PSS welcomes back students

The much-anticipated first day of the 2023-2024 school year dawned yesterday as students and teachers across the CNMI Public School System returned to the classrooms after a well-deserved summer break.

As of yesterday, there were 8,896 registered students in PSS across all three islands—Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.

For this school year, due to Beach Road construction that reduced some lanes to just one, classes in Saipan high schools—Kagman High School, Saipan Southern High School, Marianas High School, and Da’Ok Academy—start at 9am and end at 3:45pm from Tuesday through Friday. Mondays are still half days from 9am to 1pm.

When Saipan Tribune visited the MHS campus at 8am, it saw a Department of Public Safety police officer at the traffic light intersection directing traffic to assist with the traffic flow heading in and out of the Susupe campus.

Almost an hour before classes started, the campus was already packed with students as the hallways echoed with laughter, excitement, and ane air of nervousness for the new school year.

Eleventh-grade student Jerome Manzon said that returning to school felt amazing. “It’s an amazing feeling coming back to see everyone else. It’s almost like having an event every day to find your friends and hang out. I actually woke up really early today because I was that excited to go back to school. So yeah, I’m looking forward to many events this year.”

About the traffic situation on Beach Road, he said “I try to wake up as early as possible so that I can get ready and head out of my house as early as possible so that I don’t catch the traffic. I try to leave before 7:30am so that I get the fast-moving traffic flow.”

When asked about the 9am class start time instead of the usual 8:30am, he said, “As a student, I love it. It gives me extra time to sleep because teenagers usually sleep late. So having that extra 30 minutes to get ready and wake up gives us enough time to get ourselves settled for the morning.”

Another student, freshman Jim Sison, said that going to MHS for his first day of high school made him feel “a little overwhelmed, but overall, I’m just excited to be here–-new school and new opportunities, new clubs to join, new people to meet, and just overall have a great and fun school year.”

He expects to expand his skills in high school—to “get out of my comfort zone, join new clubs—in Hopwood [Middle School] I was in thespian… but maybe in high school I could join sports like volleyball, basketball, or any kind of sport,” he said.

MHS principal Jonathan Aguon, who was interviewed after students made their way to class, said the school has over 1,500 students this school year.

“It’s buzzing around but I know and feel that the students are ready and eager to be back on campus,” he said.

On how they adjusted to the anticipated traffic, he said, “We were anticipating a lot of cars coming in and also heavy traffic on the main road, given that there is road construction…but we’re very happy that the flow did work out. We did have to adjust our school start time from 8:30am to 9am. …I think it works really well, given that a lot of parents are dropping off their kids early on for elementary school, middle school, and then we just have remaining parents on the road for high school. So, I think it worked really well with that schedule change.”

With the traffic flow in and out of the campus, he said that they have the main entrance at the front, which is also the access for the bus. From there, cars and buses would enter the school and loop between the gym and the library. He said there’s also an entrance/exit at the back on Texas Road where parents can come in from Chalan Kanoa. They also have another entrance on the north gate of the campus where students can be dropped off.