DepEd central office directs teacher distribution in Bicol

LEGAZPI CITY, Jan. 24 (PNA) –- The over 3,000 new public school teachers to be hired and assigned in Bicol starting school year 2013-2014 have to choose from the areas of assignment the Department of Education (DepEd) central office has identified in an effort to set right the faulty teacher-student ratio in government schools in the region. As to the present number of teachers in the region, Bicol public schools can achieve the efficient ratio of one teacher per 35 students, but they are not properly distributed. Some schools have an oversupply of teachers while there are others that lack instructors, Dr. Jose Bonto, DepEd Bicol administrative officer, said. The central office’s intervention is both an offshoot of the color-coding scheme implemented by regional education officials to identify schools that need reinforcement of faculty members and the immediate dissemination of these data by the department’s Bureau of Education Information System (BEIS). “The BEIS gave us relief. No applicant now can accuse regional or division officials of favoritism or of constraining them to accept assignment in areas away from their residence that is a violation of Republic Act 8190 or the Localization Law. The areas are identified by the central office and what we are to do is simply fill the vacancies,” Bonto said. Local education officials have implemented since middle last year a color-coding scheme in an effort to reassign and redeploy teachers to public elementary and high schools in the region with insufficient number of instructors in anticipation of the upcoming opening of classes this June. It is also being done in anticipation of the prohibition of transfer of teachers by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) relative to the upcoming 2013 local and national elections and to harmonize with the K+12 curriculum requirements next school year. White patch is attached to names of schools with enough number of teachers and proper ratio, black patch to those in excess while red patch is given to schools with insufficient number of educators. “The color-coded schools were reported to the central office through the BEIS and were posted in the DepEd website. So applicants, through the Internet, can now outright know the area of possible assignment that is nearest their domicile. They don’t have to come to the regional or division office to know the areas with vacancies,” Bonto said. He, however, made clear that the Localization Law shall be enforced in schools with vacancies and which have applicants living within or nearby the host barangay. Republic Act 4670 or the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers had also, so far, prevented efforts to rectify teacher distribution in the region because it is mandated that transfer of teachers could not be done without the consent of the teacher concerned, or it must be done only “for the exigency of the service.” On transfers made under the latter condition, the DepEd regional office is required under the law to pay the transportation expenses of the concerned teachers. It was learned that DepEd Bicol succeeded in persuading some teachers to transfer from schools with oversupply to undermanned areas through payment of a P3,000 monthly transportation allowance for a span of six months only. We have enough funds for the payment of the six-month allowances to fully rectify the distribution problem. But it was not enough to encourage most teachers to accept transfer of assignments,” Bonto said. Aside from the new public school teachers to be hired this year, local education officials have also been expecting a share from Deped’s 2013 budget for the purchase of about 38,000 armchairs and construction of 3,500 additional classrooms. (PNA) LAP/FGS/ALV/MMG/ABB