The fatal shooting at a school in Zamboanga City has renewed calls for Congress to establish nationwide standards for school security and student protection.
1Tahanan Party-list Representative Elmer V. Catulpos told Brigada News FM Philippines on Tuesday, August 18, that he is urging the House of Representatives to expedite deliberations on House Bill No. 10616, or the Bantay Paaralan Act (Safe Schools Security Act of 2026).
Catulpos filed the measure after a June 22 shooting at San Jose National High School in Tacloban that killed three students and injured about 20 others.
“I am not asking my colleagues to agree with every provision. I am asking that it be calendared. Debate it, cut it, improve it—but let it be heard,” he said. “I would rather be told in committee that my bill is wrong than be told by another mayor, in another city, that it is too late,” he said.
On Tuesday, a student at the junior high school campus of Ateneo de Zamboanga University shot a fellow student before taking his own life.
Catulpos said the incident was the second fatal school shooting reported in the country in less than two months, underscoring the need for a “consistent school-safety framework” instead of leaving security measures to individual schools or local authorities.
“After Tacloban, we were assured that school security was being strengthened. I believe our teachers and our police did everything they could with what they were given,” Catulpos said. “That is exactly the problem. They were given almost nothing to work with—no national standard, no funded personnel, no protocol.”
Three-part framework
HB 10616 proposes national standards covering physical security, security personnel, threat assessment and school-based counseling in public and private basic education schools.
The measure is built around three components: “Harden the Gate, Guard the Grounds, and Heal the Halls,” Catulpos said.
Under “Harden the Gate,” schools would be required to maintain secure perimeters and controlled entry points, accredited security personnel, bag-inspection procedures, CCTV systems, emergency alarms, and adequate lighting. Additional requirements would apply to larger and higher-risk schools.
The bill also proposes national funding for school-safety infrastructure in public schools, including salaries, training and equipment for school security officers and accredited guards.
Catulpos said priority would be given to schools and communities with documented security threats or significant security gaps, but the Zamboanga shooting showed that school violence is not confined to under-resourced campuses.
“If this could happen in a school with resources, in a city with a full police complement, then what protection is there in the thousands of public schools with a broken fence, no guard at the gate, no camera, and not one counselor for two thousand children?” he said. “The safety of a child cannot depend on which school that child happens to attend.”
The “Guard the Grounds” component would establish a permanent school security officer in every public basic education school, specialized accreditation for school guards, and a school safety unit in every city and municipal police station. It also proposes a response-time standard of no more than 15 minutes for emergency calls from schools.
While, the “Heal the Halls” would focus on identifying and addressing potential threats before they escalate.
The measure also proposes accelerating the hiring and deployment of guidance personnel, with a target of at least one registered guidance counselor or School Counselor Associate for every 500 learners within five years. It would also require a threat assessment team in every school and confidential reporting channels for bullying, threats, weapons and other concerning behavior.
The bill would cover threats made through online posts, images and other digital communications, including procedures for reporting threats and preserving digital evidence, the lawmaker said.
“In both Tacloban and Zamboanga, there were people who saw something before anything happened. There was no safe, confidential place for them to bring it, and no team obliged to act on it,” Catulpos said. “That is not a failure of vigilance. That is a missing mechanism, and a mechanism is something Congress can actually build.”
Security without militarizing schools
Catulpos said the measure also seeks to protect students’ dignity and rights, rejecting the militarization of schools and prohibiting security measures that humiliate, profile, discriminate against, or unnecessarily traumatize learners.
Meanwhile, Senator Bam Aquino has a pending bill for a broader School Safety Act that addresses more than just bullying, especially as reports of violent incidents and students bringing weapons to school raise new security worries.
“We are not asking to turn schools into checkpoints,” Catulpos said. “We are asking that a child be able to walk through a gate that someone is watching, into a school where someone is trained to notice that he is not alone in his head.”
“No child is made safe by hardware alone, and no child is healed by counsel alone. It has to be both.”
HB 10616 proposes an initial P5-billion appropriation for its first year of implementation to cover Tier 1 school-safety infrastructure and the initial complement of School Security Officers.
Succeeding funding would be included in the annual General Appropriations Act (GAA), Catulpos said.
For 2027, the Department of Education (DepEd) has proposed a budget exceeding P976 billion, accounting for the largest share at 13.55% of the total expenditure plan.*
Reymund Titong is a Filipino journalist steadily building his voice in the field of news reporting, driven by a commitment to tell meaningful and relevant stories.
He serves as a correspondent for Rappler, contributes to Negros Daily Bulletin, and maintains a blog on Medium.