Should there be classes during Ramadhan?

MARAWI CITY – School officials, teachers and students in this Islamic City are now reportedly torn between following religious practice or a recently-issued directive from the regional Deparment of Education (DepEd) that ordered the holding of classes during the holy month of Ramadhan.

On one hand is traditional Muslim practice, buttressed by city ordinances, that declares every month of Ramadhan as under school break to allow the Muslim academe to observe fasting, prayers and other religious rituals mandated under Islam.

And on the other hand is a recent directive issued by the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) DepEd just before the start of Ramadhan last June 18 that required the city schools to hold classes during the holy month. Ramadhan ends on July 17.

The controversial ARMM-DepEd directive was issued by regional Secretary John Magno.

According to local officials, the city ordinance declaring a school break during Ramadhan was instituted based on studies by experts that teachers and students were unlikely to perform well while they were fasting.

And while the ordinance, which was also in accordance with the declaration three decades ago of Marawi as the country’s only Islamic city, had been recognized by the ARMM government including the administration of Governor Mujiv Hataman until Magno’s order early last month, sources said.

As it is, school officials, teachers and the more than 50,000 students of the city’s elementary and high schools have followed Muslim tradition and the city ordinance and have gone on the monthlong break. But they are now wary over the sanctions they could face for not following the ARMM-DepEd directive issued by Magno.

And in the middle of that conflict, Marawi Schools Division Superintendent Mona Macatanong may have found herself between a rock and a hard place.

On the basis of Magno’s directive, Macatanong asked Marawi City Mayor Sultan Fahad Salic, in a letter dated June 7, to order the holding of elementary and high school classes despite the existing ordinance.

But Salic responded three days later, turning down her request and instead instructed the city schools division to continue observing the Ramadhan break and just make up for the days missed by holding classes during Christmas and semester breaks as observed in past.

Macatanong thinks the dire situation she is in was forced on her as part of the alleged pressures from the administration of Hataman to force her into retiring from office before October 2016 in favor of ARMM-appointed officers-in-charge in the city.

She said she was bypassed by the Hataman administration in appointing new teachers for this city recently in alleged violation of civil service rules and other existing laws that require the role of superintendents in the screening of candidates for appointment or promotion.

Earlier, dozens of school supervisors, principals and teachers failed to gain attention from the President or DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro in their petition for relief from alleged persecutions by ARMM executives, who had cut the city division’s monthly maintenance and other operating expense (MOOE) fund since June 2014.