A bill filed in the House of Representatives seeks to fast-track the titling and registration of unregistered or untitled parcels of land being used as public school sites to prevent land disputes from delaying classroom construction and school rehabilitation projects.
House Bill 9477, or the proposed Classroom Building Acceleration Program Act, aims to secure public school sites under the name of the Department of Education and streamline coordination among government agencies to address long-standing bureaucratic delays in the transfer of ownership.
The measure seeks to ensure that DepEd’s classroom-building acceleration program will not be hampered by incomplete land documentation or questions over legal property rights.
It also aims to protect government investments in the retrofitting, rehabilitation and major repair of public school buildings, particularly those requiring clear ownership over the land where the structures stand.
Parañaque Rep. Brian Yamsuan, who filed the bill, said clear land ownership is necessary to allow the government to carry out long-term safety measures for public school buildings without legal obstacles.
“While not an engineering safeguard, our proposal to secure government ownership of land housing public schools would greatly contribute to the unhampered implementation of long-term safety measures for these structures, such as earthquake retrofitting, rehabilitation and other improvements which often require clear legal rights over the land they stand on,” Yamsuan said.
The lawmaker made the statement as he welcomed the recent directive of DepEd Secretary Sonny Angara to conduct structural safety inspections on schools affected by the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Mindanao on June 8.
“No amount of funding or accelerated construction of school buildings will resolve our perennial classroom backlog if the lands for public school sites remain open to dispute because of incomplete documentation and lack of legal property rights,” Yamsuan said.
The bill comes as the country continues to face a classroom backlog of more than 144,000 as of January, a problem that could worsen because of deteriorating school buildings and disaster-related damage.
Citing data from the Second Congressional Commission on Education, Yamsuan said about 122,000 classrooms nationwide have already exceeded their prescribed lifespan, while 51,222 more classrooms are expected to be declared condemned structures by 2028.
A report by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies also showed that without major repairs and rehabilitation, only 18.6 percent of public school buildings are projected to remain in good condition by 2040.
The recent Mindanao earthquake, which damaged several structures including school buildings, could further aggravate the classroom shortage.
While Congress increased the Basic Education Facilities Fund for fiscal year 2026 to more than P85 billion to accelerate school infrastructure development, the lack of clear legal property rights over many school sites could remain a major barrier to DepEd’s efforts to address the classroom crisis, Yamsuan said.
Aside from expediting the titling and registration of public school sites, HB 9477 also establishes a disputable presumption of ownership in favor of DepEd for parcels of land that it has openly, continuously and exclusively used for at least 10 years.
This presumption would apply even in the absence of registrable documents affecting the transfer of registered lands on behalf of the department.
The proposed measure also strengthens DepEd’s authority to acquire private lots already being used as public school sites through expropriation, or the process by which the government acquires private property for public use upon payment of fair and just compensation to the owner.