France Castro, ACT secretary-general said the budget may either come from a supplemental budget or the President’s discretionary fund and would be used to address the classroom shortage, overcrowding and lack of teachers brought about by the hasty implementation of the program.
Castro said aside from petitioning Unicef, the group intends to ask Congress, through Party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio of ACT, for the immediate passage of a supplemental budget of the kindergarten program.
ACT stressed that the present crisis in the public school system, which is worsening, is the effect of the hasty implementation of the K+12 program.
“The government started to carry out the first phase of the K + 12 program by implementing the universal kindergarten during the start of this school year. This was done without a budget. As of now, 1.9 million five-year-old children are enrolled in this program. Because of this unpreparedness, problems of shortages in classrooms, teachers, chairs and toilets have worsened,” Castro said during the relaunch of “the Movement for Quality Education.”
“Our main call now is for the Aquino administration to immediately execute remedies to this disaster,” Benjamin Valbuena, ACT vice chairman, said adding that, “As in other emergency situations, wherein funds are released from the discretionary fund of the Office of the President, this should be treated as a similar case.”
Another possible source of fund, according to Valbuena is savings from the personnel services fund of the Armed Forces that the Department of Budget and Management set aside in February this year.
According to Laban Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara of Aurora, Quezon, based on the Senate investigation of the Armed Forces, its personnel services was bloated by 20 percent.”
“This is equivalent to P8.6 billion and this could fund a total of 56,919 new teacher items for the public school system. We recommend that this be realigned to the present needs of public education,” Valbuena added.
Earlier, the Teachers Dignity Coalition (TDC) warned the Aquino administration on the hasty implementation of the K+12 education program that they claimed would be more of a problem rather than a solution in addressing the deteriorating quality of education in the country.
Benjo Basas, TDC national chairman, made the statement stressing that the first week of this school year only highlights the prevailing condition of the public school system and the perennial problems, such as the lack of teachers, classrooms and other facilities shortages, and overcrowding remain.
He chided Department of Education headed by Education Secretary Armin Luistro, for alleged ineptness in addressing the classroom shortages and overcrowding which was the basic concern during the planning stage of the implementation of K+12 education program.
