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“Every time na may PTA meeting, instead of talking about academic performance, laging project ang napag-uusapan.” Senator Raffy Tulfo, those “projects” are not vanity projects—they are lifelines. They exist because the Department of Education (DepEd) cannot always act fast enough to fix what’s broken in our schools. Step into a public school on a regular day and you’ll understand. Classrooms are overcrowded, the air feels trapped and heavy, and parents at PTA meetings sometimes sit on the same wobbly chairs their children use. A lone electric fan, older than the students themselves, whirs in the corner. Teachers make do with painfully small budgets and often reach into their own pockets just to make learning bearable. These PTA “projects” you dismiss are not whims. They’re urgent: replacing dangerous chairs, patching leaking roofs before the next typhoon, buying a fan so children can focus on lessons instead of heat. Waiting for DepEd’s procurement process can mean another year—or more—of unsafe, unfit classrooms. So parents step in. They contribute what they can, not because it’s required, but because they refuse to let their children endure one more day in conditions unfit for learning. DepEd’s mandate is to provide safe, functional, and well-equipped learning environments. But when it falls short, PTAs fill the gap. Every peso raised at a PTA meeting is a peso parents shouldn’t have to give—if the system worked as it should. These are voluntary acts born from urgency, not obligation, and certainly not greed. Yes, some PTAs misuse funds, and those cases must be addressed. But reducing all PTA activity to corruption erases the sacrifices of parents and teachers who pour time, money, and effort into keeping schools functional. This is not about choosing projects over academics. This is about making classrooms livable enough so that academics can happen at all. If you truly want to grasp the situation, Senator, visit a public school quietly—no cameras, no entourage. Stand in a packed classroom under a roof that leaks when it rains. Watch a teacher share a single textbook among forty students. Speak to a parent who gave up a day’s wage to buy one notebook. None of this is exaggeration; this is the daily reality. The PTA is like a bucket catching water from a leaking roof. The real issue is not the bucket—it’s why the roof is still leaking despite DepEd’s responsibility to keep it sound. Until that roof is fixed, parents will keep catching water, and children will keep studying under the drip. What students need is not more televised finger-pointing, but working classrooms, supported teachers, and leaders—both in the Senate and in DepEd—who fix the cracks before they spread. Until then, every PTA project will remain silent proof that parents are doing the work the department should have done first. faylicity