Education Commissioner Dr. Alfred Ada has debunked rumors that the Public School System will be laying off employees beginning April 3.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no laying off that\u2019s going to happen at this time. I wrote the letter to [Delegate Gregorio C. Sablan (Ind-MP)], but I didn\u2019t sign it because that was a draft. I don\u2019t know how it leaked, it was a mistake,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He did admit that PSS is looking at reducing more hours on top of the soon-to-be-implemented 64-hour work schedule. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere won\u2019t be any layoff. I will be writing a letter to all the teachers to clarify that, but we are looking at reducing more hours,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Ada said there might even be another salary reduction for teachers to combat layoffs. He considers layoffs as the worst-case scenario for PSS. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to plead with the faculty and staff\u2014better something than nothing. If we have to reduce our salaries halfway, then we will have to do that because it\u2019s better than nothing. It\u2019s a very difficult time. People\u2019s lives are at stake. I\u2019m trying to save everybody; maybe furlough but not layoff. By furlough I mean you work depending on the availability of funds but you still get to keep your job. Layoff means you are dismissed and if you want to come back you need to reapply. We don\u2019t want to layoff or terminate anybody,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Ada explained that this has to happen since PSS is looking at a budget reduction from $1.3 million bi-weekly to $750,000. <\/p>\n
\u201cOut of the 1,000 employees, only 200 are federally funded so the remaining 800 are locally funded,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to a circulating draft of a letter from Ada to the office of Sablan, Ada wrote that PSS was informed that their budget would soon be reduced to zero, which would lead to the termination of thousands of employees. <\/p>\n
Ada reportedly wrote the letter to appeal to Camacho to help identify funding for PSS\u2019 locally funded staff. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Education Commissioner Dr. Alfred Ada has debunked rumors that the Public School System will be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-319708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319708","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}