4-day school week by April 1

Board of Education members and representatives of the Public School System meet for a board meeting yesterday at the Board of Education building on Capital Hill. (KIMBERLY BAUTISTA)

The Public School System will implement a four-day school week starting April 1 pursuant to austerity measures approved by the Board of Education yesterday.

BOE members unanimously voted yes to cutting school weeks to four days and PSS staff hours to just 64 hours. That means there will be no PSS classes on Fridays.

BOE chair Janice Tenorio, vice chair Herman Atalig, Marylou Ada, Andrew Orsini, and Phillip Mendiola-Long all voted yes to the proposed 16-hour across-the-board cut.

With the approved cuts, PSS staff will have every Friday off without any changes in instructional hours. according to Mendiola-Long.

“[We approved] a 64-hour pay cut, every Friday off, and then no additional hours or minutes added to the school day so elementary schools will still be 7:30am to 2:30pm and middle school and high school will still be 8:30am to 3:30pm,” he said.

Even with that, PSS still expects to incur a $2-million deficit, Mendiola-Long said.

“We’re going to be back here. The administration proposed a budget that only cuts a little amount and we’ll still be ending the school year with a $2-million deficit and zero for operations. There’s no way to sustain it. You can’t end the year with a $3-million deficit, so that would mean that you’re going to have to come back and do further cuts,” he said.

Mendiola-Long added that the concern is whether the PSS administration is doing enough to cut and prepare its teachers and staff so that they understand that the cuts are temporary and further cuts are underway unless the injunction enforcing the Supreme Court’s opinion on the certified question is carried out.

“We’ll be back here come April unless we win the injunction. If we win the injunction, the government is forced to appropriate the money in accordance to the slip opinion, then this may be the last cut because we’re looking at a whole different set of math,” he said.

Mendiola-Long also mentioned that teachers whose salaries were frozen last year as part of PSS’ previous austerity measures will be adjusted and then cut.

“In order to be fair across the board, if you’ve earned your certification and you’ve been approved, we’ll adjust you to where you’re supposed to be and then we’ll implement the 64-hour cut,” he said.

According to Marianas High School teacher Jeremiah Rother, it’s disappointing that he, and his colleagues, will experience another cut, especially since their salaries have yet to be restored since the last cut in 2019.

“I hope the injunction is filed post-haste. I hope the courts rule in favor of PSS, and I hope that the Constitution is upheld as soon as possible and hopefully this is our last cut and as short-lived as possible,” he said.