Review of PSS pay plan OK’d

With the Public School System facing a financial tight spot, the Board of Education directed PSS officials last Tuesday morning to seek an outside company that would review and revise their current compensation plan—just two years after it was implemented.

At their six-hour meeting last Tuesday, the BOE unanimously approved a motion to direct PSS to issue a request for proposal for a third-party company that would review the just-implemented compensation plan, which basically increased PSS salaries across the board

BOE Saipan representative Marylou Ada made the motion for the issuance of an RFP, with the goal to make the compensation plan “more fair and equitable.”

Then-acting education commissioner Lynnette Villagomez declined to comment whether the compensation plan was unfair or inequitable, when Saipan Tribune sought her comments on the matter and left the question to current Education Commissioner Glenn Muña.

BOE chair Janice A. Tenorio noted in an interview Tuesday that, although premature, she is open to talks of a revised compensation plan—even if the third-party company recommends a reduction in compensation across the board.

“A third-party company would be more effective,” Tenorio said.

The current compensation plan was handled at the time by then-education commissioner Cynthia Deleon Guerrero

“In the current compensation plan, the experience, credentials, and years of service [determines the compensation]. Years of service are of course a merit we have to acknowledge, [and] it made the salaries higher,” Tenorio said.

Tenorio conceded that, when the compensation adjustment was done sometime in 2017, the across-the-board-increase was implemented without a supporting contingency plan.

“When we did the increase, it was across the board, but the financial analysis and the budget impact, to be honest, we didn’t really dive into. It was a happy time—money was spilling into PSS and the Legislature and the government was really supporting [PSS],” she said.

In defense of the compensation plan, she argued that the salaries were adjusted in order to provide a more competitive and attractive compensation plan to entice teachers to work within PSS.

“We couldn’t get teacher from the U.S. mainland to come here because the salaries were very low. That was the rationale behind paying individuals in the system who have worked hard for their personal credentials to earn what they should earn,” Tenorio noted.