Teachers picket Arroyo visit to public school, issue resign call

Militant teachers held a picket this afternoon as Pres. Gloria Arroyo visited a high school in Quezon City.

Around 30 public school teachers and college professors, all members of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, conducted the demonstration near the main gate of the Quezon City Science High School, where Mrs. Arroyo was holding a consultation meeting with Department of Education officials, school administrators and personnel.

“We’re holding this protest action to draw attention to the Arroyo administration’s terrible track record in education,” said ACT chairperson Antonio Tinio. Noting that the upcoming anniversary of the People Power 2 uprising would mark seven years of Arroyo’s stay in power, he added: “Seven years of Arroyo’s rule has devastated the education sector.”

“The Arroyo administration’s policy of cutting back on real spending on education annually has resulted in an unprecedented number of school children being denied access to basic education. Shortages of teachers, classrooms, textbooks and other resources have soared to alarming levels. The economic status of teachers has been severely eroded as salaries were frozen for six years. Public higher education institutions have suffered huge budget cuts even as the government has failed to curb runaway tuition and other fee increases in private schools. Even Mrs. Arroyo’s own secretary of education has acknowledged that the quality of education is now at its lowest level. This has been the legacy of seven years under Arroyo,” said Tinio.

Tinio noted that Pres. Arroyo has been making the rounds of public schools in the past few days, visiting the Maceda Integrated School, Araullo High School, and Albert Elementary School in Manila, and now the Quezon City Science High School. “While Pres. Arroyo has made a point of ‘consulting’ teachers about their issues on some of these visits, in reality these were highly stage-managed affairs with no opportunity for bringing up issues which it would rather not confront, such as Cyber Education or the extrajudicial killings of activist teachers.”

The demonstrators bore placards calling for the scrapping of the Cyber Education Project, a PhP 26.48 billion initiative being pushed by Mrs. Arroyo to use satellite television broadcasting in public school classrooms. ACT claims that the project has no proven education value even as it warned of possible large-scale corruption.

“We’re also here to hold Pres. Arroyo accountable for the extrajudicial killings and involuntary disappearances that have taken place under her watch. At least ten of the victims were teachers, three of whom were officials of ACT,” said Tinio. “We demand justice for Napoleon Pornasdoro and Vitoria Samonte, ACT National Council members killed by death squads, and Ma. Luisa Posa-Dominado, a former Panay ACT regional coordinator who disappeared last year.”

“We likewise condemn the military’s ongoing propaganda campaign in public schools in Metro Manila, where they single out ACT as a communist front. We must not allow the Arroyo government to bring its ‘dirty war’ to our schools,” warned Tinio.

Tinio concluded by calling for Pres. Arroyo to step down. “For these reasons, ACT joins the people in saying ‘Seven years is enough, Gloria must go!” #