RONELO Al Firmo, Ph. D., Ceso V, schools division superintendent of Leyte Division, has been nominated as one of the 14 finalists for the 2019 Gawad Career Executive Service (CES) Presidential Award.
“An honor and recognition dedicated to the hardworking and committed teaching and non-teaching personnel of Department of Education (DepEd) Leyte Division,” said Firmo, 46, while thanking the support of the education personnel and stakeholders in the province.
“This is Leyte’s gift to a leader with few words but works tirelessly. Indeed, it’s an honor to be working with a leader who has exemplary performance and significant contribution along with the other 12 schools division superintendents in Eastern Visayas. Thus, catapulting Project Lead to certain heights,” added Edgar Tenasas, assistant schools division superintendent.
Project Lead or “Lead, Empower, and Achieve through Data-Driven Decisions,” is a regional banner of DepEd Eastern Visayas launched by director Ramir Uytico in November 2016 pursuant to the Republic Act No. 9155 or the Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001.
It aims to encourage the 13 divisions in the region to craft their own banner project, highlighting the role of the school leaders in terms of the delivery of basic education policies, principles, and services that answer to the needs of their school community.
Firmo introduced Project Seedling or “Strategic Empowerment of Educators in the Delivery of Learning Instruction and Needs-Based Governance” which empowers division officials, school leaders and classroom teachers in identifying their needs and establishing services and innovations to solve it.
Through his guidance and initiatives, Firmo received the 2018 Most Outstanding Schools Division Superintendent award among the 13 division education leaders for his “commendable contributions, achievements, and services in sustaining the summit of excellence through his unwavering zeal of attaining the goals of Project Lead.”
Marilyn Siao, assistant schools division superintendent, said that Firmo’s award showed that the division is “indeed harvesting the produce of Project Seedling.”
Since 2013, Firmo was instrumental in crafting various innovations and interventions for the educational reforms and development in the province.
His accomplishments include the opening of more schools for Leyte students to include those persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) at the minimum and maximum security in Leyte Regional Prison in Abuyog town; launching of the Nurturing Employees’ Welfare through the Division’s Objective Open Ranking System (New Doors) to ensure transparent and objective hiring and promotion system; and initiating the online facility called Learners’ Information System (LIS) to ensure reliable data management of the students in the division, among others.
Leyte division is known as the biggest division in Eastern Visayas, with 80 districts, 1,257 schools, 14,287 teachers, 1,587 related teaching and non-teaching personnel, and 378,253 students as of 2018. (SunStar Philippines)