By URIEL C. QUILINGUING
Contributing Editor .
SCHOOL year 2018-2019 officially ended Wednesday, hence all Department of Education-supervised schools had their moving-up and graduation ceremonies that day. And Cagayan de Oro’s Lumbia Detention and Rehabilitation Center, though not an educational institution, was no exception.
Nineteen of the more than 200 inmates, euphemistically called persons deprived of liberty or PDL, in the LDRC facility, who were enrolled under Deped Cagayan de Oro Schools Division’s Senior High Alternative Response Education Delivery (Shared), had their moving-up rites, too, albeit behind bars.
“They have successfully completed the Grade 11 requirements of general academic strand. In fact, six of them received with high honors certificates,” said Deped-10 regional alternative learning system (ALS) coordinator Ray Butch Mahinay yesterday.
Mahinay said all the 19 11th graders, as young as 19 to as old as 40 years old, underwent a 10-month long academic interactions with four ALS teachers from the Lumbia National High School which is under the stewardship of school principal Maria Christina Ganas.
Although they were officially enrolled with Lumbia NHS, classes for Shared students were held at the LDRC Dalawan Center, the male dormitory.
The Shared initiative came about after a memorandum of agreement was inked in August 2018 between schools division superintendent Jonathan dela Peña and Jail Chief Supt. Luisito Muñoz, regional director of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, in the presence of LDRC jail warden Erwin Kenny Ronquillo.
“We’re simply making education more inclusive by reaching out to the PDLs. This could be the first ever in the country,” said dela Peña.
(ERRATUM: This is to correct the headline of the story “19 inmates graduate behind bars at city jail” that appeared in our April 5, 2019 issue. The 19 inmates did not graduate but merely participated in the moving-up from Grade 11 exercises. They will graduate from senior high after the 12th grade. Our apologies for our mistake. –Editors)
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