Schools still closed despite upcoming exams

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.