It was 10:30 in the morning of January 16, 2018 and the LSB members were already seated in the SB Session Hall.  Mayor Ligaya Apura, our tireless education leader and partner in Lemery, has called the LSB meeting to order.  The SEF budget and the LSB plans for 2018 were up in the agenda for the Board’s first meeting of the year.

Mayor Apura was proud to report to the Local School Board the improvement in SEF spending allocation in 2017.  A bigger slice of the P1 million budget, or P600,000, was spent for school repairs and only the remainder to sports activities.   For 2018, District Supervisor Wilma Diolata, the LSB co-Chairperson, proposed that the SEF budget should prioritize remedial reading in elementary schools.  The Municipal Treasurer then updated the LSB on his tax campaign program to raise the target 2018 SEF of more than P1 million.  He said he will convene a “pulong-pulong” in different barangays, send out demand letters to delinquent land owners and conduct auction sales.

Having attended the last Synergeia National Education Summit, Mayor Apura expressed interest in the Seal of Good Education Governance.  Our program officers, Edwin and Estong, discussed the process by which the 2017 winners were chosen, and informed the Board on the LSB and SGC assessment scores for Lemery.  At mid-assessment, the LSB scored a 4.1 while the SGCs scored only a 2.2.  Mayor Apura was not pleased with the low performance of SGCs and asked DS Diolata to challenge all  schools to make their SGCs fully functional and involved in setting school policies on student welfare and discipline.

There were 2 other items taken up by the LSB.  First was the proposal of DS Diolata to conduct the Municipal Education Summit which Mayor Apura supported, and the second was the announcement of Mayor Apura that she was about to sign an Executive Order expanding the membership of the LSB.

It was a very productive meeting and we are happy that Lemery’s LSB is driving the planning and implementation of education programs for the locality.  It was indeed a good day. The travel to Lemery for the on-site LSB mentoring and monitoring has been gratifying, with the view of ricefields, vegetation and green mountain ranges our cherry on top.