To address its shortage of maintenance personnel\u2014with some schools having only one paid personnel for their campus\u2014the Public School System is reviewing whether contracting out maintenance services may be more efficient, according to Board of Education chair Herman Guerrero.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might be economically better to do it that way and more efficiently done,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
He said this is something that Education Commissioner Dr. Rita Sablan is looking at for PSS.<\/p>\n
Citing the system\u2019s continued lack of funds, Guerrero said that \u201cadding more personnel just won\u2019t cut it.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said that PSS does not have enough money as \u201cteachers are the priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat poses a challenge for us,\u201d he said, adding that contracting out services will make, for example, cutting the grass for school campuses a deliverable service so that payment can be based on whether a task is done or done correctly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just don\u2019t have enough staff to do those things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For fiscal year 2014, only a little over $2 million of its local budget of $32 million went to maintenance of operations and facilities, with the rest going to personnel salaries and wages, and utilities, according to an earlier PSS report.<\/p>\n
He said they are looking at contracting the maintenance service for groups of schools as opposed to single schools, and that they would like to get a contracted service as opposed to one person who would have to work \u201call over the place to maintain\u201d school grounds.<\/p>\n
Volunteers also assist with school maintenance.<\/p>\n
MHS principal Cherlyn Cabrera said the school is getting by on aid from community volunteers, noting that other schools do the same. \u201cI saw one volunteer at another school. He volunteered the whole way from the day school opened until the day school ended.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said this kind of help it \u201cnot uncommon\u201d to help campuses maintain their grounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really appreciate their help,\u201d she said, adding that some of these volunteers await opportunities to be gainfully employed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To address its shortage of maintenance personnel\u2014with some schools having only one paid personnel for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,365,40,41],"class_list":["post-179481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-mhs","tag-pss","tag-public-school-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179481","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}