‘Pay hike for teachers, aides not true’

Education Commissioner Rita H. Inos has belied the claim made by a letter to the editor in the Saipan Tribune that there had been a salary increase for teachers and teacher aides in the CNMI.

Inos said she was amazed to read in a letter to the editor published Monday, written by Jay Cabrera from Chalan Piao, claiming that all teachers and teacher aides had received a pay raise within the year “just as all other government employees had.”

“I wish it were true but it is not,” Inos said.

This is because the Public School System has not had a budget increase over the last seven years, she said, adding that the budget for PSS this year is $5 million lower than it was in 1997 and 1998.

Despite this financial limitation, the school system had opened six new schools and had added 2,500 more students since 1997. She said the student enrollment now reaches 12,000.

Cabrera had stated that he “knows for a fact and PSS-Finance could verify that teachers and aides received a raise within this year, just as the other sectors did with nurses, doctors, and police officers.”

Inos said the writer is “factually incorrect” on many of his assertions.

The House and the Senate earlier this summer unanimously approved the reprogramming of $1.1 million from the deficit reduction account to PSS for the payment of minor repairs and maintenance in all 20 schools. The reprogrammed funds will be used for payment of trash collection at all public schools, fuel and repair for the school buses and vans, payment for security guards, and payment for the annual leave of CNMI public school teachers.

PSS has been asking for the supplemental funding even before school started on Aug. 3. Inos said that PSS wrote the governor about its need for additional funding in July and the school system has been following up on this but has not received any response.

In his letter, Cabrera had also asserted that other government employees didn’t get a raise and “probably worked twice as hard” without a summer vacation.

Inos said she hopes the writer is wrong in his assertion that the governor is just a figurehead who does nothing because the power to appropriate funds resides with the Legislature. She said she would like the writer to know that the governor has the power to reprogram funds.

“All that is needed to prove that the governor is not just a figurehead who does nothing is for him to act now and reprogram the $1.1 million from the deficit reduction account, as approved by the Legislature earlier this year,” she said.