THE House of Representatives on Thursday unanimously passed House Bill 23-20 to allow a simple majority or three members to constitute a quorum on the Board of Education.
All the 19 members present voted to pass H.B. 23-20 which now goes to the Senate. Rep. Roman C. Benavente was excused from the House session on Thursday.
Rep. Manny Gregory Castro introduced the bill and requested the speaker and other members to act on the bill “given the nature and sensitivity of the issues at hand.”
According to H.B. 23-20, “The presence of four voting members shall constitute a quorum for transaction of business at any board meeting, provided that members from at least two senatorial districts shall be present to constitute a quorum.”
Prior to the roll-call vote, Castro said he wanted to reassure his constituents that “there is nothing political about this bill…. We are separating all ties here and we are looking at the issues at hand.”
Castro likened the Public School System to a big ship with a small rudder. He said his bill would “give that rudder flexibility to steer to a direction PSS needs to go, given the financial issues and all the other things that need to be addressed expeditiously.”
Rep. Marissa Flores, for her part, said: “What we are doing today is to ensure that there is equity and the slogan of PSS which is Students First is adhered to.”
In an interview after the session, Castro said “people are subdued by systems and processes that restrict experimentation, limit learning, hinder the transfer of knowledge, fail to motivate and suppress innovation. As a result, organizations fail to capitalize on the talent they have and in the long run perform poorly.”
Moreover, in any democratic deliberative body, Castro said the majority rules.
His bill would “do something that should have been done long ago,” he said.
“Nearly all boards in the CNMI require a simple majority of members to conduct business. This simple majority is large enough to ensure legitimacy while also being small enough to secure flexibility,” he added.
The BOE, which sets policy for PSS, has been unable to organize because two of the board’s five elected members — Saipan’s Andrew L. Orsini and Rota’s Herman M. Atalig — walked out of the meeting on Feb. 1, 2023, and were off-island during the meeting on Feb. 24, 2023.
Manny Gregory Castro
