Act No. 1085 Loaning ₱4,500 to Batangas for Teachers' Salaries, 1904

Even before the end of the Philippine-American War in 1902, the new United States colonial government had started the wheels rolling of their “benevolent occupation” of the Philippine Islands. The Philippine Commission, which functioned as a colonial government, had started talking to civilian populations around the country to prepare them for civilian governance.

Quickly noting that the Spaniards had opened colleges but had failed to set up public basic education schools to feed these colleges, schools at the primary, intermediate and secondary levels were among the priorities. In 1904, the Philippine Commission authorized the load of ₱4,500 to the Province of Batangas for the payment of the salaries of teachers who would take charge of these schools. The full contents of this act are reproduced below:

AN ACT Providing for the loan of four thousand five hundred pesos, Philippine currency, to the Province of Batangas, and authorizing the provincial board of said province to reloan that sum to such municipalities in the province as to the provincial board may seem proper, to be used in the payment of salaries of teachers employed in the barrio public schools of such municipalities, and for no other purpose.

By authority of the United States, be it enacted by the Philippine Commission, that:

SECTION 1. There is hereby appropriated, out of any funds in the Insular Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of four thousand five hundred pesos, Philippine currency, to be loaned to the Province of Batangas.

SEC. 2. The money appropriated in section one of this Act shall be paid by the Insular Yreasurer to the treasurer of the Province of Batangas on the presentation to the Insular Treasurer of a certified copy of a resolution of the provincial board of Batangas accepting such loan and agreeing to repay the same, without interest, as follows: Two thousand five hundred pesos, Philippine currency, within two years from the date of the acceptance of the loan, and one thousand pesos, Philippine currency, each year thereafter until the full amount of the loan has been repaid to the Insular Treasury.

SEC. 3. The provincml board of Batangas is hereby authorized to reloan the money thus made available to such municipalities in the province as to it may seem proper, to be used by such municipalities in the payment of teachers employed in their barrio public schools, and for no other purpose, and such loans shall be repaid by the municipalities to the province, without interest, within such time as may be fixed by the provincial board.

SEC. 4. The public good requiring the speedy enactment of this bill, the passage of the same is hereby expedited in accordance with section two of “An Act prescribing the order of procedure by the Commission in the enactment of laws,” passed September twenty-sixth, nineteen hundred.

SEC. 5. This Act shall take effect on its passage.

Enacted, March 10, 1904.