Rep. Heinz S. Hofschneider should apologize to students of Saipan Southern High School\u2014and all public high school students for that matter\u2014after the independent gubernatorial candidate reportedly said high school students in the CNMI could not even put a sentence together.<\/p>\n
Board of Education chair Roman C. Benavente said a number of students, from SSHS in particular, called his office and complained about the comments made by Hofschneider during last week\u2019s gubernatorial debate at World Resort Saipan.<\/p>\n
In the debate, Hofschneider scored Gov. Juan N. Babauta\u2019s Education Initiative that gives away free laptops to high school students, saying that the money would be better spent in making students learn the basics\u2014reading, writing, and math<\/p>\n
Benavente said he wants to express his disappointment with the gubernatorial candidate\u2019s statements but clarified that he was not expressing his opinion because he was favoring other candidates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am speaking as the chair of the Board of Education,\u201d he said, adding that he is just defending students of the CNMI Public School System. \u201cI was shocked by the [Hofschneider\u2019s] quote. It is very antagonistic, arrogant and degrading.\u201d<\/p>\n
The board chair said the issue would be discussed during tomorrow\u2019s BOE meeting. He added that he is challenging the congressman to help in passing the PSS\u2019 budget.<\/p>\n
Benavente said Hofschneider should focus more on passing the PSS budget in its entirety so the education system he is criticizing would improve.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what he should be doing instead of bluntly criticizing the students,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that some students at SSHS are already planning to send out letters to the media for clarification and for their own defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Hofschneider, with due respect, you should understand that education is a learning process,\u201d Benavente said.<\/p>\n
Hofschneider said during the debate that rather than laptops, the money should be spent to improve the students reading, writing and math skills.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey cannot even put a sentence together,\u201d Hofschneider had said.<\/p>\n
Under his Governor\u2019s Education Initiative, the governor provided some $2.5 million worth of grants to the public schools.<\/p>\n
The initiative included a $319,000 pilot Computers in the Classroom project, which was awarded to SSHS last year. Under the program, a laptop computer is given to each sophomore student, which can be used both at home and at school. If a student drops out prior to graduation, the computer shall be returned to the school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rep. Heinz S. Hofschneider should apologize to students of Saipan Southern High School\u2014and all public high school students for that matter\u2014after the independent gubernatorial candidate reportedly said high school students in the CNMI could not even put a sentence together.<\/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-95099","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\/95099","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=95099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}