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Rotation of BOE student rep appointment OK’d
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Posted on Aug 16 2011
Gov. Benigno R. Fitial signed into law Friday a bill requiring that the student representative to the Board of Education is alternately appointed from each public high school on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.
Fitial, in his message to House Speaker Eli Cabrera (R-Saipan) and Senate President Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota), commended the Legislature for passing the measure as it updates the statute to take into consideration the growing number of public schools in the CNMI.
“This legislation now fairly alternates appointments of students from each public high school to the State Board of Education,” Fitial said.
Rep. Ray Palacios’s (Cov-Saipan) House Bill 17-192 is now Public Law 17-50.
Article 15, Section 1(c) of the CNMI Constitution requires that the governor appoint three non-voting ex-officio members to the Board of Education.
One of the three shall be a student attending a public school, one member shall be a representative of private schools, and one member selected by an exclusive bargaining representative of the teachers within the Department of Education, now the Public School System.
The student representative from a public high school is appointed on a rotating basis by senatorial district.
Palacios, in his bill, said this requirement held true as there were only three public high schools—one on each senatorial district of Saipan, Tinian and Rota—at the time of the provision’s enactment in 1988.
Since then, Saipan has built two more public high schools: Kagman High School and Saipan Southern High School.
