‘PSS will lose arm and a leg under wage cut’

The government’s wage cut proposal could cause CNMI public schools to lose $20 million in federal funding and over one-third of its teaching staff, education officials warned the Legislature on Monday.

Board of Education chair Roman C. Benavente and Education Commission Rita H. Inos, in a written comment on House Bill 15-115, said the wage cut measure is bad for the Commonwealth economy and public schools.

“We anticipate that this wage reduction bill will only exacerbate our existing difficulty in recruiting teachers and other auxiliary service providers to meet our school’s needs,” the PSS officials said.

H.B. 15-115 seeks to cut the wages of civil service employees by 10 percent across the board.

Benavente and Inos pointed out that, with the nationwide shortage of teachers, a wage reduction in the CNMI would only make stateside employment more attractive for local teachers.

Already, the states are offering signing bonuses for highly qualified teachers. In addition, teacher salaries are being raised across the board.

PSS is projecting that 90 percent of its 612 teachers will pass the Praxis exams and become highly qualified teachers as defined by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

“We could easily lose over one-third of our teaching staff,” the officials said. “Many of our secondary school teachers and staff have indicated that they will leave if their salaries are cut.”

The proposed wage cut could also be very damaging to the private schools, they said. “Reduced parental income may force parents to make tough choices by taking children from private schools and enrolling them in our already overcrowded [public] schools,” Benavente and Inos said.

Furthermore, the wage cut proposal could jeopardize PSS’ federal funding, as it could constitute a violation of the “maintenance of effort” requirements set by the U.S. Department of Education.

The MOE requirement means that local funding should at least remain constant and ideally should increase as the student population increases.

The CNMI government contribution to the public schools, amounting to $37.2 million, has not increased across the past seven years, even as the federal contribution continues to rise.

“A violation of the MOE assurances that we provide to the federal government could result in the suspension or loss of $20 million in federal funding. Federal funding pays the salaries of over 15 percent of our classroom teachers and provides over $3 million for technology and instructional materials for our public schools,” said Benavente and Inos.

They recommended that the Legislature explore options that do not have a negative multiplier effect. Such options, they said, include further streamlining government operations, imposing a sales tax, or imposing a progressive tax for high-income earners.