The Education Department here is still burdened by the perennial problem on shortage of teachers, classrooms and other resources needed for both elementary and secondary public schools in the entire region for the coming school year.
DepEd Region 11 has projected a total of 5,436 teachers required as additional workforce to address the need of the region based from the actual enrolled students of last year.
For the elementary schools, an estimated 2,787 teachers are needed while 2,649 teachers are to be required in secondary schools for this school year.
Last year, there were 17,007 and 6,623 actual teachers for elementary and secondary schools, respectively. However, DepEd Regional Director Susana Teresa Estigoy lamented during the launching of Oplan Balik Eskwela on Tuesday (June 1), that “we have the need for these teachers, but we can’t hire.”
Unless, Estigoy said, “we will be given teacher items which have to be approved by the Congress.”
“We can’t provide for these needs unless the approved national budget this year would allow DepEd to hire,” she stated.
She bared that the Congress approved last year only 10,000 teacher items for the entire country which comprised of classroom teachers, principals, school heads and disbursing officers.
Davao Region was given more than 600 teacher items which also constituted non-teaching items, Estigoy disclosed.
According to Estigoy, for the part of the local government units, only Davao City and Panabo City have afforded to allocate teacher items using the special education funds.
She said that Davao City has more than 300 Local School Board paid teachers, receiving same salary as to DepEd’s hired teachers. As for Panabo City, she added, it has more than 200 regular teachers.
Estigoy said the LGUs have different priorities, citing for instance Tagum City which has the best school buildings in the region as having infrastructure projects as its priority in terms of the education program using the special education funds.
To address this need for shortage of teachers for the meantime, Estigoy stated that DepEd is providing training for teachers and is resorting to multi-grade teaching and the double shifting strategies in some areas.
She explained that the double shifting requires the school to have an early morning classes for half of the total students in one section, then late afternoon shift for the other half.
Meanwhile, another setback for DepEd to address is the lack of classrooms and furniture such tables and chairs, and books to accommodate and cater to the expected incoming enrollees for the year.
The entire region has the need of 1,272 and 1,267 classrooms for elementary and secondary schools, respectively. About 130,618 furniture needs are projected for the elementary schools, while high school needs have an estimate of 49,004.
According to Estigoy, more than P57 million has been allocated this year for the construction and repair of classrooms and toilet seaters.
However, she said that though there were some organizations like Davao Light and Power Company that have donated some classrooms and other needs, “we’re still very far from what we need.” [PIA 11]
