The CNMI Board of Education and Public School System are looking at what needs to be done, now that House Legislative Initiative 18-12 was passed in November, raising from 15 percent to 25 percent PSS\u2019 share of the local budget.<\/p>\n
There is no additional amendment or provision within the initiative that sets an effective date for the measure, according to board chair Herman Guerrero, but because the people \u201coverwhelmingly\u201d voted for the initiative, it should be effective immediately when it was officially certified.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur legal counsel is looking at whether the current appropriation measure needs to be amended to comply with the constitutional amendment\u2026 Perhaps we need to do a little research, and once the governor is sworn in and the new Legislature is sworn in, we will have conversation with them to see what needs to be done,\u201d he told members of the board\u2019s committee on finance, personnel, and administration last Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where we are\u201d on the initiative, he told the committee. <\/p>\n
The initiative garnered 7,826 \u201cyes\u201d votes and 3,958 \u201cno\u201d votes in last month\u2019s polls.<\/p>\n
Education Commissioner Dr. Rita Sablan said they are now planning for the \u201cimplementation\u201d of the new measure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve begun to do needs assessment for full-time Kindergarten,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Full-time Kindergarten, continuous school improvement and modernization of school facilities, class size reduction, and classroom instructional materials and technology were promoted as part of the initiative.<\/p>\n
Sablan said schools are working on providing staffing pattern information on \u201cwhat they will be anticipating next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
PSS is also looking at classrooms instructions and materials. \u201cOur plan is to go before the board and adopt a core curriculum instructional material for our K to 12 programs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Needs assessment has been completed for this, according to Sablan. She also said they have to look at the \u201cmodernization\u201d aspect with regards to chemistry, biology, and math laboratories in schools.<\/p>\n
The preliminary work is ongoing, she said, and they hope to have \u201cmore solid numbers\u201d presented to the full board later this month.<\/p>\n
Sablan described building more classrooms for the Garapan, Oleai, San Vicente, Koblerville, and Gregorio T. Camacho elementary schools as \u201cvery, very critical\u201d for implementation of full-time Kindergarten. <\/p>\n
Approximately 20 to 24 classrooms are needed, according to her. Right now only Kagman Elementary School and Sinapalo Elementary School have the classrooms for full-time Kindergarten, but more full-time equivalents are needed for these schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The CNMI Board of Education and Public School System are looking at what needs to…<\/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":[39,186,1223,428],"class_list":["post-186812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-boe","tag-initiative","tag-rita-sablan","tag-san-vicente"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186812","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=186812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}