Board of Education chairman Roman C. Benavente called on members of the board yesterday to \u201crefocus\u201d and end an \u201catmosphere of animosity\u201d with the leadership and the Babauta administration. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m tired of this animosity going around with board members and with the administration\u2026 Personal issues must be eliminated from the board,\u201d said the chairman.<\/p>\n
The chairman recently issued a letter to public school teacher representative Ambrose Bennett warning him about his use of the board\u2019s letterhead when communicating with teachers without permission from Benavente.<\/p>\n
Bennett also gets \u201ca lukewarm treatment\u201d at the board and the Public School System over his \u201cbehavior\u201d and for his insistent push for teachers\u2019 collective bargaining\u2014a subject that makes education officials touchy.<\/p>\n
At the same time, board member Herman T. Guerrero has openly attacked Gov. Juan N. Babauta on a number of issues, including an alleged failure to provide needed funds to PSS.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to impress among board members that we are supposed to be working for one purpose, that is to make sure that students get what they want. These quarrels are uncalled for. We should be looking for solutions instead of confrontation,\u201d said Benavente. <\/p>\n
As for Bennett, he said he hopes that Bennett would go beyond his collective bargaining pitch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not trying to criticize him but instead of only talking about collective bargaining and interest of teachers because I believe teachers are well taken cared of, I\u2019d like to hear his opinion on student improvement and other issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As chairman, he said, he tries to accommodate sentiments of all parties: Bennett, other board members, PSS, and others.<\/p>\n
As far as collective bargaining power is concerned, Benavente said that it is being looked at now by a recently formed adhoc committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Board of Education chairman Roman C. Benavente called on members of the board yesterday to \u201crefocus\u201d and end an \u201catmosphere of animosity\u201d with the leadership and the Babauta administration. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81072","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\/81072","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}