Education Commissioner Dr. Alfred Ada has confirmed that all Public School System graduation and promotion ceremonies for school year 2019-2020 are cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. <\/p>\n
According to Ada, he doesn\u2019t want to keep anyone\u2019s hopes up and, although he doesn\u2019t want to cancel the graduations, it\u2019s become absolutely necessary for the safety of the students, PSS staff, and the entire community. The CNMI already has two positive cases of the coronavirus infections.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, we are canceling all graduations for now until further notice. If something else comes up, like an idea, we will explore that. I don\u2019t want to give any false hopes and say, \u2018We might still have graduation,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ada added that Distance Education learning packets have also been cancelled until further notice because teachers and staff are afraid to leave home and go to their respective campuses to prepare the packets and grade them.<\/p>\n
Distance Education will now be called Enhancement Learning, according to Ada, which is strictly internet-based. <\/p>\n
Enhancement Education will prioritize seniors to get them the necessary credits to pursue higher education. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not equitable for everybody because not all families have the resources to do Enhancement Learning, but we are prioritizing the seniors, making sure that they can continue their education,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Also, PSS cancelled its Grab & Go Meal Distribution program as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak in the CNMI. <\/p>\n
PSS suspended all meal distributions until further notice because they lack the manpower to continue the program. <\/p>\n
Ada explained that following the announcement of two positive COVID-19 cases in the CNMI last Saturday, many of the volunteers who were helping out during the last three days of meal distribution no longer wanted to volunteer because they are afraid. <\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the workers are afraid to come out and continue distributing food to the public. We took that into consideration and it has created a shortage in manpower,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Education Commissioner Dr. Alfred Ada has confirmed that all Public School System graduation and promotion…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320193","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=320193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}