Saipan Mayor RB Camacho, left, swears in Flo Calvo and Eluene Baza as new board members of the Saipan Higher Education Financial Assistance program on Tuesday, Aug. 1.
SAIPAN Mayor Ramon RB Camacho on Tuesday swore in educators Flo Calvo and Eluene Baza as the newest board members of the Saipan Higher Education Financial Assistance program.
In his remarks, he urged them to pursue additional funds and to consider how to entice off-island students to return to the Marianas for employment.
SHEFA was created by Saipan Local Law 13-21 to “provide supplemental financial assistance to qualified Saipan and Northern Island residents pursuing a post-secondary education on Saipan and abroad.”
SHEFA falls under the purview of the Office of the Mayor of Saipan, and is funded mainly through the appropriation of local license fees for poker and pachinko machines.
Mayor Camacho said the SHEFA board should think “outside the box” when it comes to financing the education of students pursuing bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
He noted that all local agencies are waiting for a portion of the local budget, which is “shrinking.”
“We cannot afford anymore to…wait for the money. I think we need to go and search for those funds,” Camacho added, noting that the Rotary Club of Saipan and the Saipan Chamber of Commerce conduct fundraising activities for their scholarship programs.
“I’m suggesting to the board to generate funding so that we can continue servicing the students that are pursuing higher education,” Camacho said.
He said the board should also consider ways to bring college-educated former residents back to the Marianas. Many of these former residents believe that there are no positions for them to fill in the CNMI, he added.
“We continue to fund these students and yet there’s no opportunity for them to come in and start applying those skills and knowledge that they acquired from off-island,” Camacho said.
Calvo said she and the rest of the board will work on the mayor’s requests.
She said one possibility is to encourage vocational and trades education. She added that the CW-1 “touchback” provision affects the availability of tradesmen whose absence could be filled by students from the Marianas.
“As the mayor explained, we have to find ways to convince the kids to come back. [It might mean] connecting with them before they pursue certain majors off-island, to ensure that when they come back we have a position for them,” Calvo said.
Calvo and Baza told the media that they are both recipients of SHEFA funds, and that the program helped ensure they received their education.
Baza is a 15-year educator at Tanapag Middle School while Calvo is a 12-year educator at Saipan Southern High School.
