GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/20 June) — The Department of Education (DepEd) has launched a major realignment of its teaching personnel and other vital resources in a bid to properly manage the needs of various schools in the region.
Dr. Allan Farnazo, DepEd Region 12 director, said Friday such move is part of their continuing efforts to provide for the requirements of every public elementary and secondary school in the region and address concerns on the lack of some basic resources, specifically classrooms, armchairs and textbooks.
“We’re currently re-routing the excess teachers and other resources in some of our schools to those that are considered undermanned and deficient to balance their utilization,” he said.
He said they have so far completed the realignment in public elementary and secondary schools in the cities of Koronadal and Tacurong.
Also known as Soccsksargen, Region 12 comprises the provinces of South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani, North Cotabato and the cities of General Santos, Koronadal, Tacurong, Kidapawan and Cotabato.
Prior to the realignment, Farnazo said they conducted a comprehensive evaluation or assessment on the status of local public schools, especially their actual enrollment records as well as available personnel and resources.
He said they initially found out that there are some schools that are facing severe deficiencies due to increase in enrollments while others have excess resources, especially in terms of teachers.
To address the problem, the official said they decided to re-route teachers with light class loads and those assigned in classes that are below their targeted teacher-student ratio of 1:45.
He said the affected teachers were moved or transferred to schools that lack teachers and were forced to accommodate classes that exceeded the 1:45 teacher-student ratio as a result of increased enrollment.
“It’s not proper to have classes that only have (teacher-student) ratios of 1:30 so we made adjustments to meet our target ratio of 1:45 for all our schools in Region 12,” Farnazo said.
With the realignment of the excess teachers, he said they were able to properly manage the allocation and use of classrooms, textbooks, armchairs and other school equipment.
The official said they’re hoping to complete the realignments in all schools in the region before the end of the month.
He is scheduled to meet with the division superintendents of the region’s nine school divisions next week to get their feedback on the enrollment and the implementation of the realignment or resources management initiative.
“Our goal is that by the end of June, all the basic needs of our schools are already properly addressed and settled,” he added.
DepEd-12 has hired an additional 1,802 elementary and secondary school teachers this year based on a quota approved by its central office.
Last year, the region’s hiring quota for new teachers reached a total of 3,462, which was allocated based on the needs of the area’s nine school divisions.
In terms of classrooms, the Department of Budget and Management released earlier this month around P960.8 million for the construction of 929 additional classrooms in the region.
In the last two years, the DepEd central office facilitated the construction of 1,244 more classrooms in the region to fill the area’s backlog. (MindaNews)
