San Jose del Monte Heights Elementary School 4.06

San Jose del Monte Heights Elementary School is a newly established school in the division of San Jose del Monte City and located at the heart of the new resettlement community of San Jose del Monte Heights in Barangay Muzon, City of San Jose del Monte. The school was inaugurated in 2014 with initially 2 buildings with fifteen classrooms each. June 2014 is also the opening of its first school year of operation. The school is a composed of multilevel buildings in a U-shape arrangement built in 4,832 square meter lot area that houses large enough, ventilated and lighted classrooms conducive to teaching and learning. For completion, the third three-story building is on-going construction and will be finished by June 2015 in time for its second school year opening. The SJDMHES, for its acronym, welcomed 2,146 students on its first school year that composed of pupils from kindergarten to grade six. Classes were being handled by 48 teachers under the leadership of Ms. Maria Fatima Felicia, a well determined and principled leader.

The community where the school resides is a resettlement area of Informal Settlers relocated from Metro Manila’s eight main waterways. The relocation is part of the P351-billion program of the Aquino administration to address perennial flooding in the metropolis, which in recent years has worsened due to clogged waterways, urban sprawl, denuded watersheds and fiercer storms. The program is an interagency collaboration among the National Housing Authority (NHA), Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA). The first families that resettled here came from the waterways of San Juan and Quezon City. As the school was not yet built during that time their children were transferred to nearest schools in San Jose del Monte City.
The country is being hit by twenty or more weather disturbances annually that wreck havoc in their path. Typhoon, storms or monsoon rains, the like of “Sendong”, “Pablo” and “Ondoy”, devastated Metro Manila and claims many lives and properties. Informal settlers living in those waterways are mostly the victims. A study has found that students in 813 public schools in flood-prone areas missed 10 percent of the number of school days every year due to flooding.

The need for the establishment of school arose from necessity for the growing number of families being relocated to the community to continue the education of their children at school near their residence. It is part of the plan when the government decided to develop the area from rice fields to a resettlement area that compose of rows of townhouses arranged in blocks around the area where the school is located in the middle.

People in the community are supportive of the school ready to help when needed. Local leaders of the barangay as well as the city government officials and Department of Education officials are also supportive of the new community. With their help the school is gradually acquiring everything necessary to operate the school. Under the leadership of Ms. Felicia, cooperation among stakeholders of the school is gaining ground to establish the stableness of the school that benefited the students. Plans for future development were drawn and will be implemented in the succeeding years. More effort is necessary for physical development of the school but more so for pupils’ intellectual, physical and moral development.