DepEd: More than half a million school execs, teachers to assist in polls 

MANILA, Philippines — More than half a million school officials, teachers and personnel under the Department of Education (DepEd) are all set to assist the conduct of the upcoming May 13 elections. 

DepEd Undersecretary Annalyn Sevilla disclosed Thursday that 531,207 officials, teachers and personnel under the agency will take part in the facilitation of the elections.

“Although Comelec has only authorized 200,000 plus members of the Electoral Board, the actual number of people working for this election from the Department of Education is accounting 531,307,” Sevilla said in a press conference.

Meanwhile, more than 250,000 teachers will be assisting the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in the polls, while 36,830 DepEd schools will be used as poll centers.

“We have a number of established precincts numbering to 389,703, all of which are classrooms of DepEd. The number of schools that will be used is 36,830,” Sevilla said.

“The number of teachers authorized by Comelec as members of the EB or the Electoral Board is 257,304. But the number of teachers involved is greater than this. Ito po ‘yung member lamang ng electoral board,” she added.

In partnership with Comelec, Sevilla said public school teachers appointed as part of the electoral board have been given lectures to ensure smooth conduct of polls.

Apart from this, an orientation for DepEd’s Election Task Force operations are being conducted to train its members on using vote counting machines (VCMs), the voter registration verification system, among others.

The DepEd also developed a mobile application allowing teacher on the ground to report issues and concerns to the agency.

“We have also developed an election monitoring application software. It’s a simple app in any android device and the teachers will report to us incidents, issues and concerns that we will encounter before, during and after elections,” Sevilla explained.

“Right now, this is having mock operations so that the teachers can start inputting their data there. And there’s an election menu that will allow teachers to upload reports that can automatically be consolidated here in the DepEd Central Command Center for monitoring and immediate response,” she added. /jpv

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