MCCS teachers’ valuables stolen; school’s appliances destroyed

THE teachers at the Mandaue City Central School (MCCS) have complained that some of their personal belongings were stolen and the school’s appliances were destroyed.

This discovery came after the City Government returned the MCCS to the Department of Education (DepEd) after the school was used as an isolation facility for persons who tested positive for Covid-19.

At the height of the pandemic in May 2020, the City borrowed the school and used it as an isolation facility.

The school was the biggest isolation facility in the city as it could accommodate more than 1,000 Covid-19 patients, both mild symptomatic and asymptomatic.

Early in June 2021, the City started to pull out its equipment from the isolation facility, which was later disinfected thrice before it was returned to the DepEd.

MCCS principal Alma Bardaquillo said the teachers started to return to their classrooms after receiving the certificate of reoccupancy last June 25. The teachers then discovered that some of their personal belongings in their classrooms were gone and some of the appliances had been destroyed.

Partial inventory shows that some classrooms lost their stand fans, industrial fans, electric kettles, speakers and laptops.

Bardaquillo said the doors to a cabinet where a grade two teacher had kept her two laptops were destroyed. The devices were nowhere to be found, she said.

The motors of the electric fans were destroyed and the copper wires were gone. Most of the fans were donated by the parents of the students in the previous school years,

In the school’s home economics building, Bardaquillo said they lost their rice cookers, pots, pans and stoves.

Some plants in the school were also gone, while there were classroom doors and the bathroom tiles that were damaged. Other classrooms were also dirty.

Before occupancy

Before the City occupied MCCS in 2020, Bardaquillo said it had been planned that the City would only occupy the Gabaldon, Friendship and kindergarten buildings.

However, the local government announced that it will also use all the school buildings as part of the isolation facility. As a result, some teachers failed to retrieve their personal belongings.

Bardaquillo said she messaged the teachers about the City’s announcement; because of the absence of public transport last year, they did not have the chance to get their things until they were banned from entering the school when the admission of Covid-19 patients started.

The Gabaldon building was made as an isolation facility for the symptomatic, while the Friendship building was for the frontliners. The other school buildings were for the asymptomatic individuals.

With this incident, Bardaquillo said she was instructed by DepEd Mandaue Division Superintendent Nimfa Bongo to conduct an inventory of all the lost and damaged items and write a letter to the office of Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes about it. Bardaquillo said they are most likely to deliver the official letter to Cortes by next week. (KFD)