BAGUIO CITY—The Manuel L. Quezon Elementary School has set its sights to expanding to Junior High School in 2017 as SM Foundation turned over a brand new, two-story school building on Nov. 1.
The new school building comes with four fully-furnished classrooms with a total 200 arm chairs, 4 teacher’s desk sets, 16 wall fans, 8 blackboards, 4 wall clocks, and 4 toilets.
SM Foundation says it recognizes the need to help close the gap in the quality of education between private and public schools by providing the proper environment that is conducive to learning.
“Education is the greatest equalizer,” said Linda Atayde, SM Foundation Executive Director for Education Programs.
She said: “Numerous studies have shown that having a prepared environment conducive for learning boosts the child’s creativity, independent thinking and absorptive capacity.
“Through these fully-furnished, well-ventilated classrooms, we hope to aid the child’s learning to be more productive, enjoyable and comfortable.”
MLQ Elementary School has 900 students from 13 barangays from Kinder to Grade 6.
It has a campus with more than a hectare of land, with 9 school buildings.
The new school building will be the 10th on campus which will serve as classrooms of the incoming Junior High in 2017.
In the meantime, it will serve as laboratory rooms for different grade levels.
“Our dream is to be a full K-12 school,” said school principal Danilo Gayao.
“The new school building from SM Foundation makes the expansion to Junior High possible. We are now even more hopeful that, eventually, it will lead to the expansion to senior high.”
MLQ Elementary School also provides Alternative Learning System to 300 students including mothers, ex-convicts, and out-of-school youth, who hope to finish schooling.
It also serves as one of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority campuses.
“We thank SM for being a partner-stakeholder of DepEd’s vision to provide education for all,” Gayao said.
This is SM Foundation’s 76th school building to date. It is the 5th school building in Baguio, including those built for the Irisan Elementary School, Pinsao Elementary School, Josefa Carino Elementary School and Lucban Elementary School.
SM Foundation also provides college and technical-vocational scholarship grants to further help provide access to inclusive and equitable quality education.
To date, the SM Group of Companies has supported Baguio and communities around it through the various programs of SM Foundation.
Through the Scholarship Program, there are 77 college scholars and 40 tech-voc scholars. The Foundation has conducted 24 medical missions benefitting 19,973 patients.
The Foundation has also renovated three health centers and two hospitals.
