THERE is a meme circulating of a popular Hollywood actor who said if we overpay teachers, there will be smarter people out there.
Whether that quote is true or reinterpreted, the message is true. Public school teachers are like beasts of burden. Overworked, overstressed and underpaid.
The public school teacher’s salary is P21,000 a month. The resigned communications undersecretary Mocha Uson’s monthly salary was P133,000. Mocha’s salary could have paid six additional teachers to teach students to be honest and less hateful.
Soldiers have their salaries augmented to 35,000 a month, the teachers are really due for an increase. The irony that military intelligence are now on a witch hunt on teachers in Manila for allegedly showing historical films about Martial Law or planting ideas of dissent. One wonders what we are paying these soldiers for.
Public school teachers here are celebrating World Teachers’ Day on October 5 with mass actions the past week calling for increases in salary and allowances.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers, the champion of teachers’ rights, said that even with their salaries, majority of the teachers are considered poor as their salaries’ value have decreased to the price increases driven by TRAIN and the worsening economic crisis.
“Never, in our history, have we been asked to eat “bukbok” rice, neither have we seen vegetable prices spiking by three to five-fold. And galunggong is being imported,” their statement said.
On top of this, ACT said teachers are compounded with shortages in classrooms, facilities and materials under the K-12 program. They also have to perform non-teaching duties due to lack of non-teaching personnel, and shell out their own money to procure schools supplies and resources.
Teachers are indeed a beast of burden in a woeful public school system. So much have been promised by this government to help the teachers, yet the economy is affecting the performance of teachers.
Here in Davao, ACT officials had a dialogue Mayor Sara Duterte last Monday requesting for the release of a monthly subsidy of P2,000 and a quarterly rice subsidy worth P2,500. This is equivalent to P406 million provided for 11,959 teaching and non-teaching personnel under DepEd Davao.
Mayor Sara said it is beyond her function to realign funds from the Special Education Fund for such subsidies. But ACT Davao Chairperson Reynadlo Pardillo said their proposal is feasible, as such funds can be charged to the city’s General Fund. Pardillo said Quezon City and 21 other cities have provided such subsidy, so they are pressing on Davao City LGU to do the same.
Pardillo said there are “doable things” that the government can do. This is the resonating call on World Teachers’ Day, that government must act to honor the millions of teachers who mold the minds for the future yet they need to be minded of their welfare and rights.