Teachers Declare Chalk Holiday Friday

Thousands of public school teachers are expected not to use chalk while conducting their classes Friday, Friday, Sept. 16, as a sign of protest for inadequate allowance for chalk and instructional materials and as a call for a raise in the 2012 government budget appropriations.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) has declared a “chalk holiday” to call for a P2,000 allowance for chalk and instructional materials for public school teachers. According to ACT Vice chairman Benjie Valbuena, public school teachers are temporarily discouraged from using chalk to reiterate their demand for higher budget allocation.

Despite the protest, Valbuena said teachers will conduct regular classes. “We will teach our students that day, but we will not use chalk to emphasize our demand,” he said.

ACT—with 100,000 members nationwide is calling for a raise in the annual chalk allowance which is currently P700 a year. At this rate, Valbuena said the chalk allowance roughly a subsidy of P3.50 per school day is used by teachers in public elementary and high schools to purchase chalk and other supplies for their classes.

To ease the burden on public school teachers, ACT is pushing to raise the annual allowance to P2,000 or about P9.85 per day. Valbuena stressed that it is about time that a component of ACT’s campaign called “Act now for Greater Education Budget” should be included in the national budget.

Aside from conducting the “chalk holiday,” members of ACT have also scheduled a rally of teacher leaders from the different municipalities of the National Capital Region to the House of Representatives at the Batasang Pambasa complex in Quezon City to lobby for higher pay during the budget deliberation.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro said the DepEd could grant the increase in public school teachers’ annual chalk allowance, if there’s a higher budget for 2012. “Of course, we will increase the chalk allowance if we are granted an increase in the budget,” he said.

However, this increase would also require a total P1-billion budget as allowance for some 500,000 public school teachers almost three times the current chalk fund of P350,000. DepEd’s proposed budget for 2012 is P237 billion 14 percent higher than the current P207-billion budget.

ACT Secretary General France Castro said aside from a raise in chalk allowance, the “ACT NOW for Greater Education Budget” also demands the regularization of all volunteer/contractual teachers; 100,000 new permanent teacher items; Salary Grade 15 for Teacher 1; Salary Grade 16 for Instructor 1 in the state colleges and universities; P6,000 increase in base pay of non-teaching personnel; increase base productivity pay to P5,000; increase clothing allowance to P6,000; P91.5 billion for classroom shortage and other school facilities; adequate budget for universal kindergarten program; greater state subsidy for all state universities and colleges and 100 percent increase in maintenance and other operating expenses in all levels of education.

ACT is also calling for the review and draft of a new education program and curriculum that is “nationalist, scientific and mass oriented” and to scrap debt service automatic appropriation, moratorium on debt payments, re-channel debt service, and use the Private-Public Partnership and Conditional Cash Transfer budget to education, health and social services.

(source: Manila Bulletin)