Dialogue between MC Parents and MC BEU Admin for SY2020-2021

Dear Miriam College Lower School Administration,

The coronavirus crisis is reshaping society in profound and lasting ways, from how we travel and how we shop, to how we work and foster relationships with one another. Some of the changes we will see in the coming weeks, months or years might feel unfamiliar or—worse—unsettling: A big part of this is education. We realize that this greatly affects all of us. And by us, we mean also the administrators, the teachers, the support system of the school and many unsung heroes of Miriam College that truly make the school a great place for education. That is why we, a concerned group of Miriam College BEU parents, have banded together to voice out our concerns on the recently released memorandum on tuition fees for SY2020-2021 and MC ConnectED Memo: Information Bulletin No 2 for Lower School Parents.


Our concerns can be divided into 2 particular areas: Schedule and Tuition Fee.

On the schedule.
1. The sample schedule sent out for Grades 2-5 is from 745AM – 330PM. It has 6 40minute learning sessions that are separated by only a 10minute break for each one. And while you mentioned that the maximum screen time for each child is only 4 hours, we feel that that is still too long considering that virtual interactions can be extremely hard on the brain.

A typical video call impairs these ingrained abilities, and requires sustained and intense attention to words instead. If a person is framed only from the shoulders up, the possibility of viewing hand gestures or other body language is eliminated. If the video quality is poor, any hope of gleaning something from minute facial expressions is dashed.

Multi-person screens magnify this exhausting problem. Gallery view—where all meeting participants appear Brady Bunch-style—challenges the brain's central vision, forcing it to decode so many people at once that no one comes through meaningfully, not even the speaker. And this is under the assumption that the family has a stable internet connection. A shacky internet connection puts another level of difficulty in understanding lesson plans and make learning difficult for children. This is considering that the maximum amount of students each class will have is 20. 20 GradeSchool students that have no capacity to understand and thrive in an online setting will have to do this from 8AM – 3PM 5x a week.

We feel this will be difficult for school age children especially since their brains are not even fully developed yet.

We propose that you make the schedule a half day only, following the schedule for Grade 1 students.

We propose that you lessen the amount of subjects and focus only on the essential subjects such as Math, Science, Reading and Language, Filipino and Araling Panlipunan.

We also propose that you hold simulation classes to see if the schedule will actually work with the different grade levels.


2. This will also be a problem for the LP which is a requirement in your letter dated 20 May, 2020. With the schedule provided, how will parents or guardians work? How will they do be ever made to do anything else if they are the designated LP for a student with a schedule from 745-330PM?

This also poses a problem for parents and guardians that have multiple
children In different age groups from different schools.

How do you propose to address those?


On Tuition Fees.
1. The fees for SY2020-21 has been seen by us parents. We feel that these fees are unfair to the parents and guardians and needs to be lowered down for the ff reasons.
· No parent will allow their children to be present in a school setting for the whole SY of 2020-2021. The President of the Philippines has already mentioned that no face to face classes will be held until there is a vaccine that will protect students, teachers and administrators. In this sense, Basic Fees will not be applicable for the SY of 2021.
· For Misc fees, we feel that some of these fees can also be disregarded. Particularly:
o Laboratory Fees
o Publication
o Class Picture
o Energy Fee
o ID Fee
o Accident Insurance
These fees will be non-existent for the SY2020-2021.
· Considering it will be a parent or guardian that will be the one actually teaching the student everyday.
· Considering the additional technical requirements that the school has imposed on its students.

If there are any changes in the future that will change the scenario of learning, then we are happy to pay for these fees only then. The school can, at that time, send an addendum of fees that will outline the additional services that the school will have.

We propose that Miriam College lower the tuition fee for SY2020-2021 to only include the actual Tuition Fee and only a few items in the Miscellaneous Fees.