PSS said reducing its budget further may result in the loss of several millions of dollars in federal grants.
PSS currently operates on a $34 million budget which is based on the last appropriation law enacted, the FY 2009 budget.
That figure is also the lowest that PSS has ever received in more than two decades and is also far lower than its actual needs considering the rise in spending costs and the needs of students and personnel.
FY 2010 started on Oct. 1, 2009.
In a letter to the presiding officers of the Legislature, Congressman Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan cited two reasons why the budget level for PSS must be maintained.
“First, as a matter of policy, I advocate keeping local funding at the current level to ensure that our students have every opportunity to succeed and help our economy thrive. Second, a pragmatic reason — any decrease of local funding risks the loss of millions of dollars in federal funding from (the) State Fiscal Stabilization Fund and other sources over the next few years,” Sablan told Senate President Paul A. Manglona, Ind.-Rota, and Speaker Froilan C. Tenorio, Covenant-Saipan.
Almost all educational programs, including the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, require that “a state or outlying area either maintain the same dollar amount of funding from one year to the next, or that its educational funding is an equal or greater percentage of that state or outlying area’s total budget as the year before,” Sablan said.
With the Strategic Priority Plus ONE as the foundation of the local school system’s effort to reach its benchmarks — high student performance, highly qualified teachers and personnel, improved instruction and modernized facilities — the stakes are high.
Education Commissioner Rita A. Sablan and the Board of Education have set a strict time-frame at achieving these goals, including a five-year target or trajectory for highly qualified teachers and personnel, and high-student performance benchmarks.
“It requires high-quality teachers, modernized school facilities, new technology and idea, continued financial investment, and more. But (with) these investments that will pay dividends to our islands for many years to come, we cannot afford not to invest in our students in this way (if the PSS budget is reduced),” explained the congressman.
The $32.34 million in State Fiscal Stabilization Fund that PSS received from the federal government late last year was the single largest grant ever awarded to the CNMI education system.
It was based on a grant application that reflected the school system’s innovative and achievable plans.
However, a key requirement of the grant is maintaining the current PSS funding of $34.4 million which is 22.73 percent of the CNMI government budget.
If this is not met, the islands could lose not only the remaining $11.9 million of federal monies that have yet to be distributed, but also nearly $3.5 million in Title I money and millions in other federal educational dollars that the CNMI receives each year.
The federal government continues to raise the level of requirement for educated-related funding releases including grants to states and territories. On top of the required maintenance of local funds, another key federal mandate is that all federally funded programs must be research-based which is costly. “If a state or outlying area fails to meet this requirement, or if it uses federal dollars to supplant rather than supplement local funds, it risk being forced to return existing federal education dollars and losing future funding completely,” Congressman Sablan warned.
Admitting that this federal requirement will be difficult and “may not be easy or convenient,” he told both the Senate president and the House speaker that failure to maintain the level of local funding for PSS would render on-going effort at securing additional federal monies “meaningless and leaving the students of the CNMI in an even worse position.”
The congressman’s office is credited for helping PSS successfully secure the multi-million-dollar one-time State Fiscal Stabilization Fund grant, edging out other territories.
“I have been successful here in Congress in obtaining additional federal funding for education in the CNMI, and I look forward to continuing that record in the future. (And) I urge you not to allow this current economic situation to diminish our children’s future opportunities,” Congressman Sablan said.
The Fitial administration has revised the government’s FY 2010 revenue projection from $150 million to $137 million.
