BOE mulls creation of school for CNMI’s brightest students

Public education leaders are plumbing ideas on how to best address the extraordinary academic demands that would feed the intellectual growth of the islands’ most gifted students.

They reportedly comprise five percent of the entire local student population.

According to Board of Education Chair Anthony Pellegrino, creating a competitive learning environment for Northern Marianas’ exceptional scholars is equally crucial to hardships in upgrading the knowledge of the Commonwealth’s relatively weak students.

“We have students who are very gifted and talented and yet PSS has overlooked these children. What are we doing to assist them?,” raised the BOE chair.

National norms dictate that three to five percent of a district’s school population cover the gifted, talented, and academically superior students, Mr. Pellegrino disclosed.

Out of an estimated 12,000 students in the local educational block, around 600 are believed to be academically superior.

“There are three kinds of students, the ones who are mentally challenged, the average, and the extra gifted. Students with learning handicaps are only so because we are not providing them with adequate facilities. Meanwhile, there are grade school students who are capable of doing high school level work but we have yet to pick them up since we lack proper means to train them,” said Mr. Pellegrino.

The BOE official last year floated the concept of developing one of Saipan’s public high schools into a campus exclusive to the Commonwealth’s brightest and most exceptional students.

“Some people say that’s elitist but there’s nothing wrong with that. They are our thinkers, they’re the leaders, the creators, the artists, philosophers of society, we should accept that,” he said.

Plans to set up what officials refer to as a “magnet school” was disclosed during the groundbreaking ceremony of one of the Public School System’s major Capital Improvement Projects in Koblerville.

According to Mr. Pellegrino, with the anticipated opening of three additional public high schools on island within the next three years, BOE is mulling over designating one of the new campuses for CNMI’s “cream of the crop.”

“All the best students will be there. These are the students who know what they want to do in life,” he said.

Students motivated into becoming high-caliber professionals in the fields of sciences, law, technology, agriculture, the arts, and others will be admitted to the proposed magnet school.

Mr. Pellegrino noted that the campus will house no less than the entire CNMI’s “brain thrust.”