MANILA, Philippines - An official of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has appealed to Catholic schools to be "charitable" to school personnel and teachers who would lose their jobs due to the implementation of the K to 12 program in 2016.
CBCP president Lingayen Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas encouraged all Catholic schools to have retraining and re-tooling of their faculty members and personnel who would be affected by the K to 12 program.
"“Charity is a law for Catholic schools that takes precedence over all human law, for its origin is the very reason that our Catholic schools exist -- the Lord Jesus," the prelate said.
The re-training will give the affected faculty members to teach in Senior High School of the program, the archbishop added.
Archbishop Villegas said that it is not acceptable for the Church and Catholic schools to retrench school personnel due to the implementation of a law.
"Turning away many of the faithful co-workers we have had who have been loyal to our schools and to the local Church for all these years is a most unwelcome prospect. We strongly exhort our school administrators to provide opportunities for the re-tooling and re-training of our instructors and professors in tertiary education to be able to handle subjects in the academic track of senior high school. Our Catholic school teachers and instructors should not be left to their own devices," Archbishop Villegas said.
On March 12, the group, Teachers Dignity Coalition, will file a petition before the Supreme Court seeking to suspend the government's K to 12 program in 2016, claiming that around 80,000 teachers nationwide could possibly lose their jobs.
The group said this is because the program will cause a zero college enrollment in 2016 and 2017 because of the additional school years in the elementary and secondary levels.