To thunderous applause, Fr. Ditto Gueco, vice provincial of the North Province of the Salesians of Don Bosco of the Philippines, announced the return of Pampanga’s premier school for boys to its old home in Barangay Cabalantian, Bacolor town.
“This is a momentous event for all Bosconians, particularly those who spent all their years studying at Don Bosco. Punong-puno ng kaligayahan ang puso namin ngayong oras na ito,” said foremost Don Bosco alumnus business leader Levy P. Laus of Batch 1968.
Devastated by the lahar rampage that buried Barangay Cabalantian on Oct. 1, 1995, Don Bosco was forced to relocate to Mabalacat City in 1996 where it has since established a sprawling campus.
“But there has always been that desire to bring back Don Bosco to its original home,” Laus said, noting how “the events and the times seemed to have made the realization of that desire an impossibility.”
For one, the old site was acquired by the House of David Group whereupon was established the Mary the Queen Academy of Pampanga in 2000.
“Even as we searched for other possible sites in Bacolor, we were ever mindful that the Salesian fathers did not have enough funds for an outright purchase,” said Laus.
It was in Turin, Italy last year, on the occasion of the bicentennial of St. John Bosco’s birth that, Laus said, he “dared” Don Bosco to “show us the way (for the return of the academy) back to Bacolor.”
Laus called it serendipity that he was named to the board of the Bank of Florida, owned by the same group that acquired the old Don Bosco site.
“We are most thankful to the David family for making Don Bosco’s homecoming a reality,” Laus said, even as he also cited the “outpouring of support, both moral and fi nancial, from the alumni.”
An instant alumni response at Monday’s press conference at the Max’s Restaurant in Villa del Sol here, was the donation of P300,000 the DBA Class of 1968 led by George Ong handed to the Salesian fathers.
The re-opening of the Bacolor campus, Laus reported, was raised initially in an appeal to the Salesians in Turin, from where the documents were forwarded to the Vatican.
With San Fernando Archbishop Florentino Lavarias granting his consent, Salesian rector major Fr. Angel Fernandez approved the re-establishment of the campus in its old site last January 20.
According to Fr. Gueco, Don Bosco-Bacolor will off er kindergarten, elementary, and junior high school, to run simultaneously with the schools’ Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Center.
“Opening Don Bosco- Bacolor has to help our needy and less-privileged young people of Pampanga, that is why we will open a TVET Center here, but we need to prepare logistically, so give us three school years for that,” Gueco said.
Known as a boys’ school, Don Bosco-Bacolor will accept female enrollees, making it the now the fourth co-educational campus of the Salesian school.
“This decision underwent so much process, of thinking, of meeting, of engaging our alumni, and getting their consent. The times call for it. Being exclusive has its advantages but being co-educational has more,” Gueco said.
