13
The 'R' in Mrs. Regis
Mrs. Belma Regis was a
sentimental and all-time favorite to become our school principal, albeit an
‘acting’ one. She had braved the heckling of her colleagues in the PSJ faculty
& staff to cross the line and raise the slogans of parents and students.
She herself claimed that she did not
complete all the units for a masteral degree. And a masteral degree, according to her, was
a prerequisite to being a full-pledged school principal for an institution offering
education from Kinder up to 4th year high school. Being an educator from the
Department of Education, Culture and Sports in a previous job in Manila, she knew best
what she was saying, I guess, so the PESJ Interim Board gave her the title of Acting
School Principal, rejoining us back in the board in that capacity.
In the old PSJ, the windshield of Mrs.
Regis’ family car had been smashed twice by unknown assailants. She would see her
family car being smashed for the third time in PESJ, much later, still by unknown
assailants.
Some mysteries are never uncovered, it
seems, although I suspect it is more due to a failing to react rightly rather than due to
the profoundness of these mysteries that keeps the lid shut tight on them.
Mrs. Belma Regis was also a reader of BUGS
& BYTES.
But when, she, as Acting Principal of the
School, and I, as Chair of the Interim Board, soon found enough differences to argue with,
people soon stopped calling me a revolutionary.
Without the ardent ‘R’ of Mrs.
Regis, I went back to my comfortable, natural disposition of being an evolutionary, much
like a fish taking back to water.
I kept my respect and warm regards for
Mrs. Regis, and I believe she also kept her respect for me, since even when she threatened
to resign from being Acting Principal after a full school year, she continued to do her
duties as both administrator and teacher dedicatedly by my side until we were ready to
elect the PESJ’s first official school board well into the second school year.
Much later, she even physically supported
the combined efforts of the Interim Board and the Official Board to move the PESJ to the
larger re-unified campus of what was going to be a bizarre merger of PESJ and PSJ,
although she and others in the core group were strongly opposed to the merger itself. She
also initially supported, with some principled reservations, the next principal that the
school board recommended for appointment to the ambassador & school director in
September 1996.
By this time, BUGS & BYTES, either
as newsletter or as personal letter, was no more in print. I never got back to
printing it until now.
Not that it was forsaken. It took a life
of its own. In the push-pull of things, it was all this while in motion on a finer but
tauter wave level.
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