Dumaguete used city funds, donated land, private partners and even bought an entire school campus. A year after former mayor Ipe Remollo described that approach to the Senate, the national classroom program is moving in the same direction.
DUMAGUETE CITY — Barely two months after completing three consecutive terms as mayor of Dumaguete City, Felipe “Ipe” Remollo stepped back into the public spotlight.
This time, he was not sitting at City Hall.
On August 12, 2025, Remollo appeared as a resource person before a joint hearing of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, together with the Committees on Local Government and Finance.
The senators were confronting one of the country’s most persistent education problems: an estimated shortage of around 165,000 classrooms.
They wanted to know how classrooms could be built faster, at lower cost and through more flexible arrangements than the traditional system that relied heavily on national government agencies.
Remollo came to Manila to explain what Dumaguete had already been doing.
The city had not waited for every classroom project to come from the national government.
It used local funds.
It tapped its Special Education Fund.
It worked with private foundations and other institutions.
It accepted donated land.
And when an existing private school campus became available, the city bought it for public-school use.
The experience was local.
The problem was national.
A different way of building
For years, much of the responsibility for public classroom construction had been concentrated in the Department of Education and the Department of Public Works and Highways.
Dumaguete pursued a more diversified approach.
In Batinguel, the family of the late Dr. Agaton Pal donated a one-hectare property beside Batinguel Elementary School during the Remollo administration.
The property allowed the city to pursue a technical-vocational school without first spending millions of pesos to acquire land.
The lesson was straightforward: before government can build classrooms, it needs somewhere to put them.
When land could be donated, Dumaguete sought donations.
When outside institutions could help, the city partnered with them.
At Dumaguete City High School, PAGCOR funded an 18-classroom, three-storey school building, helping address congestion in one of the city’s largest public schools.
After a fire later destroyed classrooms at the same school, DepEd funded three additional 12-classroom buildings, adding 36 classrooms.
Different institutions filled different parts of the same need.
Then Dumaguete took an even more unusual step.
It bought an entire school.
In 2024, the city acquired the former Catherina Cittadini campus in Barangay Calindagan for ₱175 million, payable in installments.
The nearly two-hectare property already contained classrooms, laboratories, a gymnasium, cafeteria, chapel, playground, parking areas and a 14-room dormitory or convent building.
Instead of buying empty land and waiting years to construct an entirely new campus, the city acquired educational infrastructure that was already standing.
The property became the home of City Central Elementary School and Calindagan Elementary School.
Remollo said the acquisition was paid through city funds on installment and without taking out a loan.
By 2025, the Local School Board had also approved another ₱81.4 million for school buildings and facilities benefiting seven public schools in Dumaguete.
No single funding source carried the entire burden.
That was the strategy.
Use city funds where possible.
Use the Special Education Fund.
Seek donations.
Work with foundations and national agencies.
Acquire existing facilities when it makes financial and practical sense.
Do not wait for only one government agency to provide the solution.
Then the senate looked at the numbers
What attracted particular attention during the Senate hearing was not merely that Dumaguete had been building classrooms.
It was how much those classrooms cost.
Figures presented during the hearings placed classrooms built using Dumaguete local government funds at roughly ₱2.1 million per classroom.
Classrooms constructed through private or nongovernment partnerships were cited at about ₱1.5 million each.
These figures were compared with higher costs cited for classroom construction under traditional national government implementation.
The differences immediately raised questions among senators.
If LGUs and private partners could construct classrooms at lower cost, why should the country depend so heavily on a single delivery system?
Remollo also brought a detailed position paper outlining the Dumaguete experience, including its financing methods, partnerships, classroom designs and the role local governments could play in helping solve the national shortage.
Back in Dumaguete, critics questioned why a former mayor was appearing before the Senate shortly after leaving office.
But Remollo was there because the Senate had invited him as a resource person.
The committee wanted to hear what Dumaguete had done and whether lessons from one city could contribute to a larger national solution.
The national system begins to change
It would be inaccurate to say that Dumaguete alone created the national Classroom-Building Acceleration Program.
The legislative proposal was already under consideration before Remollo testified.
Nor can one Senate appearance be credited with producing an entire national policy.
But what happened afterward closely reflected many of the principles discussed during that hearing.
The Senate eventually approved legislation creating a Classroom-Building Acceleration Program that would broaden the number of institutions able to participate in classroom construction, including local governments and civil society organizations.
Even before the legislation completed the entire congressional process, the national government began implementing a broader multi-partner strategy.
In January 2026, Education Secretary Sonny Angara told mayors and local officials that LGUs would be given a larger role in classroom delivery.
Under the emerging framework, capable local governments could undertake procurement and construction while DepEd identified priority schools, provided technical specifications and released funding.
The government was moving away from a system heavily dependent on a single implementing agency.
In February, DepEd entered into agreements with provincial governments representing more than 90 percent of the country’s provinces.
Under the initial 2026 program, billions of pesos were allocated for classroom construction, including funds that provincial governments could directly implement.
By March, DepEd was calling on more than 1,300 mayors across the country to participate in what it described as a multi-channel strategy for addressing the 165,000-classroom deficit.
The approach combined national government funding, LGU implementation, private-sector participation, public-private partnerships and alternative construction methods.
By April, several provinces had already been cleared to begin procurement for classroom projects under the new arrangement.
The responsibility for building classrooms was becoming more widely shared.
National government.
Local governments.
Private institutions.
Different financing mechanisms.
Different implementing partners.
One national shortage.
What dumaguete had already been doing
The similarities with the Dumaguete experience are clear, even though the national policy has many authors and developed through a broader legislative and executive process.
When land was the problem, Dumaguete sought donations.
When foundations and other institutions could help, it partnered with them.
When local money was available, the city used local money.
When buying an existing school campus offered a faster solution than building from the ground up, the city bought the campus.
And when classrooms were needed, local officials did not treat the absence of a national project as a reason to simply wait.
That was essentially the experience Remollo brought before the Senate in August 2025.
His argument was not that Manila was unnecessary.
Nor was it that LGUs alone could solve a shortage of 165,000 classrooms.
The lesson was that a problem of such magnitude could not depend on only one funding source, one agency or one method of construction.
A little more than a year after that hearing, the national government is increasingly moving in that same direction.
Governors and mayors are now being asked to take a greater role in building classrooms.
Private partners are being brought into the effort.
Local resources are being combined with national funds.
And classroom construction is being spread across more implementing institutions.
Dumaguete did not solve the Philippine classroom crisis.
What it provided was a working example of how a local government could refuse to wait for a single solution from Manila.
In a country still confronting a classroom shortage estimated at 165,000, that experience has taken on a significance far beyond the City of Gentle People.