By MARCONI CALINDAS
\nReporter<\/p>\n
Roman C. Benavente has retained his seat as chair of the CNMI State Board of Education during an election held Thursday at the board\u2019s first meeting for the year. This is Benavente\u2019s third term as chair.<\/p>\n
The election of officers, moderated by Public School System legal counsel Heather Kennedy, also resulted in the election of Dino Jones as vice chair and Marja Lee Taitano retaining her seat as secretary\/treasurer.<\/p>\n
Benavente expressed his gratitude to the board for their trust and support and predicted that this year \u201cis not going to be an easy year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although his background is somewhat dissimilar to the other members\u2019 as he was never a professional educator or teacher, he said, \u201cI am more or less a community based person,\u201d and said he would work harder this year and do his very best to make a better future for the CNMI.<\/p>\n
Board member Herman T. Guerrero reminded Benavente, though, of his responsibility toward PSS. \u201cI would just like to stress on your responsibility to defend PSS,\u201d said Guerrero.<\/p>\n
He said that, as chair, Benavente has to avoid being shortsighted on issues that affect PSS that could cause morale problems across the board. \u201cI hope that we have learned from the year that passed. Your job is to secure and defend PSS.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerrero also said that Benavente, together with the board, should support the office of the commissioner in defending the rights of children to quality education. Guerrero was the board of education chair for four years before Benavente assumed the post in 2003.<\/p>\n
Benavente warmly accepted Guerrero\u2019s comments and said that, although he is not perfect, with the board members\u2019 support he believes that this will prod him to do a better job despite the crisis the PSS is going through at this time.<\/p>\n
Frances H. Diaz remained as board member, together with Guerrero, private schools representative Scott Norman, and Teacher representative Ambrose Bennett,.<\/p>\n
Benavente also appointed the chairs for the board\u2019s standing committees. Taitano heads the Committee on Fiscal and Administration; Diaz for Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment, Guerrero for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs and Head Start Policy Council, Jones for Capital Improvement and PSS property, and Norman for School Reform and Parental Involvement and Student Relations.<\/p>\n
The next board meeting will be on Feb. 3, 2005, 9am at the Board of Education office, Retirement Building, Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roman C. Benavente has retained his seat as chair of the CNMI State Board of Education during an election held Thursday at the board\u2019s first meeting for the year. This is Benavente\u2019s third term as chair.<\/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-86998","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\/86998","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=86998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}