Despite President Duterte’s prevailing Proclamation No. 1218 extending the state of calamity to September 12 of this year, the DepEd sets a nationwide class opening on Monday, August 22, with less than half or 46% of all public and private schools nationwide offering the full face-to-face classes.

Teachers find unbelievable the department’s earlier assessment of a 90% in-person readiness for public schools. To start with, we are still plagued by the decades-old problem of classroom shortages. In parts of the country, classrooms are still being halved to accommodate more classes. Covered courts are still being converted to makeshift classrooms. We are still wallowing in the bloated curriculum worsened by inadequate learning materials. Our teachers are still overburdened by redundant clerical work that worsens every day, and we still barely have the additional teachers and non-teaching staff promised by the previous administration. Class sizes are relatively bigger at 50-55, some could even reach 70 making the observance of minimum health protocols impossible. And despite having the classes under the situation of pandemic, health workers are not accessible in our schools.

None of these are helping the country’s already limping learning outcomes and only extend the injustice being inflicted on our perennially neglected teachers.

But despite the grim situation, teachers are gearing up to report physically starting Monday and make do, fingers crossed. They are calling on to parents and learners for understanding as they voice out their protest, born out of legitimate fear of what in-person learning could still bring them and their families.

In all this confusion, the TDC is calling on teachers to better look after themselves and their families by cutting the old habit of pulling out of their own pockets each time the DepEd decides to spend the taxpayers’ money elsewhere such as the recent quadruply priced low-end laptops, and demand that they instead, do the right thing and allot proper budget for the needs of the schools and the teachers.