Lawrence F. Camacho
COMMISSIONER of Education Dr. Lawrence F. Camacho on Tuesday thanked the administration of Gov. Arnold I. Palacios and Lt. Gov. David M. Apatang for allocating additional funds to the Public School System for fiscal year 2025.
In the governor’s revised FY 2025 submission, the PSS budget went up to $33.6 million from $27.8 million.
In the current fiscal year, the PSS budget amounts to $28.4 million. PSS, however, is also a recipient of federal grants for specific programs and activities.
In its 2023 Citizen Centric Report, PSS said the federal Education Stabilization Fund and American Rescue Plan Act funds “bridged the local budget gap for [PSS] personnel costs of $29 million and $32 million for fiscal years 2022 and 2023, respectively.”
The CNMI Constitution mandates that PSS “shall be guaranteed an annual budget of not less than twenty-five percent of the general revenues of the Commonwealth through an annual appropriation.”
For FY 2025, the Department of Finance identified $158.6 million in budgetary resources of which $111.4 million is available for government appropriation.
In a statement, Camacho said he, his PSS team and the Board of Education met with the governor and the lt. governor last month to discuss how they could work together to ensure that PSS, which has over 1,500 employees, is able to fulfill its constitutional mandate of providing uninterrupted learning opportunities to nearly 10,000 students.
He said PSS and the administration agreed that this could only be accomplished if funding was available, given the Commonwealth’s financial challenges.
“I can honestly state that since my arrival in January of this year, we have been successful in our efforts to collaborate with the leadership of Governor Palacios and his team in bringing attention to the ongoing need for funding for our Public School System,” he said.
After meeting with Palacios and Apatang, Camacho said, “My PSS team and I felt relieved, thankful, and reassured that our kids will continue to attend school five days a week and that our teachers and staff will continue to work and provide services that are essential to our kids’ education.”
Camacho said the new fiscal year, which starts on Oct. 1, 2024, will not see any disruptions, thanks “to our efforts and the efforts of our governor and lt. governor.”
As a result of their collaborative work, Camacho said PSS, with the support of the BOE and the administration, “has been able to mitigate any possible negative effects that a lack of funding may have on PSS and our learning community, specifically related to the expiration of our [four-year] American Rescue Plan Act funding on September 30.”
PSS received a total of $160 million in ARPA funds.
In its 2023 Citizen Centric Report, PSS said ARPA funds allowed the school system “to backfill a huge hole in the local budget as the local personnel cost is $40 million yet PSS, across the past three years, has received [only] $19 million, $24 million and $25 million” for personnel and “all others.”
