CNMI education officials said yesterday that the local State Board of Education and the Public School System does not own the bus shelters located in villages. <\/p>\n
BOE chair Herman T. Guerrero said they are glad that community members are stepping up and taking charge in the repair and maintenance of more than 20 bus shelters scattered around the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just want to clarify that they are not owned by the PSS, they are not PSS property. Our job is to pick up and drop off kids, that\u2019s it,\u201d said Guerrero after yesterday\u2019s special board meeting at the PSS Emergency Operations Center in Capital Hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re glad that there are businesses and organizations who are helping in the maintenance of these bus shelters. Companies maintain and repair a lot of these bus shelters. We don\u2019t ask them to do it and neither do we issue permits for them to do it,\u201d added Guerrero.<\/p>\n
He said that businesses or organizations wrote to the PSS as courtesy and informing them that they would repair or adopt a bus shelter for them to maintain it. \u201cIf they say they are going to do it, we welcome their help.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain, we are not the agency that oversees it. It is not on PSS land, bus shelters are built on public land. This is beyond the authority and jurisdiction of the board. We don\u2019t own the property and did not build the facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Education Commissioner Dr. Rita A. Sablan added that with the bus shelters built on public lands, it is the Department of Public Works\u2019 duty to maintain it. She said that they don\u2019t earmark any funds since DPW is responsible for right of way facilities and those built on public land.<\/p>\n
\u201cBus shelters are an extension of the schools so we also make sure they are properly maintained. We just collaborate with DPW with this since they don\u2019t have enough staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that\u2019s why they are encouraging community involvement when it comes to the repair and maintenance of the bus shelters. \u201cOrganizations like the Rotary, Lions, and others help in maintaining these shelters and we are truly grateful for all their help.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CNMI education officials said yesterday that the local State Board of Education and the Public…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1114,1222,40,1882],"class_list":["post-226686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-dpw","tag-education-commissioner-dr","tag-pss","tag-public-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226686","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\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}