Thanks to the Coronavirus Aid, Response, and Economic Security Act\u2014or CARES Act\u2014the Northern Marianas College was able to go back to 80-hour pay periods for their locally funded staff that took effect in the first part of January 2021.<\/p>\n
According to interim NMC president Frankie Eliptico, it was only the locally funded employees that were earning less than 32 hours per week that were affected, while the federally funded employees remained at 40 hours per week. The locally funded staff were on a 64-hour biweekly schedule in fiscal years 2019 and 2020 prior to going back to 80 hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are thankful to the governor\u2019s allocation of CARES [Act] education funds to NMC that helped the college resume 80 hours,\u201d said Eliptico. \u201cThe funds helped the college significantly, especially as the institution continues to post strong enrollment numbers and more students are looking to NMC for their personal and professional growth<\/p>\n
Aside from the reduced work hours, the college had also implemented cost-saving measures in 2019 and 2020. That included a reduction in expenditures for supplies, equipment, and other operations-related expenses; non-federal hiring, and restrictions on travel.<\/p>\n
Yet even if employees were on austerity, Eliptico said they wanted to make sure that \u201cthe students didn\u2019t feel the austerity.\u201d That meant not a single class was cancelled.<\/p>\n
Eliptico also disclosed that because of the reduced hours, it took a while for the college to go through with the demolition of the 13 of the 37 buildings that were destroyed by Super Typhoon Yutu in October 2018. These were buildings A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, Q, R, and S.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been on a reduced operation and that has been really difficult for the institution, because we have, unlike many other institutions or agencies or organizations, been working to rebuild our campus, and with very limited hours, it\u2019s hard to expedite a lot of contracts, procurement, and activities if your employees are at reduced hours,\u201d said Eliptico.<\/p>\n
Eliptico said he\u2019s thankful to the Palacios-Torres administration, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP), and the U.S. Congress for the CARES Act, which helped NMC resume 80 hours.<\/p>\n
NMC recently completed its demolition of the 13 buildings and is now moving on with the next phase of rebuilding. According to Eliptico, they are already moving forward with the facilities master plan, which will establish the blueprint of future buildings of the campus. They expect to finish the main building\u2014which NMC refers to as the flagship building\u2014by 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are thankful to the U.S. Department of Education, the governor, the NMC Board of Regents, the guidance of regulatory agencies, and other for their support and help with our recovery activities,\u201d said Eliptico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thanks to the Coronavirus Aid, Response, and Economic Security Act\u2014or CARES Act\u2014the Northern Marianas College…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":335425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[69],"class_list":["post-337764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-nmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337764","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\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}