Deleon Guerrero’s term at BOE set to expire

State Board of Education member Galvin Deleon Guerrero yesterday confirmed that his term at the education panel will soon expire and his slot will be up for grabs in the coming midterm elections.

Deleon Guerrero is among the five voting members of the board representing Saipan. He is the incumbent secretary and treasurer of the board and serves as head of two standing committees: school reform, parent, teacher, student involvement committee; and the ad-hoc committee for commissioner of education evaluation.

Deleon Guerrero is also assigned as the board’s representative to the Head Start Policy Council.

His term will officially end on Dec. 31 this year. Deleon Guerrero ran for the BOE in the 2007 election and was sworn in as a board member in January 2008 for one term. Due to the realignment of elections cycles, the term was for five years, which expires in January 2013.

He decided to run for the BOE post because, as a committed educator, he wanted to help students and other educators in the CNMI by bringing a classroom perspective to the boardroom. He wanted to ensure that decisions made at the policy level always considered the real-world impact and implications of such decisions.

For the new election, however the board member admitted he has yet to make a decision.

“I have not decided on whether or not I will run for reelection because I am considering pursuing doctoral or further graduate studies beginning in the Fall of 2013,” he admitted to Saipan Tribune yesterday.

When asked about his priorities for PSS, Deleon Guerrero said his goals remain the same.

Among these goals is to help improve PSS’ Special Education programs where the board has adopted a differential salary schedule for SPED teachers in order to recruit and retain more teachers.

However, he emphasized that as PSS moves forward with austerity measures, it must remain diligent in recruiting and retaining SPED teachers and meeting the needs of all students.

It is also his goal as BOE member to help enhance PSS’ disciplinary policies and processes in order to strike the right balance between helping students and maintaining safe and orderly schools.

“While raising this issue was initially controversial, I believe we have made progress in this regard by clarifying the system’s disciplinary policies and working toward more uniformity between the schools in enforcing those policies,” he told Saipan Tribune.

Among his other goals is to help financial literacy. Deleon Guerrero revealed that in addition to revisiting the career and technical education curriculum of PSS, the board also re-established the Junior Achievement Program which he hopes to continue and expand next school year.

To improve PSS’ leadership through the development of an effective evaluation and assessment system, the BOE and the PSS he said have worked closely with McREL to develop an evaluation and assessment system for the entire system, including evaluating the education commissioner.

“With the commissioner’s contract up for review this year, we look forward to integrating this new evaluation and assessment system into that contract,” he added.