The lack of experts on \u201cspecial education\u201d and related services is burdening the Public School System, according to Rep. Blas Jonathan \u201cBJ\u201d Attao (Ind-Saipan).<\/p>\n
In the CNMI, the PSS administers \u201cspecial education\u201d to individuals with disabilities\u2014from 3 years old to 21 years old\u2014and provides related services such as speech language pathology, audiology services, interpreting services, psychological services, physical and occupational therapy, among many others.<\/p>\n
Those needing special education often includes individuals with autism, other learning and intellectual disabilities, and those suffering from hearing, speech, and visual impairment, among other physical disabilities.<\/p>\n
Attao said PSS often recruits specialists from off-island because the CNMI does not have local practitioners of these specialized skills. Most often, the specialist has a master\u2019s degree to qualify.<\/p>\n
A major concern is that the specialist often leaves the CNMI after only one or two contract periods, Attao said.<\/p>\n
The lack of specialists has prompted Attao to introduce House Bill 19-61 (\u201cRelated Service Providers Scholarship Act of 2015\u201d), which seeks to establish a scholarship program for special education and related fields.<\/p>\n
Unlike existing scholarship programs, the administration is required to submit an annual report to the Office of the Governor and to the Legislature, and to have a \u201csunset\u201d provision.<\/p>\n
Generally, Attao\u2019s bill is similar to the Saipan Higher Education Financial Assistance.<\/p>\n
Attao, however, said the main difference is that beneficiaries will be required by law to return to the CNMI and practice these related services for special education for a period of two years for each year of scholarship assistance.<\/p>\n
Attao\u2019s bill also allocates $10,000 (maximum) per semester for students enrolling in a master\u2019s degree program (with an accredited U.S. institution) for a period of three years.<\/p>\n
If the beneficiary fails to complete this obligation, he or she must remit the funds back to PSS.<\/p>\n
Attao\u2019s bill also seeks to allocate $300,000 from the PSS budget annually to be used for the scholarship.<\/p>\n
If his bill is passed into law, Attao said the annual budget will be drawn from PSS starting in fiscal year 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The lack of experts on \u201cspecial education\u201d and related services is burdening the Public School…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,194,40,41],"class_list":["post-202171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-house-bill","tag-pss","tag-public-school-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202171","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\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}