KES Principal Andrew Tabelual in an interview yesterday said that a total of 597 students enrolled this year and 130 of them are transferee or new students.
Tabelual said the number increased by 10 percent compared to 587 numbers of enrollees last school year.He added most of these transferees are from private schools and from Babeldaob areas.The principal said the first day of school went well and although they don’t have problems with the textbooks and the facilities, their main concerns right now is to have additional electric fans for the comfort of the students.KES has 30 classrooms. Out of this 30, 28 classrooms are for regular students and two for special education students.He said the Special Ed classrooms and four of the regular classrooms have air conditioning units.24 classrooms are using only electric fans. Each classroom has two or three electric fans.He said they need four or five more electric fans to make the students comfortable.For Palau High School Principal Ibuuch Tomoichi, she said their main concern right now is that most of the air conditioning units are broken.She said PHS has over 64 classrooms and some of the classrooms don’t have air conditioning units.She added that some of their door knobs are broken too.She said they are just waiting for the allotment from the Ministry of Education to fix the problem.Another problem at the PHS, some of the classrooms are just using ceiling fans but the fans are not also working, making the classrooms very hot.This problem affects the students for it discouraged them to go to school.There are 24 or 25 students in each classroom.PHS enrollees also decreased. Last year the total number of enrollees is over 800 but now only 754 enrolled.Mindszenty High School Principal Basilio Deltang said the decrease is due to the bad economy. He said a lot of their students transferred to the public school because the parents cannot afford to pay the tuition anymore.Last year, the total number of students that enrolled was 212. This year, only 200 enrolled.
