Sen. Justo Quitugua (Ind-Saipan) wants scholarships made available to high school students who are also enrolled in the Northern Marianas College, according to a bill he introduced in the Senate last week.<\/p>\n
Senate Bill 19-81 states that there are currently 81 students still enrolled at local public high schools who are taking college courses at the local college and that financial assistance should be made available to these students.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese students are getting a head start on their college courses and should be encouraged and supported in their education endeavors,\u201d Quitugua\u2019s bill states. \u201cThe sooner these students graduate from college the sooner they can enter the CNMI workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill amends local statute that establishes programs and criteria financial aid for education\u2014such as grants, scholarships and loans\u2014so that these are available to \u201cfull-time and part-time students enrolled at an accredited institution of higher education or trade institution in the CNMI or any part of the United States and high school students with dual enrollment at a high school and the Northern Marianas College.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill notes that over 40 percent of the CNMI government workforce are high school graduates and that encouraging high school graduates to pursue college is an \u201ceconomic advantage\u201d for the CNMI.<\/p>\n
The bill stresses that\u2014as the CNMI economy grows and recovers each fiscal year and new investors and businesses emerge\u2014a shortage of U.S. citizen and\/or permanent resident workforce remains.<\/p>\n
The CNMI is constricted partly due to a local contract worker program that expires in 2019, which will leave \u201cthe CNMI without the requisite workforce\u201d it needs to service the government and businesses on island, the bill states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sen. Justo Quitugua (Ind-Saipan) wants scholarships made available to high school students who are also…<\/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":[26,37,262,1411],"class_list":["post-220947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-education-2","tag-northern-marianas-college","tag-senate-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220947","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=220947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}