site but nothing has come out of it.
Where the CDC is found most wanting, Governor Pineda is most fulfilling: “Certainly, we will keep and support (PSHS) in Pampanga. We will muster all our resources for programs on education. Ganito kahalaga ang edukasyon sa amin.” said the governor.
Pineda said the Capitol is “most willing” to support PSHS’s infrastructure and other needs. As the school has funds for buildings, the provincial government can focus on campus roads, library, and water supply system.
She identified the Pampanga Agricultural College in Magalang town as “the most ideal site” for the PSHS. Which struck a most positive chord in Dr. Herminio Soriano Jr., PAC president: “We will be so happy to accommodate them at PAC. The 10 hectares they need is there. Much more, we could complement each other in science and technology. A PSHS campus at PAC is a most welcome development.”
A PSHS at PAC actually follows some sort of a template established with the PSHS main campus at Agham Road in Quezon City and the University of the Philippines in Diliman. The latter serving as a natural catch basin for the former’s graduates, thereby assuring a continuing link of the science-technology specialization. . A case in point of the PSHS-UP synergy is my son Jonathan Elliot. He was among the some 3,000 graduating elementary students throughout the country who took the two-tiered PSHS entrance exams in 1998, and fortunately made it among the 200 selected.
For hard-luck parents sending one other kid in high school and three in college all at the same time then, Jonathan’s DOST full-scholarship – free schooling, free on-campus board and lodging, book and uniform allowance – was a boon. Graduating from PSHS in 2002, Jonathan passed the UPCAT with flying colors and took his DOST scholarship there, along with a university scholarship at one time or the other, in his four-year stay, earning his sablay with a BS Mathematics degree in 2006.
My son has since taken a series of examinations – at twice-a-year interval – in actuarial science and a separate set of examinations too to be a chartered financial analyst. He will have his eighth test in the former this June and finished his third in the latter last year.
Jonathan is currently based in Hong Kong – “on loan” from ManuLife Philippines for three years – working as actuaries specialist of ManuLife H.K. It is not just some parental bragging that is being impacted to the reader here. My son’s successful professional career – he is only 25 years old and single – he owes to the strong foundation the PSHS and the UP systems build for their students.
What my son and hundreds of others like him were blessed with, the Kapampangan youth should not be deprived of.
That is why we are pissed at CDC for its snooty indifference at the plight of the PSHS in its domain.
That is why we are most grateful to Governor Pineda for her immediate and definitive action to find a site – and help all-out – for the PSHS campus at PAC. Thank then Nanay for keeping Pisay.