Schools still closed despite upcoming exams

Rendi A. Witular and Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

During last week's flooding, which submerged homes and apartments, public schools were by no means spared.

With less than 20 days left before second term examinations, many schools have yet to resume their academic activities.

Many students and teachers have been suffered two-fold: first having suffered the effects of the flooding of their homes, only now are they finding that their schools have been turned into temporary shelters for the thousands of evacuees.

In SDN Kalideres elementary school, West Jakarta, only 50 percent of the school's 240 students made it to class on Wednesday.

Many showed up without uniforms which were either soaked by the floods, or swept away altogether by strong currents.

Worse still, the students were in desperate need of reference materials and notebooks, which had also been carried away by last week's floods.

The school itself had been closed since Jan. 29 to accommodate flood victims before it re-opened on Tuesday.

One of the teachers, Ibu Rinsi, expressed her exasperation about the upcoming examinations, set for late February. Neither students nor teachers, she said, were able to carry out their activities because of the floods.

"Due to the week-long closing and the fact that only 20 percent of the students came to class in the last two days, we decided to give them additional sessions to prepare for the tests," she said.

SMUN 92 high school deputy principal Sukarmo, meanwhile, said that although the school -- located in Semper Barat, North Jakarta -- had been hit by waters up to 20 centimeters high, students and teachers with flood-free homes were urged to continue their academic activities.

On average, only 15 out of every 40 students made it back to class at the school, which has 650 students and 43 teachers.

By Wednesday, teachers and staff were still working to clean up their classrooms and reschedule academic programs.

"We can only clean up the mud and garbage from the school for now. Teachers have been helping students catch up to the curriculum," he said.

The school also suffered great material losses, as sports fields and equipment were severely damaged by the flooding.

Sukarno said that on Tuesday he had proposed a renovation budget to the City Education Agency. However, he added, the school did not request compensation for students' lost uniforms and books.

SDN 03 Petamburan elementary school, Central Jakarta, served as a shelter for nearly 3,000 flood victims over the course of two weeks.

One of the students, Devi, said that her school would re-open on Feb. 11. However, she added that she has no idea how to get new notebooks; her original ones were ruined by the muddy waters.

"I can't read my notebooks -- they're totally ruined -- but I'm still drying out my reference books. They're only wet, so I can still use them," said the resourceful fifth-grade student.

City Education Agency officials announced earlier that they would spend some of Rp 500 billion of their annual budget to repair hundreds of damaged school buildings.

The agency's head of general affairs, Abdul Hamid, urged school officials to report their losses soon to more effectively distribute compensation.

The agency, however, did not provide books or uniforms for flood victims.