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IT&E urged to give free data to students, teachers
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Posted on Oct 12 2020
Senate vice president Jude U. Hofschneider (R-Tinian) is requesting IT&E to extend to CNMI teachers and students the same free data it recently offered in Guam.
In his letter Thursday to Guam/CNMI IT&E chief executive officer Jim Oehlerking, Hofschneider said the CNMI’s students and teachers are experiencing the same difficulties with distance or remote learning as their brothers and sisters to the south.
He said most of the CNMI Public School System students and teachers will be conducting distance learning due to the public health threat of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The senator made the request after learning last Wednesday that IT&E is offering free data for Guam students and teachers so they could access popular distance learning platforms, including Blackboard Learn, Blackboard Ultra, and the G Suite for Education, which includes Google Classroom and others.
“While I applaud IT&E’s support and partnership with the community in Guam, I humbly request that IT&E extends the same support and partnership to the CNMI,” Hofschneider said.
The senator acknowledged that CNMI IT&E and PSS are already collaborating on how IT&E can best serve and assist students and teachers while they transition to distance learning this school year. However, he said, he does not believe that CNMI IT&E has offered free data in the CNMI for students and teachers to access learning platforms for this school year. If IT&E can extend this service to the students and teachers in Guam, it should also be possible to extend such services to the CNMI because there’s only about 12,000 total students and several hundreds of teachers here, Hofschneider said.
“The CNMI stands ready to assist IT&E in expanding and improving its services to the people and community,” he added.
