Board of Education and Public School System officials asked the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday to recommend giving PSS at least \u201c$36 million,\u201d which they said is the median between Gov. Eloy S. Inos\u2019 proposed fiscal year 2015 budget of $32 million for PSS and BOE\u2019s endorsed $40 million.<\/p>\n
Rep. Tony Sablan (Ind-Saipan), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said at the end of the budget hearing that \u201cany\u201d upward adjustment to the governor\u2019s proposed budget for PSS would be strictly for the hiring of 37 classroom teachers that education officials brought up at the hearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe priority should be to reduce the teacher-student ratio, if there\u2019s any upward adjustment in the PSS budget,\u201d Sablan told Saipan Tribune. He cited, for example, the need to reduce Marianas High School\u2019s 50:1 student-teacher ratio, as well as those of other schools.<\/p>\n
The Ways and Means chairman said finding $4 million to add to the governor\u2019s proposed for PSS is \u201ctough,\u201d so there is no guarantee that would be met in the 2015 budget bill. <\/p>\n
He said the Legislature, just like the administration, has to prioritize funding for public health and safety, along with education and other social services, among other things.<\/p>\n
Education Commissioner Dr. Rita Sablan said they are \u201chopeful.\u201d She and BOE chair Herman Guerrero led a team of education officials at the House committee budget hearing on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that you can do better than what the governor has proposed,\u201d the education commissioner told lawmakers, who took turns asking PSS and BOE officials about its current programs and plans.<\/p>\n
Also in the budget hearing were Management and Budget director Virginia Villagomez and Finance Secretary Larrisa Larson.<\/p>\n
Earlier, PSS\u2019 Sablan told reporters she may ask BOE to declare a state of emergency for CNMI public schools \u201cfor us to really make sure we get the amount we need to adequately provide quality education.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Board of Education and Public School System officials asked the House Ways and Means Committee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[39,20,37,40],"class_list":["post-35678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-boe","tag-budget","tag-education-2","tag-pss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35678","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}