Students, teachers, and staff at San Vicente Elementary School gathered Friday in a special ceremony to honor principal Joaquina Salas, who will be retiring this month.<\/p>\n
In what she thought was a routine field-day program, Salas was surprised by the school\u2019s student council with a \u201cspecial tree\u201d\u2014a kind of ornamental plant called Pink Tacoma\u2014that was planted in front of the school\u2019s center stage in her honor.<\/p>\n
Salas, who has been with San Vicente in the last 30 years, started as a school teacher aide after graduating from high school in 1981. She was a classroom teacher for more than 20 years before becoming the school\u2019s vice principal; she became the principal five years ago.<\/p>\n
Salas wants to become part of her granddaughter\u2019s first years in school and will be moving to Arizona this summer. However, she promised the students and teachers that she will return and pay them a visit once in a while.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been an educator for 30 years\u2026and my heart will always be with the students. Hopefully I can go back in the classroom because I want to continue serving children,\u201d she told Saipan Tribune, adding that she will try to work as a teacher in Arizona.<\/p>\n
Salas said the San Vicente school used to accommodate over a 1,000 students each year. The government later built two schools\u2014Kagman and Dandan elementary schools\u2014to ease the overcrowding. From over a 1,000 enrollees in the \u201990s, San Vicente is now home to 655 students.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my 30 years here, I\u2019ve seen a lot of good changes. I\u2019ve witnessed a lot of growth in terms of student achievement as well as our teachers\u2019 advancement in ensuring our students are really learning and becoming successful every year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For teacher Valrick Welch, Salas can be likened to a Neem tree, which is noted for its drought resistance and for giving protection to some other plants. \u201cShe will surely be missed here,\u201d he told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Students, teachers, and staff at San Vicente Elementary School gathered Friday in a special ceremony to honor principal Joaquina Salas, who will be retiring this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}