Minding the details about School Ownership (Day 28)
by Rey Laguda(This is the 28th day of 50-day journey of DepEd Undersecretary Rey Laguda as being serialized here with his permission, culled from his Facebook account - Blogger/owner)
Ownership of school property is hardly discussed as it is assumed that all public schools sit on land that is owned by Government. This is true except that documentation for such needs to be complete. When we joined in 2010, there was a schools titling unit that was tasked to ensure that a proper inventory of titles and other relevant documentation was in order. It was also supposedly tasked to work on issues regarding school ownership.
Based on available data from the unit, only 1,875 schools had a clean title, 1,307 schools had deeds of sale, 348 were covered by Presidential Proclamations, and 408 were covered by usufruct agreements in favor of DepEd. This totals to only 3,938 schools that had sufficient documentation. The other schools were either owned by the Local Government Unit, had incomplete documents, or under dispute with other claimants to the land. Yes, there are cases where there are other claimants. Many of school properties are donated in favor to the school or DepEd. However, these may not have been sufficiently covered by proper documentation or are currently being processed. There is a cost to such transactions which are not usually budgeted. Also, some are being reclaimed by the heirs of the donors.
