It was said that many public school facilities are in dire need of repair and upgrading, and both CIP and local funds should be allocated to meet this need. It was said that although PSS has federal grant money to support many specific programs, PSS does not have enough money for maintenance, repairs, personnel, and other expenditures that must be covered by local funds. It was also said that students need more hands-on training in various fields, particularly in the sciences, but they cannot gain this experience if school laboratories are in disrepair.
It was said that schools routinely lack basic supplies; teachers are stressed from either overcrowded classrooms or from having no prep periods; and some schools are now rationing power and water. Teachers are now turning off lights in the classroom during instructional time in an effort to save power, and extracurricular activities after school are limited because the water is shut down. School buses also have limited fuel, so field trips are difficult to arrange now, and students sometimes must pay a private company to go on trips.
Some said, however, that management is a problem at PSS and at many struggling public schools just as it is with any other CNMI agency. More money will not help much if these fundamental management issues are not addressed.
Not all public schools are alike on the island. Some are more successful than others — better equipped, better maintained, staffed by more qualified teachers and personnel, and producing bright, motivated students who are adequately prepared for the next stage in their educational careers. My impression is that these more successful schools are not getting special treatment or receiving extra funding that other schools don’t also have access to: they are just managed better. They are run by creative and competent administrators who know how to effectively pursue the resources they need, how to make the most of the resources they have, how to recruit and retain the most qualified teachers they can find, and how to build morale at the school to maximize student learning. We need more administrators like that.
If there are schools that are failing now because of mismanagement, the chain of responsibility does not end with the principal of the school; it ends with the administrators of the Public School System, the Board of Education as well as the Commissioner, who allow mismanagement of our public schools to persist, or who fail to empower otherwise qualified principals and teachers to succeed. And actually, responsibility extends even beyond the Board of Education: it reaches the voters who elect the members of the Board without knowing their qualifications to do the job.
I have read recently that an audit of PSS is currently underway, and I am glad to hear that. I want to know the results of this audit, and I want to know how the recommendations of the audit will be implemented. The management problems at PSS must be fully disclosed to the public and openly addressed.
While addressing the management problems at PSS are critical, I do think we should invest as much as we possibly can afford in public education. I don’t think we have ever, as a community, treated public education as the investment in our future that it truly is. Public education is a basic need if we hope to build a community of productive and empowered citizens. In this time of diminishing resources, we should cut all the nonessential programs – including superfluous, ill-defined, and ineffective “youth programs” – and invest those funds in public education, including our community college. Many politicians like to say, “The youth are our future,” but what kind of future will we have if our students are not prepared for it?
Read up on some of the discussions that occurred here:
I have a question.
Why is it that among all candidates for Board of Education, only Mr. Galvin S. Guerrero has a website, and a position, on education in the Marianas?
Can someone please provide me an answer? Maybe I can find information with other’s help.
The Commonwealth Election Commission can send by email a copy of House Legislative Initiative 15-1 to anyone interested in reading up on the initiative as passed by the Legislature.
Please send your request by email to: gkilili@pticom.com
ps. The Commission is presently housed at the multipurpose center and we are operating on dial-up, analog internet access. So, all requests will be entertained either early in the morning or early evenings when I can forward the iniative by dsl.
pss. We also have HLI 15-16, SD1 as passed by the Legislatue and the Saipan Casino Act as cerfitied by the Office of the Attorney General for anyone who requests.
psss. We are working on the Rota Casino Act of 2007.
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