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Federal funds emerge for cash-starved PSS
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Posted on Dec 01 1998
The Public School System is recipient of a $65,000 in grant that will fund the formulation of education reforms to boost learning, and a team from the Hawaii-based Pacific Resources for Education and Learning is helping out push the project through.
The project, called Comprehensive School Reform, is required to be based on models that have been proven successful. It focuses away from isolated projects and on a campus-wide campaign.
Meanwhile, education officials were told yesterday that PSS may dip into education funds earmarked for some specialized programs and for what is known in the U.S. as migrant education.
Thomas W. Barlow, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Assistance of PREL, said the U.S. Department of Education has an outlay for charter schools, or specialized schools, and for which CNMI may work to qualify itself.
Except for Hawaii, no other institution from around the Pacific has benefited from that funding.
To qualify, the CNMI would need the concurrence of the Legislature and other leaders.
While the CNMI may run into difficulties in the technical definition for recipients under the migrant education funding, the appropriation may also be worth looking into, Barlow said.
“This is a big challenge because the ways people define migrants in the U.S. mainland don’t fit here,” he said.
In the U.S., people who are mobile because of work fall under this program. For instance, people who pick apples in Washington and then move to Arizona to harvest lettuce are eligible.
“Laws though have changed. For example, Alaska was able to include children who move with families in the fishing industry,” Barlow said.
Hawaii was reportedly granted $3 million for migrant education.
