Mr. President:

Like anything written on the blackboard, we can erase and change the amount of “chalk allowance” our public schools teachers get.

Which is what this bill precisely sets out to do – erasing “P1,500” and replacing it with “P3,500.”

“Chalk allowance” is the popular term for the “teaching supplies allowance” given to teachers at the start of the school year.

The money is for consumable teaching supplies like pens, paper, cartolinas, paste, erasers, and yes, for that classroom mainstay which has been used to teach generations of Filipinos to read, count and write and after which the allowance is named – chalk.

Fortunately, as chalk writings are not indelible, so are the rules that peg the amount for chalk allowance.

At present, the chalk allowance is P1,500 per year, which translates to about P7.43 a day, with 202 school days in an academic year.

Seven pesos will only get you about seven pieces of bond paper at the corner sari-sari store, which means that it could not meet what is required, a task impossible even for a profession famous for miraculously making ends meet.

That is why for three Congresses now, I have been campaigning to raise the chalk allowance.

Fortunately, we have managed to, pun intended, chalk up small victories along the way.

In 2014, when the then administration proposed P1,000, I lobbied to have it increased to P1,500, and with the support of then Finance chair Chiz Escudero, it was approved by the Senate, and incorporated into the 2015 national budget.

And in this Congress, among the first I filed was the bill doubling the chalk allowance from P1,500, to P3,000. But after seeing that it is not enough, I have since campaigned for a higher amount – P5,000.

But my years in Congress have taught me the value of compromise, that it would be better to go home with half a loaf of bread than nothing. So when Senator Sonny Trillanes proposed P3,500, I signed on. Because a half-full box of chalk is better than an empty box.

The idea, Mr. President, is to break the embargo in adjusting this very important allowance.

We are easily dazzled by the endless zeros in the budget, more so when typical budget hearing discourse is so peppered by billions and even trillions that P1,500 seems to fall in the realm of the puny.

It may be small, a mere speck in the budget, but it cannot be dismissed as unimportant.

Chalks, and pens, and papers, and cartolinas are to teachers as what bullets and combat rations are to soldiers.

In the war against illiteracy, these are the ammo our teachers use and with the little supplied to them, they can only improv as much, and plain, old diskarte has limits.

For them to push back ignorance, we have to beef up their ammo load. This bill does that, plus it does more.

It sends the reassuring message to our literacy war frontliners that we have always their welfare in mind and that their simple requests have not been forgotten.

Hopefully, a P3,500 allowance would allow them to expand their shopping list, even a bit, to include perhaps a USB, and other computer and Internet-use supplies, needed in this digital age when online research aids instruction.

The incurable cynics would scorn the P3,500 as not enough. I agree. It won’t enrich the teacher but it would somehow enrich the way they teach.

And those who prefer status quo to change should be reminded that that a small nudge is better than a nailed position. And I know that this is just the seminal first step in what I am sure would be a regular practice of adjusting the chalk allowance.

In fact, a section in the bill provides for that. It mandates the Secretary of Education to periodically adjust the rate, and by periodically, it means often and not by eons, or after an Ice Age.

Mr. President:

Increasing the chalk allowance to P3,500 will cost P2.78 billion based on the 2017 DepEd teaching workforce of 797,119.

Because P1.195 billion is already in the 2017 budget, the additional fund needed is about P1.59 billion.

In this bill, we have proposed that P1,500 of the P3,500 be appropriated in the DepEd budget, and the P2,000 will be shouldered by PAGCOR.

You can call it a chip-for-chalk swap. I call such an arrangement a winning combination.

How much the proposed chalk allowance allocation compare with the P3.35 trillion national budget? It is a microscopic .08 percent.

But no amount gives a better and beneficial yield. This is one retail spending that gives a higher return.

Please join us in writing a higher chalk allowance for our teachers.