Asunton Coñgresso
Commencement season begins
As is the case every year around May, high school seniors throughout the NMI go through their proudest moment–commencement exercises–claiming their hard-earned trophy of academic accomplishment after four grueling years.
About 300 seniors would be marching through ‘pomp and circumstance’ right at the beginning of summer (late May early June). For some, this journey is the launch pad to matriculate to colleges and universities between here and the US mainland. Others who choose to stay closer to home would begin real experiences in ‘life after campus’.
In either case, the uppermost query that comes to mind is whether leadership has prepared the way for more opportunities in the acquisition of lifetime skills while opening up jobs in the local job markets for graduates who wish to work while going to our Northern Marianas College?
I need not expound on this query in that you, as future leaders, are more than capable of answering it yourself now that real life experiences begins.
In considering the budget for the current and subsequent fiscal years, the House Leadership has trimmed down wasteful spending in government, to provide more funds for your education. This is the very essence of how we have disposed of the current fiscal year’s budget. We hope our counterpart in the Senate sees the essence of our decision that favors more education money for our young people in dire need of acquiring lifetime skills.
The reform measures we have proposed are the very issues seemingly missed by previous leadership. And this is just an observation and in no way is it meant as strictly criticism. But each year of missed opportunities effectively turns into three years of setback in the lives of the very people we have promised to help. You, the graduating seniors this year, are part of this equation.
This coming fall semester, some 600 students will be transferring to Hopwood Jr. High School for elementary schools throughout the island. It means (assuming each students makes it over the next four years academically) that some 400-500 plus students would be going through commencement exercises in greater number. Would the current leadership have defined and prepared greater opportunities for them in 2004? Given the measures before both chambers, our answer is a positive one for we ever determined to shove aside complacency in the use of what I have coined as “leadership’s compass” to guide our work through thick and thin.
May I also encourage parents to be proactive in the education of their children. By this, I simply mean say your piece in forthright fashion so to remind policymakers, politicians and bureaucrats of global changes wrought by the Information Technology. The IT alone has more than changed even the conduct of business, delivery of quality instructions, medicine, etc. And I am proud that the House Leadership has taken the lead in this and other issues of major significance in what’s known as laying out the requisite infrastructure in our total efforts to build a brighter and better tomorrow.
As future leaders, you must begin expressing your views on issues that will eventually affect your livelihood down the years. It is through this exercise that we get to learn of your true sentiments on matters that affect the livelihood of our young people. Again, I encourage you to be proactive on issues of substance. And may I be the first to offer my most profound congratulations to the graduating seniors of the first year (2000) of the new millennium. Congratulations!
