Official statement of Education Commissioner Dr. Alfred B. Ada

While our goal is to resume in-person learning on all levels, the Public School System has been aggressive with its vaccination drive, highly encouraging our 12-year-old students to get vaccinated.

The Public School System believes vaccinated public school community is both essential and critical to the overall health and wellbeing of our Commonwealth.

Over the past 16 months since the COVID-19 pandemic affected the CNMI, our Public School System, with the support of CNMI Board of Education, implemented measures aimed to protect our students, staff/personnel, parents and the entire school community. These were implemented based on the COVID-19 prevention guidelines and preventive measures put in place by the Governor’s COVID-19 Task Force.

Because of these measures, the Public School System was able to continually afford educational opportunities to all of our elementary, middle, and high school students.

PSS successfully implemented asynchronous learning (students attend course at their own pace on their own schedule) and synchronous learning (students interact with the instructor/teacher and other participants in an online learning course at the same time but at a different location) last year and this recently opened school year. These were also supported by existing resources such as technology support, highly trained and qualified classroom teachers and staff, safe and clean school facilities, among others.

The school district believes that we need to be a vaccinated school community. The school district continues to appeal to our parents—our strongest partners—to encourage their 12-year-old children to get vaccinated.

To support our aggressive drive to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our PSS family and the community, as a whole, we have hired highly trained Registered Nurses. These RNs will regularly visit and conduct clinical work on all of our students in all of our campuses on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota, keeping in mind that the health and wellbeing of our students remains paramount.

We will continue working with the Governor’s COVID-19 Task Force to guide us in our constitutional mandate in providing our public elementary, middle, and high students, including kindergarten, Early Head Start, Head Start, Special Education and Early Intervention students the optimum educational learning opportunities during this continuing pandemic situation.