049 ODE TO MIKE (2)
Mike Luz was an enigma to me, at least, he was when we were working in the same building at the Department of Education’s Central Office in Pasig City. He was a very private person, I thought. As am I. So we basically kept to ourselves all that time, him in his ground floor office while I was at our small Communications Unit nook just a floor above, at the Office of the Secretary.
We basically only saw each other briefly, at meetings or when we bump into each other at the lobby, with him always greeting me with what seemed to be a deliberately measured yet very friendly smile. He was all business. At least, that’s what it appeared back then.
Just the same, I’ve always thought of him as one of the good guys.
It helped that one of my dear friends, Marge Barro, had a lot of good words about him. She was executive director of the League of Corporate Foundations then, but she had worked with Mike as his point person for his innovative Library Hubs project that allowed the education department to provide library books to our underfunded public schools. Hubs were basically warehouses that lend out books to schools. So instead of providing all schools with all of these books, they share with other schools. Less cost. More efficiency. Genius.
I wouldn’t know how he felt about me and the rest of my team back then. I can only assume that he’d have had his doubts, as is the nature of his job in admin and finance in a government agency that can be quite the magnet for the corrupt and the incompetent. Just the same, my team made sure to support him and his innovative efforts.
We supported him all the way to the bitter end, when the president “fired” him for doing his job (As a career officer, he couldn’t be fired but he was unceremoniously transferred to another agency). At that time, we made sure that he could get his story out. So we arranged as many media interviews we could have while he was still at his office. At the same time, we resisted Malacanang’s move to rename Brigada Eskwela in what to us was an obvious attempt to erase Mike’s legacy at DepEd, replacing it with the rinky-dink name ‘Bayanihan Para Sa Paaralan’ (We kept Brigada and used Bayanihan as a subtext to appease the palace, and when the heat subsided, we eventually got rid of Bayanihan altogether).
It was obvious that Mike’s heart was in education (he was, after all, a former teacher even before he became dean at the Asian Institute of Management). We all knew that he loved his job. And just like us, it was obvious that education reform was the cause he was most passionate about.
We did what we could to bring his message out. I even asked the editorial board of Educator Magazine to feature him in the cover. In that particular magazine issue, I had the honor to write the editorial, which basically said that Mike Luz would have been an outstanding education secretary, if given the chance. Yes, it was a full endorsement.
(TO BE CONTINUED)