Rolling stores, clinics and botica on wheels, justice on wheels.

We like them mobile, thank you.

If the people can’t go to where the goods and services are, roll them out to them.

This makes perfect sense to us, especially in remote, isolated communities.

And so considering the perennial shortage of classrooms and the ever-growing number of children who enter school age every year, we appreciate the sheer audacity of the proponents of a mobile kindergarten project.      

The first unit of several mobile kindergarten classrooms of the Department of Education and the Bagong Henerasyon party-list group was launched the other day in a public elementary school in Quezon City.

The mobile unit is a customized truck equipped with furniture and classroom paraphernalia as well as air conditioning. It could service up to 24 students.

The President Corazon Aquino Elementary School will use the first unit in Batasan Hills, Quezon City, but more  are expected to be rolled out to service schools with classroom shortage.

The PCAES has 632 kindergarten students crammed in four two-hour shifts, with the fourth shift lasting up to 6 p.m. daily.

DepEd will provide teaching materials to volunteer teachers for the program.   

In a ceremony, Education Secretary Armin Luistro signed a memorandum of agreement with the party-list group headed by Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy for the implementation of the project.

Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista, Quezon City Schools Division superintendent Corazon Rubio, and PCAES principal Paul Medrano were also present during the affair.

Bagong Henerasyon pledged to provide customized trucks for the “Kindergarten on Wheels” program as well as drivers and maintenance officers who will be present during the learning sessions when needed.

The DepEd plans to fill up the classroom backlog of 66,000 by 2013 as it implements its ambitious K+12 curriculum that adds universal kindergarten access and adds two more years to the existing 10-year basic education system.

“Budgetary constraints are not the only reasons that have held back our pre-school education program. We are now faced by lack of space for new school buildings, but we intend to address this with the novel idea behind the kindergarten-on-wheels,” Dy, vice chairman of the House committee on welfare of children, was quoted by a major broadsheet as saying.

Dy is the principal author of House Bill 1079 codifying the alternative child care laws of the country and HB 1080 seeking to establish at least one special education center in each school division and three SPED centers in big school divisions.

She also co-authored HB 0008 that seeks to institutionalize pre-school education into the basic education system in the country.