CAPIZ FLASHBACK

The Gabaldon Schoolhouses 

The century old Gabaldon building in Kalibo Pilot Elementary School, Kalibo, Aklan.

Roxas City – The old generations of Capicenos  must have  been  familiar with the name of school  buildings known as ‘Gabldon School Buildings’. Here in the old Capiz, Capiz town now known as Roxas City,  a Gabaldon School  Building was constructed on the site where the present Philippine National Bank building stands at Magallanes cor. Taft Streets. It was constructed during the governorship of Jose Cortes Altavas, the fourth governor of Capiz who served for two terms from l9l0 to l9i6.

Sources from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts identified the man behind the sponsorship  in the construction of the Gabaldon schoolhouses is Assemblyman Isauro Gabaldon of Nueva Ecija. He authored Act l80l of the First Philippine Assembly in  l907. It provided an appropriation of one million pesos for elementary schools throughout the country. Construction began in l9ll until l9l6.

According to Gemma Cruz Araneta, the Gabaldon Act l80l appropriated one million pesos between l907 to l9l5 for the ‘construction of school houses of strong materials in the barrios with guaranteed daily attendance of not less than 60 pupils.”

 Funds for each school could not exceed four thousand pesos unless the municipality contributed a counterpart sum of not less than fifty per cent of the total amount granted under the Gabaldon Act. A municipality was authorized to appropriate its own funds, receive voluntary contributions in cash, kind, or in manual labor, for the construction of schoolhouses.

The Gabaldo Act stipulated that only land owned by the municipality could school building be constructed. Because the proposed site had to be surveyed and registered with the Court of Land Registration, very few schools were erected in the first three years. The Bureau of Public Works and Bureau of Education came up with standardized designs. These were known as “Gabaldon School Buildings” or simply “Gabaldon.”

Fifty-one “Gabaldons” were completed in l9ll and  405 more were constructed in l9l6  bringing the total number of classrooms to l852.

In Batan, Aklan, the Gabaldon School Building was utilized by second grade pupils where this writer was included before the Japanese occupation of the town. This building was converted  as the Kalantiaw  Shrine building in l954. Now its being used as a municipal library of  the municipality of Batan.

(Sources: National Commission for Culture and the Arts and Gemma Cruz Araneta.  Compiled by BIENVENIDO  P.  CORTES)