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Bennett reconsiders position on BOE meetings
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Posted on Sep 10 2004
Public School teacher representative Ambrose Bennett said he has reconsidered his previous decision to stop attending Board of Education meetings “for the interest of teachers.”
“My fellow teachers, school teacher representatives have advised me to stay and not skip board meetings. It’s for the great interest of the teachers that I attend the meetings,” he said.
Bennett earlier said he would stop attending the meetings until the board decides on his pending petition for a teachers’ collective bargaining agreement.
He lamented that, since the submission of the proposed agreement to the board in April this year, no action has been made on it yet.
He said the board had formed an adhoc committee to tackle the issue but he doubted that it has conducted any meeting at all.
Bennett earlier said that attending the board meetings without the board’s recognition of the teachers’ right to bargain would be “useless.”
“It makes no sense to me to attend meetings when I’m not part of the process…I don’t plan on attending any general meeting where issues are finalized by a vote that I don’t have because it’s a waste of my time, gas, and efforts,”he earlier said.
BOE chair Roman C. Benavente had said that it was all up to Bennett. “We can’t force him to attend. It’s his choice but he’d be misrepresenting the teachers by doing that,” Benavente said.
Benavente earlier appointed board member Marja Lee Taitano to head the adhoc committee to assess the proposed teachers’ exclusive bargaining agreement. Other members include Frances Diaz and Herman T. Guerrero.
Bennett is insisting that CNMI teachers have the right to collective bargaining under federal and local laws. He said that the BOE by law “has no options and cannot refuse recognition nor dictate the type of representation for teachers.”
He said it is in the best interest of all parties if BOE acts in ‘good faith’ through a collaborative effort to reach an agreement on the issue.”
