Lack of rooms, teachers still school woes of Negros, E. Visayas
BACOLOD CITY—Negros Occidental public schools have enough teachers but lack classrooms while Eastern Visayas still lacks over 1,000 teachers.
The allocation of 485 new teachers in Negros Occidental would enable the province to have enough teachers in its public schools, unlike other provinces in Western Visayas, according to provincial schools superintendent Juliet Jeruta.
However, the rest of the provinces in Western Visayas would still have a shortage of 2,058 teachers, although the Department of Education (DepEd) has allocated 4,964 new teachers for the school year 2013-2014.
Negros Occidental and the rest of the region also face shortage in classrooms reaching 3,000.
Negros Occidental is short by 784 classrooms—483 classrooms for kindergarten, 129 for elementary and 172 for high school, Jeruta said.
The Negrense Volunteers for Change (NVC), in partnership with various groups, plans to build more classrooms this year to help the DepEd meet the shortfall, according to NVC president Millie Kilayko.
Kilayko said the group plans to build 120 classrooms this year with the help of groups that are working with NVC and Filipinos overseas.
The NVC has built and turned over 114 classrooms in 2011 and 2012, said Kilayko. At least 96 of these classrooms are in Negros Occidental and 18 in Negros Oriental, she said.
In Eastern Visayas, the DepEd needs 4,943 new teachers for kindergarten (1,386), elementary (71) and secondary (3,486) levels in the coming school year.
But the region was only given an allocation of 3,760 new teachers—513 for kindergarten, 1,200 for elementary and 2,047 for secondary levels, said Rebecca Ragrag, acting assistant regional director.
Ragrag also said that starting this school year, the DepEd has issued a moratorium on the hiring of teachers by local government units (LGUs), which could aggravate the shortage of teachers.
She said many teachers hired by LGUs have not passed board exams and the DepEd wanted to give priority to those who had.
