Hofschneider-Yumul campaign spokesman John P. Del Rosario says the Inos-Torres camp\u2019s claim of \u201cprotecting\u201d education is false.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you really look at the course this current administration has taken with regard to funding the Northern Marianas College and the Public School System,\u201d Del Rosario said, \u201ctheir record is abysmal and\u00a0 IT\u2019s \u2018IT Protects Education\u2019 road signs should read \u2018IT Drains Education.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at the budget for fiscal year 2007,\u201d Del Rosario said. \u201cThe budget, signed into law by Inos\u2019 predecessor, Gov. Fitial, approved over $38 million for PSS. If \u2018protection\u2019 was their intention, then why was there a 16-percent decrease in that funding in the budget for the current fiscal year? Each year, subsequent to 2007, public school officials were in the news, the Legislature, making hay over the governor\u2019s withholding of millions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEven Education Commissioner Dr. Rita Sablan has expressed frustration over inadequate funding this year,\u201d Del Rosario said, \u201csaying that the current budget is not enough to ease the pain of large class sizes due to the inability to hire more teachers. She has even hinted at a possible \u2018state of emergency\u2019 that CNMI PSS may have to declare.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis doesn\u2019t sound leadership \u2018protecting\u2019 education to me,\u201d Del Rosario said.\u00a0 \u201cAnd not funding the public school utility payments is irresponsible as well but I guess they figure if the central government doesn\u2019t pay its power bills, the school system should be lumped into the mix as well, leaving schools to negotiate with the CUC over and over and over and that\u2019s a waste of energy and valuable resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFurthermore, look at NMC,\u201d Del Rosario continued. \u201cFrom FY 2007, the over $5 million that was budgeted for the college has taken a comparable hit. In the current fiscal year, there has been a nearly 18-percent decrease in funding from seven years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor college students here at NMC and abroad, the threat of losing scholarships should be a major concern,\u201d Del Rosario said. \u201cAnd the current administration, through the casino law, has effectively ended the Saipan Higher Education Financial Assistance without a known plan to replenish it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSince SHEFA is funded by poker license revenue and the casino law states that no new licenses will be honored in light of the Best Sunshine casino, that leaves SHEFA\u2019s future in limbo with no known plans by this administration to save it,\u201d Del Rosario said. \u201cThat sounds like IT protecting their business interests, not protecting education.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen our students needed \u2018protection,\u2019 the administration chose to approve budgets and laws that continually drained education resources\u201d Del Rosario said. \u201cYou don\u2019t \u2018protect\u2019 education by underfunding it.\u201d (PR)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hofschneider-Yumul campaign spokesman John P. Del Rosario says the Inos-Torres camp\u2019s claim of \u201cprotecting\u201d education…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,256,69,244],"class_list":["post-185521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-budget","tag-casino","tag-nmc","tag-utility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185521","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\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}