CENTRO ESCOLAR LAS PIÑAS: A BRIEF HISTORY

CENTRO ESCOLAR LAS PIÑAS (CELP) was born out of the desire of Centro Escolar University (CEU) to bring quality education to a wider area and to a greater number of youth. CELP is the youngest of several schools which all traced their origin from the two young women, Librada Avelino and Carmen de Luna, who put up the very first non-sectarian, nationalist school for girls in the Philippines. They named it Centro Escolar de Señoritas. It became a university in 1934 and, later in 1945, opened its doors to boys. Presently, it is now led by the successors of the late business mogul, Don Emilio Yap, a Chinese-Filipino business tycoon. 

Centro Escolar Las Piñas was formerly Las Piñas College (LPC) which was founded in 1973 by Dr. Faustino Legaspi-Uy, an accomplished and enterprising doctor of medicine. What started off as a school of nursing soon became an institution that offered programs in primary, secondary, tertiary and vocational education. 

After the death in 1986 of the LPC’s founder and the carrier of the vision, his wife, Dr. Luz Co-Uy, took over management and successfully expanded the school’s offerings that led to enrollment figures as high as 4,000. Dr. Co-Uy, after nineteen years of being in the helm and who was getting on in years, turned over the management of LPC to her son, Marshall David Uy in 2005. By this time, the number of schools around the neighboring cities of Las Piñas, Paranaque, Muntinlupa and Bacoor were experiencing growth in the real estate development which brought in a lot of young families. This attracted new schools with more resources to establish in the area, whittling down the LPC enrollment to a little over 500 students. 

In 2015, the publicly listed Centro Escolar University (CEU) acquired LPC. CEU allowed Dr. Co-Uy to run the Centro Escolar Las Piñas until the end of SY 2015-2016. In a Special Stockholders Meeting of Las Piñas College held April 29, 2016, it was resolved that the corporate name would be changed to Centro Escolar Las Piñas, Inc. with the primary purpose of operating a school that offered programs in basic, baccalaureate, and graduate education. The transfer of ownership to Centro Escolar University brought new life to an institution that had lost its bearing, bringing in the mark of excellence of CEU in the areas south of Manila.      

CENTRO ESCOLAR LAS PIÑAS now joins the other campuses of Centro Escolar University (Manila), Centro Escolar University (Malolos), Centro Escolar University (Makati), Centro Escolar Integrated School (Manila, Malolos, Makati) where excellence and the rigor of science is a way of life and where virtue is the core of every one’s persona.