Don't dump society's education problems on teachers alone

I have a column in today's West Valley View. I might return to doing a newspaper column after a significant break.

One of my favorite novels is the 1998 opus “The Beach,” which tells the story of a community of rugged individualists that cling to their unique ideals. Like all good literature, moral questions get raised and explored. In this case, a member of this separatist beach community gets injured in a shark attack and the group decides to stay isolated instead of bringing him back for the medical attention he desperately needs. His moaning and misery begins to spoil the mood, so he is whisked away from the group to fend for himself. His problem remains unsolved, but most just take comfort in having the issue out of sight and out of mind. A much smaller subgroup in the community tries to nurse him back to health with the limited resources available, while the rest wash their hands of it.

This scene reminds me a lot of the situation facing our public schools. I’m in my fourth year teaching middle school in the Liberty School District and what I’ve generally seen is this state shirk its responsibility to educate the youth. Our school budget, already among the nation’s most meager, goes down each year, while not coincidentally our prison budget is the lone area going up. Last year we had a local override extension election, few voted and it was narrowly defeated. Good teachers lost jobs, skimpily paid teacher-assistants lost jobs and many of the various student supports from reading coaches to English Language Development teachers to the librarians to the discipline coordinators were dismissed. Meanwhile we continue to make do with absurdly outdated computers, limited PE facilities and a dismantled full day kindergarten and sports program. Our exhausted, demoralized staff scrambles to plug all these leaks and truly hope the cavalry comes out to vote on November 8 supporting the override this time.

When people choose to either vote no or not vote at all in these override elections, the problems don’t go away. The students keep showing up, keep needing to be educated, keep looking for adult educators spread further and further thin in bigger and bigger classes with greater subordinate demands to give them the time and attention they often aren’t getting elsewhere in our society full of broken homes, increased poverty and income disparity -- problems children did nothing to cause. Not supporting the schools isn’t like skipping vacation this year to save money. The need and the obligation for education remains. What you are doing when you fail to support education is putting the problem on the teachers, then walking away and telling them it’s your problem. We don’t do that to doctors, nurses, plumbers or any other professionals. We teachers continue to plod along with less and less help despite the fact that it’s wrong, selfish and counterproductive to invest so little in our children compared to every other state in our country. Education is a partnership between parents, teachers, students and the community-at-large. It is not something teachers can, or should, do alone.

Our country right now is in a malaise. We have run up a staggering debt. The social safety net has huge holes in it. We’ve seen the values of our homes decrease, and I would suggest that one of the ways to help is to send a message that Buckeye is a place that supports and invests in education and where you want your kids to go to school. This election is a referendum on how people feel about the value of education and how they want to support those people who spend their days dedicated to the success of your children.

It is also important not to be bamboozled by the misinformation out there. The conversation on this topic in this forum and others tends to be ignorant and mean spirited. People often say factually inaccurate statements like, “there are too many administrators.” Every school in the Liberty District has only one administrator except the largest school. Another fallacy is the role of a teachers union. We don’t have one. I can be fired at any time for any reason, and in fact, my teaching experience by law can’t even be used as a retention criterion. It is actually in a district’s financial interest to fire veteran teachers the way the system is set up now. My check is down $100 from two years ago, my wife and kids don’t have health insurance, my 301 money is down $1500 since I started, and I don’t even have access to extra work like coaching and summer school to try to scrimp by anymore. The current conditions have at least three good Liberty teachers I know ready to leave the state at year’s end, and I would imagine that will be a growing trend.

The local school budget isn’t Washington D.C.’s cesspool of waste and ill gotten lobbyist pork. It’s a shoestring operation that generally solves its problems by just making more and more demands on teachers already stretched to the limit. We need your help and we need your support on November 8.

Incidentally, it should be noted that in “The Beach,“ the shark attack victim died despite the efforts of that small group. He needed more help.

Letter to the Editor West Valley View

A recent letter writer made the claim that he had to remove his daughter from Freedom Elementary School to give her “a chance.” I’ve taught at Freedom for the bulk of the school’s existence, live a half mile away, my son graduated from Freedom in May and my younger son is in third grade there right now. I think I know the turf and am heavily invested. The school has never been better, and this is primarily related to an entire staff that is awesome. I teach middle school, so this is the area I know best and will speak of most.

Our reading and science scores are up dramatically, and this is in an environment in which our middle school staffing is down 20 percent in the last two years, not to mention the loss of other support areas such as librarian, ELD teacher, physical education teacher and the discipline coordinator. Our population is enormously transient given the housing market crash that continues unabated. I received a new student literally two days before the AIMS test in March and another 3 days before school was over in May to give you an idea of the constant revolving door the school faces through no fault of its own. One subject in one grade level not meeting an unrealistic benchmark can put an entire school on “warning status,” and give an unrealistic impression of what is happening in the big picture. While I hate to say a body as inept as the Arizona Department of Education is right on anything, when they say the AYP standard is unrealistic and misleading, they are quite correct.

The writer makes a factual error in saying the Freedom principal has eliminated writing instruction, and sarcastically mocks the idea that the social studies teacher can teach writing effectively. Writing has been spread among the staff in middle school and continues unchanged in the primary grades. It hasn’t been eliminated at all. And as the social studies teacher, I have 11 years experience teaching writing and have excellent student writing results at Freedom. We have two other highly qualified, effective and experienced writing teachers on the middle school team as well.

No one needs to pull their child out of Freedom or any Liberty School. What they need to do is vote in November for their own property values and their own children by supporting the $9 per month school budget override. They might also consider contacting their child’s teacher and saying, “How can I help you help my child.” And if really motivated, perhaps join the local PTO and pitch in. Those steps would be far more effective than making factual misstatements and insulting people who work long hours with low pay, little job security and lots of abuse for doing an amazing job. Stop by and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.

A new Mitch Hedberg release

Since Mitch won't be doing any new tours, this is the next best thing: The first and I would imagine last posthumous release. If you haven't caught the comedic stylings of Mitch Hedberg, you're missing out. What kind of world are we living in where Bernie Mac, Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks and Mitch Hedberg die young, but Sinbad and Carrot Top are hale as a horse?

In other matters, I've discovered in just a few weeks on the job that Saipan isn't the only place in America with severe academic issues. Indeed I can see literacy just falling off a cliff in this country. I have scores of students claiming not to have a single book in their house. Now, there is an especially strong tendency here among students to come up with every excuse under sun or moon to avoid work, but I'm starting to think they aren't lying about having no books in the house. Things like spelling here are far worse than in Saipan. With a far better staff of teachers, better funding, though not dramatic with all the federal goodies the CNMI gets or is at least eligible for and not all administrators take advantage of, students here in the mainland are every bit as intellectually troubled as what I saw in Saipan. There are bright spots. I have an honors class that reminds me why I got into this job.
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Chrissy Hyde, who has one of the sexiest voices in history, had an album called Learning to Crawl. I started seeing that already yesterday as Brad Ruszala's goddaughter is becoming mobile, not so agile, and sometimes hostile. She's still on the master cleanse of her own, drinking just milk.

College should be rigorous and a priority, MV 23

By Jeffrey C. Turbitt

Against a backdrop of Northern Marianas College fighting to retain its accreditation, the distinction that determines a valuable college degree versus a worthless piece of paper, stories about classroom overcrowding and the high failure rate for NMC's admissions test appeared in the local media this week.

Let me preface my thoughts by saying that for all the educational problems on the islands, compared to all the systems in the area and most definitely Guam and rural Hawaii, we are the most successful system in the region. The problem with that line of thinking in that commonly made point is that we live in a globally competitive economy, so being better than the rest of Micronesia just isn't good enough, and we should not want our local college to lower its placement standards.

For all the noise about PSS, there are two issues that dominate all others that I see. The first is that several schools are falling apart from a simple construction and facilities standpoint. The second big issue is that many classes are wildly overcrowded. Kagman High School is listed as having an average of 29 students per teacher. For a core class like language arts those numbers are usually higher. An art, music or computer class is usually much smaller than 29, so when the average says 29, there are usually more than 29 students in math, science or language arts classes to make up for those smaller elective classes. At SSHS, the freshmen pre-honors language arts class has 35 students. Three of my four classes are above 29 students per class.

As for the entrance exams, the criticisms of NMC have been somewhat ridiculous. College is supposed to be rigorous. Every college has admission tests generally in math, language arts and a foreign language. I had to take two remedial math classes myself when I entered college for the simple reason that my math skills weren't at the college level, which made it harder to graduate in four years, but it was still done. The argument that NMC is using this as some kind of money raising tactic is hokum. It could simply raise its already very cheap tuition fees if money was the prime focus.

This comment from a letter to the editor from Ivan Propst defending the NMC admission tests was interesting: "And for those whom the placement system indicates a need to improve their English skill development prior to entry into English 101, a far greater percentage require writing skill development than require further work on their reading skills."

This isn't very surprising. The high schools have a four period block schedule. A real world average of about 33 students times four eighty minute classes means 132 students. A two page writing assignment turns into 264 pages for a teacher to review. A five page paper would be 660 pages. Perhaps that is why a Hopwood teacher recently wrote a letter to the editor requesting help on this from other language arts teachers in the same boat. The simple fact is no one can do those in depth writing reviews more than once or twice per quarter, especially considering the no preparation time and wildly disparate skill levels in the classroom that are a fact of life in the public schools. In each class there is probably a minimum of two students who should be in an ESL class because they have absolutely no understanding of basic English. PSS has no ability to implement these classes because they lack the classroom space and the staff. It also just doesn't seem to be a priority.

Beyond that, while the local government has not funded education properly, an even bigger problem is that many parents have not instilled enough focus, will and urgency on their children to get that bachelor's degree, which is the admissions ticket for any serious hope at a decent middle class lifestyle. During my four years teaching seniors, I was staggered by the frequency that some of my best students told me their parents flat out told them not to leave the island to go to college. As expensive as college is these days, and it's astronomical, not going or taking the slow route is far more expensive. Median U.S. weekly earnings for a college graduate age 25 and older are $962. For a high school graduate the number is $595. That means it costs $19,084 per year not to have finished college in median earnings differential. That number might be even more dramatic in the CNMI. Very few students here avail themselves of federal financial aid loans that are easy to get, have low interest rates and flexible repayment schedules and instead hold out hope for the scarce "free college money," try the slow way by working low wage jobs to finance the degree or worst of all, "take a year off." That year costs a lot, and the longer it takes the student to get that four year degree, the more it costs in foregone potential earnings. Many other parents encourage direct military enlistment instead of going immediately to a four year college, joining college ROTC, entering the military with a degree as an officer and having far greater career and earning possibilities in the military while still receiving the college financial benefits the military offers, not to mention all that is offered by the college experience.

The CNMI is in a well documented financial crisis. There seems to be little will among our leaders to make hard choices. The temptation is going to be to continue to give short shrift to education as educational benefits are far off and the need to keep voters employed is immediate. Going that route would be a mistake. To obtain a college degree and to achieve a high level of intellectual ability should be a paramount skill and value we instill in our children. We should not look to diminish college standards because we are too cheap to do what we should be doing for the schools.

Jeffrey C. Turbitt is the language arts department chairman at Saipan Southern High School, as well as an avid scuba diver and traveler. He offers more thoughts in his blog Hypercritical Thoughts at: www.turbittj.blogspot.com/ He welcomes feedback, tips and story ideas at turbittj@yahoo.com. His column appears regularly on Wednesdays.

Another teacher salary cut out there

The election is over, and all the candidates claimed to be "pro" education, so the day after the election, here is what I see. The government borrowed money from PSS, won't pay it back, so now PSS leadership wants to cut teacher salaries rather than put up a fight. On top of that, the choice of words is both wrong and misleading. Let's see if our new BOE members will have something to say about this. "Guidance" is being sought.

EDUCATION Commissioner David M. Borja on Friday said that without “clear guidance” from the Board of Education regarding the Public School System’s budget shortfall, PSS management will have no choice but to enforce a “salary
reclassification” to cope with their limited personnel funding. Borja said the
move to suspend this pay increase is in line with the PSS budgetary shortfall
this fiscal year as a result of their budget of only $35 million and the
administration’s failure to return the $2 million it “borrowed” from the school
system.

This phrase "pay hikes" is extremely misleading, and from a PSS public relations standpoint is a disaster. PSS has a basic salary guide that some people were not participating in largely because they didn't meet the original Praxis deadline. For a while, they were getting $100 a day as substitutes, and some were upgraded to still much less than their peers. Now they've completed the tests and wanted to be on the normal salary scale when they passed, as PSS once promised when these people were ticked. PSS didn't comply in many cases. These also aren't bonuses or increases, this is the basic salary guide that's been in existence for a year and a half with Praxis as a qualifications requirement.

There are many things teachers put up with, but reclassifying their salaries lower and then not paying them for holidays midyear is not one of them. A lot of peple will walk mid-year, and it will be extremely justifiable. I am so tired of having my basic paycheck threatened every other week there isn't words. It's bad for morale. I'm so tired of this BS. Scores of people come to this blog to find out about teaching in Saipan. Here is my new answer: Don't do it.

Education Roundtable with Tina, Cinta and maybe others tomorrow night

The Association of Commonwealth Teachers is calling for all interested community members to join in for a Pre-election Educational Round Table Discussions with the candidates starting Wednesday Sept. 26 at 7:00 pm at the San Vicente Elementary School Cafeteria.

The purpose of these events is to ensure that teachers, parents, and the community are able to meet the candidates and ask questions regarding their plans for education. This will allow voters to make informed decisions in casting their votes for members of the Legislature, Senate, and Board of Education. Round Table discussions will also be held on future Wednesday evenings at 7:00 P.M. in the cafeteria of San Vicente Elementary. Please look for announcements of specific dates. Candidates Cinta Kaipat and Tina Sablan from Precinct One are confirmed to participate in this Wednesday's Round Table.All interested members of the community are invited to join us at these gatherings. You do not have to be a registered voter or a resident of the specified precinct in order to attend. Should you have any questions, feel free to contact The Association of Commonwealth Teachers at cnmiactnow@gmail.com.

The Tokyo subway and a CNMI classroom

The education commissioner takes a lot of heat. I don't know enough about how he does things to offer my thoughts on him personally, I'm not a principal, but he has always been cordial with me and open to my thoughts. I think he's doing his best and what he thinks is right. It's public record that two of the board members don't like him and didn't vote for him to be in that position. The Variety editorial page has been harsh with him -- too harsh in my opinion -- and repeatedly. He has instituted some policies that not all principals like -- so I've been told. He is also in an impossibly difficult situation with the state of the island's economy, and more so, the island's cultural aversion to accountability. The implementation of Praxis could have been handled better, but ultimately, don't you want your teachers to pass a basic skills test like doctors, nurses, lawyers, accountants and other professionals? Doreen Tudela admitted stealing thousands of dollars as a school principal and hasn't been fired yet. That is what I mean by accountability.

Right now some fairly radical plans are being implemented by the PSS administration. Principals will be teaching classes. There are 86 fewer teachers than there were two years ago. That is a staggering reduction, especially since there are more students as many have transferred from the private schools. Coordinators and specialists are teaching classes as well. Naturally, I suspect principals and coordinators will be getting the best students in the best classes with the least disciplinary problems. Principals are overworked and essentially exploited here, this isn't a knock on them. However, it is wrong to push veteran, entrenched teachers aside and out of their classes to make room for this plan, as I know and suspect is and will be happening. A coordinator is being brought in to teach AP History and AP Government at my school. I know him, I like him, he's a good man. I'm sure he is a good teacher, but he shouldn't be taking all the AP classes. After four years with seniors, I'm being forced to teach freshman -- something I find appalling. A new teacher was brought in to teach my seniors. This lack of respect for seniority is vulgar. If conditions allowed, like if I found out about this last year, I'd quit -- or at least transfer. Another veteran teacher at my school is being pushed out of his chemistry class for a newcomer. These things send a terrible message. They destroy already low morale and they are simply unfair.

A news story indicates the student/teacher ratio is 24:1. That number is no doubt technically accurate. It is also misleading. The typical CNMI classroom is more crowded than the Tokyo subway at rush hour during an Ichiro Suzuki autograph session. I doubt most of us have as few as 24 in our class. I had 32, 32 and 27 last year in language arts classes. It has been like that most every year. That 24:1 ratio is skewed by special education, which has a very low ratio, and perhaps things like computer classes. In addition, some schools, like GTC, are significantly less crowded, while some schools are significantly more crowded-- notably the middle schools. My experiences as a teacher and parent with a child in the schools tell me that the massive overcrowding in the middle schools at a difficult age causes immense problems. There are inequities between schools. My colleague Angie Wheat wrote about this issue in the new teacher's blog at http://www.actnowcnmi.blogspot.com/.

Education isn't valued here at all. I routinely see parents try to stop their kids from going to college, which boggles the mind. Parents and students all over seem more concerned with "passing" than learning, which is why college degrees -- even graduate degrees -- have been demeaned and diminished. In fact all education is grade focused, not learning focused. People will find out eventually if you're competent. Your diploma won't convince them otherwise.

The economy is in shambles with our flawed model, so none of this is surprising. In today's world in a first world economy, being educated isn't a luxury, it is a necessity for any type of quality of life. There simply is no excuse for cramming your children like sardines into dilapidated facilities, while we have an obscene abundance of elected officials with too much discretionary money, other wasteful bureaucracies that don't need to exist like the municipal councils, and a ridiculous public relations firm and lobbyist being paid thousands of dollars for things we could do ourselves or shouldn't be trying to do at all. We are all to blame for this depressing mess. We are failing our children as a community and we should be embarrassed about that.

More good news and short takes

I applied for, and received today at last, a teacher's license in the state of Virginia. I'm fully certified to teach language arts and social studies there, as I am here. There is a significant chance I'll be a social studies teacher at SSHS instead of language arts next school year. I'm up for a change, and my passions are more in social studies. My language arts class is kind of a language arts/social studies hybrid, and as a dedicated social studies teacher I expect to do the same.

I'm pretty happy with my current position here, even the salary, but I want to be prepared for nuclear economic meltdown. In theory in the states a person can get a teacher license alternate route, but that is very hard to do and leaves few real job options. Getting a teacher's license has been a long process that led me through three Praxis tests and an MA in Education, as well as four years teaching here, plus two in Korea. Cynthia's green card is moving along, which is the third and now final leg of my bureaucratic three headed monster of adoption, teacher's license and spousal immigration.
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I wrote a piece for the new version of In Transit that will be performed in the Fall, and may be my acting debut if I can pull that off. It will be a series of monologues on life intertwining. Mine is about life not turning out as you planned. I've had one friend love the piece, my dad not as strong an endorsement, but I think it is pretty good. I'll have to see what Galvin and Barbara have to say.

I wrote another piece based on my Guam Airport blog that I want to get published in a large publication like Rolling Stone or the Village Voice. That piece was also in the Variety. I think it is about time I did that. My father thinks if I toned it down a bit it would actually be suitable for the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps the best part of blogging, and I thank other Saipan bloggers for jump starting this in me, is that it has got me writing a lot now, a skill I had actually left long dormant despite my semi-frequent rants in the local papers over the past few years. My $40,000 newspaper journalism school education is getting some exercise at last.
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I loved the dichotomy in Friday's Variety. On one hand there is a request for $155 million from Congress, which "isn't a handout" and then a typical racist rant from Danny Aquino in both papers. Danny wants the CNMI to secede from the Union because workers are getting a little bit of a break at last via minimum wage and immigration. He is also upset the CNMI is not represented in Congress, which I actually agree with him about. Of course, the vast majority of people aren't represented here in reality, so I don't know how much it matters. I blasted Aquino on his white bashing a while ago, which led to the Eric Atalig dustup, which several people told me Danny actually wrote and submitted under Eric's name. Eric got blasted by many people. My kid was in Danny's Day Care center, Little Darlings. Frankly, if I knew in the beginning it was his place, he wouldn't be in there, but I didn't want to disturb my son over his ravings. My kid won't be returning since a racist whose public opinions are insulting to his Filipino workers has an influence on the morale of people with the extremely challenging job of guiding small children, which is completely unacceptable. There is a close battle between Danny and garment mouthpiece Richard Pierce on who is the most vile person on this island. Flip a coin on that one.
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A bill was introduced to revise CNMI immigration. As they did on the minimum wage, the government want a "study" done. Did they do a study before they paid millions to Jailbird Jack Abramoff to rig the game?

“That is a significant development,” said press secretary Charles P. Reyes
Jr. “It's troublesome because we've repeatedly asked that a study be done for
any action is taken. We hoped Congress would consider our economic vulnerability
and give this piece of legislation some thoughtful analysis. Unfortunately, our
calls were not given much credence.”

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The loser prosecutor who bent over justice in an attempt to get re-elected got disbarred. This is something that restores my faith in America, which seldom happens under the rule of George W. Bush. Actually the court did the right thing and said we still have to follow the Constitution and actually charge and try Americans and not just hold them indefinitely in our own Gulag as enemy combatants, so there are two encouraging things. If they executed this prosecutor I don't think it would be unreasonable. For a prosecutor to use state power to ruin people's lives on a fact ignoring witch hunt to get re-elected is so beyond appalling. I hope Mike Nifong has a locker one day in hell next to Ken Lay of Enron infamy.
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I have two confirmed yesses on the Thursday afternoon dive on Bruce Bateman's boat. Let me know y'all.

Herding cats with Sisyphus

There is about to be a small pissing match between Ambrose Bennett and ACT. Many people want a new teacher representative, and frankly, have wanted one for a long time. This story here describes the efforts to make the ACT president the teacher's representative to the board. I'm surprised it took this long, but I've already seen Ambrose's forthcoming letter to the editor, in which he is "shockingly" not so happy with this plan. He says anyone should be able to run for teacher rep. who is HQT with five years experience and gets 50 nominating signatures. He complained he wasn't part of this process. His term ends in January. You can read his thoughts very soon if you so wish. Here are mine, which I shared with a few concerned teachers.

A few thoughts on this. Ambrose, knew about the meeting, and certainly could have attended if he so wished. He didn't even have to be an ACT member to attend. Having said that, Ambrose's point that a person should be eligible to run for that position without even being in ACT, I believe, is valid theoretically. Practically, teachers are a disorganized, apathetic mess that a small number of people are trying to fix. Given the size of our bureaucracy, we should be the dominant political voice on this island. Instead we are an embarrassment of lost opportunity and lost potential for influence. And having said all that, this is actually an appointed position, so the election, including the one that elected Ambrose, is really more of an advisement to the governor, who may choose to ignore it anyway.

Bottom line, I feel it is pretty clear from the election that the teachers wish Miss Miller to be their voice. The time frame I suppose of when they want it could be debated. I think they want her there now, but I don't have data, other than the election and a strong show of hands at our meeting to back that up. I think the ACT election shows Miss Miller has a lot of support. Also, these are serious times for teachers, and Ambrose is in a lame duck position. Ambrose has done a lot, especially early in the term. One thing he has not been able to do, and I don't fault him totally on this, is organize a mass of teachers. That clearly isn't an easy job. Ambrose acknowledged this in his letter: "To represent all the teachers, ACT must have the majority as members or they will face the same challenges I faced, which is speaking for all the teachers WITHOUT their support," Bennett said.

I think Miss Miller would have much more support. It won't be easy for her, either, galvanizing teachers, and it isn't all on her shoulders, as it wasn't on Ambrose's shoulders. Again, teachers have been a bitter failure at standing up for themselves and there is no sugarcoating it. Now there are things going down with layoffs and 90 day notices, and there is only a beginning system of support for those who sat from the sidelines for all these years.

A big fight here will create a lot of noise and little else -- and these are serious times. It will doubtlessly turn off teachers from participating. Then we are back where we started. Again. Getting teachers to do much as one is like herding cats with Sisyphus.

Back in my day

I guess this is one of those posts where I know I am getting old. I graduated high school in 1990 -- amazing enough to me as I remember the last day of school and graduation like it was yesterday. That was a distinct thought I had chaperoning the prom last week. I enjoy high school graduation, unlike most teachers, even though graduation is hot and long -- and coming up in two weeks. I think graduation is a great day in the students' lives and I enjoy their excitement.

I went to a middle class high school in New Jersey, a fairly wealthy state. The place where I grew up, a town called Sayreville, famous only for being Bon Jovi's boyhood home, did have, and as far as I know still has, a long history of not supporting the school system. In Asia they know Bon Jovi, but I gently nudge them toward Bruce Springsteen, much less known in Asia by the way.

In Sayreville, all the old people would vote against the school budget, as this was a Sayreville tradition, and their kids weren't in school and voting against school funding got them out of the house. In New Jersey voters must approve the school budget, and they all came from the Bruce Bateman School of Economics. Calling them out on it was the first public imbroglio I was involved in, and it started my general antipathy for the AARP. I was only seventeen at the time, which really irritated the blue haired voters. Little did I know that almost twenty years later I'd still be agitating for greater school funding against an equally intransigent force over here -- though obstinate for different reasons. It is a never ending fight Bonnie.

I actually ended up running for the school board as a high school senior and would have signed my own diploma if I had won. I got trounced largely because I was honest, attacking the old people for screwing the young kids, and that is why I decided to become a journalist, not a politician. Later I found out how silly a lot of journalism was and I was in the wilderness for a while.

This is from the Star Ledger archive 4-26-90, impossible to link directly to, and naturally called "School Budgets Fare Poorly in Middlesex County Vote."

"Sayreville had a somewhat unusual election this year, with two incumbents
knocked out of office and a teen-age candidate, who lost. Jeffrey Turbitt,
an 18-year-old senior at Sayreville War Memorial High School, did not pull
an upset but vowed he will return to the election ring in the future. 'In
four years I shall return,' Turbitt said. 'Definitely, I shall return.'
Turbitt said.

I wasn't MacArthur, I lied about returning as it "turns" out. None of this is my main point yet. In elementary school we would go on a class trip every year -- the Zoo, the Science Center in Philadelphia, a few Revolutionary War locales, NJ was key in that fight, the United Nations and one of the many New York museums. From seventh grade on, we didn't go anywhere. Zippo. Nothing.

Today, kids get to go all over the place -- even in a broke, won't fund education place like this. Now, a lot of the funding isn't public money, in fact probably most all of it is from fundraising. The funding comes from selling junk food that makes this place so diabetes stricken. This isn't unique to the CNMI. Fund raising via junk food was a staple then and now. Kids on island have gone to Cape Canaveral (Mt. Carmel I believe), Space Camp (SIS). Students here have gone to Guam and Korea on multiple occasions. The entire class from a Japanese high school visits here each year. The mock trial team makes it to various spots in the mainland. NHS has gone to Hawaii, Disneyworld and other locations. My son is going to the Wax Museum and World Resort tomorrow on a school trip. I don't begrudge them this at all, and I'm a firm supporter and believer in field trips. These kinds of activities rank high on Dale's Cone of Experience, a tool that ranks instructional methods. I'm just saying, back in my day we didn't get this kind of stuff.

God, I'm getting old already.

Angelo's visit and other musings updated

I invited Angelo to be a guest speaker to my class on Friday. It was a really fun day, and he did a great job. I believe it is always good to bring in a fresh face and a new voice from time to time. He spoke off the cuff and well. I chimed in to amplify a point or to crack wise. I've read about team teaching, and if this is any indication, I like it. He spoke to my seniors about Beautify CNMI, blogging, developing your communication skills and going off to college in the states as a Chamorro.

In Asia, students just don't speak very much. It is just a fact of life that takes some getting used to. Angelo opened with a question and got the usual response, very little. My favorite quote of the day, and one I'm still laughing about two days later, was when Angelo was imploring the students to develop speaking and writing skills and said, "Talking is not something just white people do."
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Ken is back. I'm glad, as his is one of my favorite blogs. In other blog news, Commonwealth Soundoff, a new and I thought encouraging blog, is locked and viewable only to the invited. I can't even begin to understand that one. It is too stupid for further comment. I took them off my blogroll the day after adding them.
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I talked to one of the Taste of India people, and they are indeed coming back to a new location on Middle Road. They are opening in Guam in July.
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After years at Wild Bill's, Stella is gone. She was like my own personal Filipina Helen Hunt character from As Good As It Gets. I wasn't as big a dick as Nicholson as Melvin Udall. She apparently was accused of theft and the legal allegations remain to be sorted out. My breakfast here will never be the same. My favorite three waitresses have departed the Sam's/Wild Bill's scene over the last few years. None remain. There are new and creative ways to make this island worse. She pleaded the fifth when I asked her about it.
***
I visited our friendly, neighborhood, overpriced Costco, and this Ipod, $234 on Amazon, was $449 at Costco. Anyone who buys that at Costco is too rich, too stupid, needs to be gang slapped -- or all three. This is what I'm talking about when I lash out at island retailers when they bitch about poor sales. Retailers here make it impossible to buy things here and not feel like an idiot. There is no way shipping, or anything else, accounts for nearly double the price on a one pound Ipod.
***
There is currently an online backlash set assail by Dengre regarding Bruce Bateman's column on the Nepalese man who set himself on fire. I emailed Dengre and told him that Bruce isn't evil, and in fact has done some good things with fund raisers for local arts and sports groups, and helped to reward the teacher of the year after the government stiffed her. I explained that he is an affable guy with whacky Right Wing politics who spouts off in the company paper with no regard to political correctness and sometimes sensitivity at all. The guiding rule for comedy and satire is to go after the rich and powerful, not the poor, oppressed, desperate and mentally unstable. Bruce missed that memo. I urged Dengre to focus on more evil people like sweatshop mouthpiece Richard A. Pierce , who knows better and says with a straight face that $3.05 is ok because that is more than China, or Danny Aquino, who has quite a record of Filipino and American bashing in the Tribune archive, but Dengre is a relentless guy and he seems pissed about Bruce, so I'm not sure how this shakes out. A movement is afoot to make Bruce Keith Olberman's Worst Person in the World, but I don't think Bruce will make the cut. It is funny to search Bruce's name in the Tribune archives and see how many angry responses he gets to his column. He has managed to piss off a broad array of people. I responded to him once over something he said about PSS. I'm sure he'll enjoy being the Cruella de Ville of liberals. You're just not Cheney enough to get the Olberman endorsement from this flaming lefty, Bruce.
***
Lost continues to be great. The only thing is, they have this climactic battle set up with the Others for the finale next week, but since there are three more seasons to go, as recently announced, it is guaranteed to be anti-climactic. I started thinking about that as it was getting tense in the last episode.
***
The Yankees continue their putrid play. Joe Torre has been a great manager, but he is symbolic of this whole team: highly paid, lacking fire and over the hill/past his prime. This team could use a fiery guy like Bobby Valentine, Larry Bowa or Billy Martin's ghost. The New York papers are all over these guys -- deservedly.
***
One thought while walking last night: Best Song of the 60s - A Day in the Life by The Beatles, 70s - Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, 80s -Bad by U2, 90s - Come as You Are by Nirvana and and of the 00s so far - Clocks by Coldplay.
***
I'm now an official member of the We Love Saipan network. I'd like the moniker, We Love Saipan, government excepted -- other than Cinta, but that is not as good a soundbite. That's why I can't run for office, not concise enough.

The teacher purge updated

We had eleven teachers get notices that they won't be back next year due to funding issues. PSS is apparently under a directive to cut fifteen percent of its payroll. Some schools are slightly overstaffed relative to others, so this doesn't seem to be designed in a fair or completely sensible way. I saw one faculty member in tears -- not just a sniffle, either -- tears. She will be replaced by someone to do the job cheaper. I can't really say more on that one without identifying people, which I don't want to do. One of these people deserved it in the sense that they had a ridiculous class with few students, and not much was done in that class. He is a nice guy, just not really appropriate as a high school teacher.

Seven, I believe, were non-HQTs meaning they had not completed Praxis -- at least at the high school level. Some had passed the Elementary Education Praxis and will be transferring. I've heard that some have found jobs elsewhere. My sense is that they were all good teachers with the one exception. Incidentally, there is more to HQT than Praxis. Certain education courses are required as is CNMI history and cultural seminar, but there is a singular focus on Praxis. Many others are not HQT if factoring in those things. I think Praxis is a good thing in that I think there have been a fair number of teachers without the intellectual capacity to be in those kinds of jobs. Few of my peers agree with me on this, but I have kids in the schools, and I frankly wouldn't want my children in class with someone who can't pass the Praxis. Praxis isn't a measure of how good a teacher is at teaching, but it measures knowledge of the subject, and it is very hard to teach what you don't know. Measuring communicative ability is much harder.

These school cuts are really a factor of the community and the legislature being unwilling to financially support the schools. Today I was asked to donate money to put gas in the school's bush cutter. I'm not doing that on general principle. It isn't my job to fund school operations. The chickens are really coming home to roost after years of piss poor management, ridiculous invented jobs, spending on nonsense and lack of will to institute any real taxes.

For next year, I'm not quite sure what will happen with all those students in all those classes. Most classes are packed with 30 plus students. Thirty is far too many students for a language arts classes and others. This is the first year, and the last I'm sure, with a preparation period, something that is helpful for you know, preparing. A teacher's job isn't just the time with students, there are papers to correct, assignments to evaluate and lessons to plan, not to mention clubs and activities to supervise. There are constant adjustments that need to be made to help students progress in their intellectual development. The net result for next year will be more students, more classes, more babysitting, less teaching, less one on one interaction with students, and fewer labor intensive projects like term papers. I talked to one teacher who has gone from three formal papers per quarter to one. I've pretty much done the same.

Through the years I've watched teachers sit idly by and say little about the system. They also seldom get asked, and if they are asked, are ignored. Ambrose Bennett was elected teacher representative three years ago when hardly anyone voted and there was no campaign. He has tried to do certain things, most of them good, but many teachers had issues with him personally and offered minimal support. I don't even know what he is doing up there anymore. He used to report on board happenings, but I've heard nothing for a long time. ACT tried to reform last August, and that went nowhere with indifference and infighting. There is another reformation right now that looks much more promising. Teachers never got together, and now there is no one to fight for them when they need it. The tenure proposal was pushed aside to argue about the Praxis issue.

The local culture here is to stay quiet for fear of your job. Among Filipinos, that factor is amplified. Teachers from the states come and go, so while they are more willing to take a stand, they are also more likely to come and go in short order. I had about 10 mainland teacher colleagues come and go in the last four years. Teachers should have enormous political influence due to their numbers, but have none for the reasons I just described. The net result is what is going on now. Teachers are being played with as this debate about not opening school until October rages. Teachers will have more students, no preparation time, probably less pay and more urging to shut up and deal with their overcrowded, lousy facilities with minimal support. This is not an equal issue at all schools. The newer schools have better facilities, and some schools are more overcrowded than others. There is really a divergence in issues from school to school.

Today was a depressing day on the job, and I expect many more depressing days. I expect next school year will be my last.

Grass roots organizations

I went to two meetings this week of people concerned with the goings on in this community. I attended the ACT (Association of Commonwealth Teachers) meeting the other night. I've been to four or five of these this year. This is the first time I thought things were headed in a positive direction and that it was worth my time. ACT has a new president in Betty Miller, whom I've known since I arrived on island. Her daughter was my student and she was an involved parent. All year ACT has been sidetracked by the utter indifference to their own lives and careers by 98 percent of the teachers, and the two percent actively trying to help each other were engaging in personality conflicts and petty pissing matches. The net result is that ACT has been useless.

I get the sense, finally, that things are getting better. I think Betty and the new officers and the members might finally make something out of ACT. Given the number of teachers out there, we should have more political influence than we do, yet a lot of people tend to come and go from the system and can't be bothered, really.

Last night I went to Tina Sablan's Open Forum at the college, and this was a great experience. There were a lot of smart people making great comments and suggestions. Ninety percent plus of the things these people said made total sense. I've read the minutes to all the meetings, and everything in there with the rarest of exceptions makes total sense. I suggest you do the same and read them. This group is pushing hard for government accountability through a revision of the Open Government Act, setting up voters' guides that lays out the candidates actual views, thoughts and priorities, and generally laying out standards and challenges to fix the mess that is the CNMI. This will lead, I hope, to voting on actual issues, not on the number of signs a candidate has or how many people a candidate can get to wave at traffic.

I have to give props to Sen. Maria Pangelinan, the lone public official there last night. She is one of those recently elected leaders, like Cinta, that encourage me. Pangelinan really had to take the sins and anger about all the government mismanagement that has gone on through the years, and it was good of her to be there in a tough spot. She is a deficit hawk, which normally I appreciate, but I've read enough Keynes to agree that this would not be a bad time to run a deficit if ever there was one. I lay out the caveat that as long as the spending is going to important things like public education, public health, public safety, and something I'm certain needs more funding: Youth and Family Services because there is an astounding amount of verbal, physical and sexual abuse on this island that is making kids' lives hell.

The one thing these two meetings had in common were white people. I would like to see more indigenous people at both these meetings because I know they are as fed up with island happenings as the loud white people like me. There is an island habit, based on years I'm sure when this was a good idea, of just sitting quiet no matter what was done. Last year PSS violated the salary guide of about fifty of us in the Framingham Master's Program, yet I was the only one who would put my face and name to calling them on it, other than my one white friend I shamed into it. Incidentally, there were many white people upset about it who pussed out. I'm talking about you Ryan and Bryan. When the teachers got docked dramatically on the Praxis thing, an issue I was infinitely less sympathetic about, most said little.

The longest journey stars with one step, as the proverb goes, so it looks like we might be journeying in the right direction at least.

Teaching in the Saipan public schools - the good, the bad and the ugly

I've got a lot of email inquiries and google search hits relating to teaching in Saipan. Right now is recruiting season for the next school year, so a new group is out there considering their options. In the interests of "esprit de corps," I will offer what I feel is a balanced views of the pros and cons of living and working here as a teacher. I am not speaking on PSS' behalf, but offering my own personal views.

The positives about living and teaching here are the following: the kids are reasonably respectful, there is minimal to no violence such as shootings, fights and the general horror stories you read about in the states, at least in the classroom, do not exist. Note this is not the case in Guam if that is a place you are considering. I've never heard a positive word about the Guam Public Schools, and in fact, GPSS sounds like a pit of epic proportion.

Saipan is a low stress environment. Administration is usually pretty hands off if you are a competent professional. There has never been any micromanaging of the classroom experience in my experience. As a teacher, you have a lot of academic freedom and are encouraged to be creative.

There is minimal traffic here, and your commute to work shouldn't be more than ten minutes. You can get a beautiful ocean view apartment for $500 to $600 dollars per month. You can get the kind of view you would never have on a teacher's salary in the mainland. Car insurance and taxes are also very low. Salaries are pretty competitive and are better than places like the southeast. The northeast and the west coast pay more, but the cost of living is much higher. There is a teacher shortage usually, so it is not that hard to get a job. A BA/BS in most anything, and completion of the Praxis I and II are the basic entry requirements. Take Praxis II in the subject you intend to teach. Later on you will be required to take a few classes in education if you do not have an education degree. You must be eligible to work in the U.S. to be employed here.

The schools often have high tech equipment like digital projectors, video equipment, high def television, ample computers, wireless Internet and so on because we get disproportionate federal funds because we are so small. Since local funds pay for supplies, you will have all these hi tech things, and then not have toilet paper in the restrooms.

Being in Saipan, you can easily travel to places like Bali, Cairns, Australia, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Singapore and Thailand. There is a two to three week break at Christmas and two months off in June and July for summer vacation.

Saipan has pretty good scuba diving, and access to the world's best diving in Palau. There are a few nice hotels, two water parks and plenty of scenic locations. There are a few good coffee shops, and a couple decent restaurants. I find the restaurants pretty disappointing overall, but there are a few decent places. Fresh tuna is readily available for $1 to $2 dollars per pound. There are plenty of sushi locations on the cheap if you like that. This is a Japanese vacation site, so it is cool to live in a place where people take a vacation. The weather is always warm, but you don't get any change of seasons, and sometimes it is incredibly hot.

The negatives of teaching in Saipan are plenty as well. The government is very unstable. To date I've always gotten my paycheck on time, but there is a steady drumbeat of fear on the economic survival of the island. It is wildly mismanaged, and the system doesn't work anymore. The economy absolutely stinks right now. The unemployment rate is probably fifty percent and up. The private sector wages are abysmal, generally the $3.05 minimum wage or there around. There is a giant, bloated government bureaucracy, and the funds to sustain it are diminishing as our infamous garment factories are exiting stage left with great alacrity and fewer Japanese folks vacation here with fewer flights from Japan.

The kids are seriously lacking in intellectual curiosity, and motivation takes up a lot of your time as a teacher. Often times the parents are sitting home on welfare, and the kids get that kind of modeling. There is no shame about welfare as it is so common. "We accept food stamps" is pretty much the CNMI motto. If you don't motivate the students, the work won't get done, and you also grow tired of making them care about anything. Classes are overcrowded. Thirty per classroom is common in the high school, and I've heard those numbers go higher in the middle schools. You get no preparation time. We had a prep period once in my four years, but that is going away next year, and I don't expect it back anytime soon. This is ridiculous and annoying to people used to teaching in the states.

The facilities are falling apart -- especially in the older schools -- which make up most of the schools. There are a few newer schools, and I teach at one of these, where the facilities are better. There are no janitors to clean the classrooms. I have the kids do it -- especially if they break class rules. Teachers are often encouraged to paint the room and wax the floors on their own dime, which I find outrageous, but I did fund the painting part. Textbooks are often limited, and the libraries are a bit lacking, but getting better. PE facilities tend to be very poor, and virtually don't exist at two of the three high schools. There is no stipend for doing things like coaching (though there really is only basketball and volleyball, and sometimes paddling) or being class adviser or yearbook or all of those things.

Because summer never ends, the ant population never really diminishes, so ants will be getting around and about most anywhere. There is a growing rat problem on the island as well, and that leads to produce prices in a place with endless summer often being ridiculous. There is a lot of teenage pregnancy, and abortion is illegal as per the CNMI constitution. There is a habit of chewing this stuff called betelnut, which provides a buzz for the chewer when mixed with cigarettes, and the juice will be spit out most anywhere. It is extremely gross. It is illegal in schools, but it is a constant battle to stop it.

Retail prices here are outrageous, and power and gas are the highest in America. At least with the gas prices you won't be driving so far, so it evens out versus the mainland. We have a U.S. post office, so I just don't buy anything here. I just use the net. The power system is not only expensive, but it is unreliable. This seems to depend on where you live. I've never lived in an apartment where the power would go out too much, but in some places it could be a daily experience. It seems to be getting better since they raised the power rates. We are also prone to typhoons, but I've not experienced a terrible one, knock on wood, since I've been here. There were two minor ones during my stay.

Overall, the pros outweigh the cons for me, or I wouldn't still be here, but my days here are definitely coming close to ending. I never thought I'd be here four years, but I will be here for a fifth, and I expect final, year next year.

PSS funding

The events of late regarding PSS funding are very disturbing. There is lots I can add to that point, but these two PSS colleagues/bloggers said it all:

http://sommysmommy.blogspot.com/2007/04/oh-for-crying-out-loud-what-now.html

http://breeanddoug.blogspot.com/2007/04/civics-103-dont-mess-with-teachers.html

Suffice to say I completely agree with them. I didn't think it was possible for my opinion of the vast majority of our elected leaders to sink to a lower level, but their comments at the PSS session last week paved the way to a new low.

Now here is what is news to me, I quote from the Saipan Tribune:

"With students, parents and teachers eyeing their every move, lawmakers
yesterday approved a bill taking $6.658 million from the Commonwealth Utilities
Corp. and other autonomous agencies to give to the Public School System.All 18
members of the House of Representatives voted in favor of House Bill 15-242,
authored by Rep. Joseph Deleon Guerrero. The measure now goes to the Senate for
approval.

Reps. Arnold I. Palacios and Francisco Dela Cruz said they
were particularly concerned about cutting the cash-strapped utility's budget by
almost $6 million. They said CUC might try to recover the reduced amount by
increasing rates. Rep. Cinta Kaipat raised a concern about fairness. "

Here is my question for my fellow blogger Cinta: Why does CUC, now that they've doubled the power rates, still get a nickel of public money? How can they not be self sufficient based on user fees at this point? They have the highest power rates in America, the customer service stinks, they still can't keep the power on -- and they're subsidized with our tax dollars while Bree has rat dung in her class and Bonnie has no toilet paper in her school. Please educate us because this blows my mind. The government is still giving these people tax money. If they were cut $6 million, how much were they getting before. I thought the massive increases got them off the government subsidy list.

Why I can't shut up about our lousy government

Sometimes I'm sure people wish I'd shut up about our lousy government. There are times I wish I could as well. Part of the reason I can't is because I read, routinely, the things my students write and the stories they tell are often horrible.

Every Friday I have a free reading and free writing period. Students can basically read for half the period whatever they wish, and then write about whatever they wish for half the period. I do this because I want to obliterate the idea that reading is something you are forced to do and your selection is what your teacher tells you to read. I want the same idea to get across for writing. Yes, in a sense, I'm still making them read and write, but I'm freeing them to read and write what they want. As an aside, I'm convinced my reading and writing ability became highly polished because I was obsessed with sports and read Sports Illustrated, which is very well written, as young as eight.

Engaging in the reading process is part of our standards for one, and two, student writing is better when they choose their topic. Beyond that, my other teaching philosophy is to develop the tools to light a fire for their own intellectual curiousity. Half of what a teacher does is break down the mysterious into something more approachable. When I took bass lessons years ago I noticed that. Ninety percent of what I know is based on all the reading I did on my own. Maybe ten percent was from school. I want to teach them to want to learn new things and not to rely or limit themselves to teachers to do it.

The stories I read in free writing are horrible. Everything from there is no food in the house because mom and/or dad pissed it away in the poker room, to verbal and physical abuse (a lot and yes reported) to dad is in jail to massive family medical problems. There are more horrible and shocking specifics that I can't mention. The number of parents who are flat out off-the-island and left their high school kids to run things is amazing. Even when the parents are here, these kids tend to have the essential parenting duty for younger siblings.

We think everyone is in the giant bureaucracy and they are all making a reasonable salary. This isn't the case at all. In fact, I'd say at best one in four of these kids have parents with a half decent job in the bureaucracy. I'd say one in five are actually on grade level. Some are quite literally on elementary school grade level. I got my schedule for this term today, and I had 35 students in one English class. This is ridiculous and it is a disservice to the students. Many are repeating the class because they put in no effort at all and got F's, but here they are again, which happens to be unfair to the kid who wants to learn only to have their teacher's attention diluted from overcrowding.

These kids, with the rarest of exceptions, aren't discipline problems at all. They are seniors after all. The Freshmen don't share this quality as much. Intellectually they mostly are aware of the importance of education and the need to prepare for the future, but in terms of putting together a strategy to do those things, they are completely lost. They don't see the relationship between action and results. Many are working for $3.05 and they are disillusioned by it already. Many have parents working for these wages and are disillusioned by that as well.

Last year for accredidation we had to put together some data on parental education levels. Very few parents got through college, many didn't get through high school, and this was at a time when the schools in the CNMI were much worse. I took an informal survey and couldn't find one student already lined up for a four year college and we're in April. They did an NMC survey at my school, and the students aren't that enthused about NMC, either -- not that I blame them. Parents have instilled a fear of the costs of college, which is understandable. However, what are the options. Skip college and you won't have those debts, but you'll most likely be broke in perpetuity. These kids have the blue passport that lets them at least get the student loans.

Overall the system here is dysfunctional. You can't have kids witnessing their parents sitting home on welfare because that is better than $3.05 and not instill a model of laziness and no ambition. You've got to break that cycle. There might have been a time that was flush enough for the current cheap labor/bloated government model to at least work for the local people, but those days are over. The garment factories are already folding with $3.05. If you can't get all these local people in the bloated government, and you can't, then you've sold out your people if there are no viable private sector jobs paying a living wage, which there isn't. A lot of people here are suffering, and a mere ride through Kobler and Dandan and other places should make that obvious. I see very clearly the consequences of this piss poor government and hear the stories of those most adversely impacted. I can and will pack up and leave one day. It won't be as easy for many of them. I'm not sure anyone is speaking for this demographic, as there is no money in it, but more people should.

Vice Speaker Justo Quitugua

First off Mr. Vice Speaker Justo Quitugua, no one in PSS, including the commisioner, is "highly paid," or are earning the "big bucks." No one. A person with a master's degree and 30 years experience is capped at about half of what people like you just wasted on a lobbyist, $47,000.

As the salary guide is constructed now, I won't make another dime for six more years. There are no "in step" or "within grade" salary increases. Be responsible and read the actual salary guide where it clearly says that before you spread disinformation. Principals work twelve months for barely more money than teachers, and frankly, you would be insane to take a principal or vice principal's job when weighing the salary versus the hassle and time requirements. There is a reason a few principals returned to the classroom, retired young or simply left the system. Principals are especially underpaid here.

Instead of bashing the people who act as surrogate parents, teach children to read, write and count, yet are routinely punished for these good deeds, how about spending some time focusing on real waste in government. For starters, how many government officials went on junkets to Hawaii a few months ago? Did a single tangible benefit come from that? How many elected officials went to Washington to keep fighting to keep the "working poor" poor? Who just spent $90,000 for a lobbyist to try to keep the poor poor? Who is paying Jesus Camacho $4,000 per month for writing pro-administration letters during the campaign? Who allowed the CPA attorney to charge the government around $500,000? Who did nothing while the old MPLA partied on the taxpayer dime? A congressman's job is oversight and supervision, so you might be better off focusing on those things where there is actual waste and leaving PSS alone to handle the mess Capitol Hill created, enabled and perpetuates.

I will be actively reminding every teacher on this island of your recent comments near November when you are hopefully sent packing for this needless slap in the face to all teachers and principals in the commonwealth.

___________________________________________________________________
A great, more diplomatic response can be found here: http://sommysmommy.blogspot.com/2007/04/what.html

These are the comments to which I refer:

VICE Speaker Justo S. Quitugua says the Board of Education should temporarily suspend the merit and step increases to qualified Public School System teachers until funds are available.The Board of Education, he said, is considering a reduction in the number of children to be served by the Head Start program due to funding problems.Effective this school year, highly qualified teachers receiving the maximum $47,000 salary in accordance with the new PSS compensation scheme were provided a one-time lump sum differential that amounted to $2,300.These are teachers with masters degrees, 10 or more years of experience, who have professional certification and have passed the Praxis tests. The board has also approved a $3,000 bonus for highly qualified teachers who accept two-year teaching assignments for hard-to-fill positions on Rota and Tinian. “In this time of budget reductions,” Quitugua said, “PSS must not make any salary adjustments or pay increases. The merit and step increases can be stopped temporarily and the funds used for students instead.”

And

Vice Speaker Justo S. Quitugua, D-Saipan, said Borja should have taken the school system’s worsening financial situation into consideration.“The commissioner should not grant principals and vice principals exemption from the austerity law,” he said. “The principals and vice principals are highly paid and they should join other personnel in this sacrifice.”Quitugua said PSS should also suspend salary increases.“The money saved would prevent many students and personnel from departing our schools,” the vice speaker said.

“The commissioner should not grant principals and vice principals exemption from the austerity law,” he said. “The principals and vice principals are highly paid and they should join other personnel in this sacrifice.”

A disgrace to the word "educator"

If there is one thing I hope my students leave my class with, it is the ability to question everything and have a richly enhanced BS detector. I encourage them to think for themselves, question authority (including me) and speak out. In fact, this aspect is laid out clearly in my highly detailed class syllabus under goals. I would hope everyone in the education field does the same. They don't.

I was furious today reading about an incident that happened "outside" an Alaska high school, and is now an important First Amendment case in the hands of the Supreme Court. There was a time with Earl Warren and William O. Douglas where free speech would be protected, but I have zero faith in the cabal that installed Bush into power and are likely to F*** Up this case as well.

A student named Joseph Frederick was suspended by his principal, doing her best Stalin impersonation, because he held a banner that said "Bong Hits for Jesus" to get on tv as the Olympic Torch passed by. This led to a ten day suspension for the student.

To quote from the Washington Post story:

"The most important student free-speech conflict to reach the Supreme Court since the height of the Vietnam War hinges on a somewhat absurd, vaguely offensive, mostly nonsensical message of protest. Bong Hits 4 Jesus. That’s the slogan that a defiant high school student named Joseph Frederick fashioned with a 14-foot piece of paper and a $3 roll of duct tape. His goal was partly to get on TV as the Olympic torch passed through his town of Juneau, Alaska, and mostly to get under the skin of his disciplinarian principal, Deborah Morse, with whom he had a running feud. It worked, at least the irritating-the-principal part. Morse crossed Glacier Avenue to Frederick's position across from the school and confiscated the banner. She later suspended him for 10 days. Frederick, a high school rebel who at the time was fond of quoting Thoreau and Voltaire, said Morse tacked on the last five days when he paraphrased Thomas Jefferson's admonition that speech limited is speech lost."

There is a saying that you should judge yourself by your enemies. By this standard, young Mr. Frederick is a raging success, as both the Bush administration and get this, Mr. Law and Order for Cigars, one of the world's great witch hunt organizers, Ken Starr, is representing the draconian principal pro bono.

"Morse's brief, written by Starr and a team of pro bono lawyers at the firm of Kirkland and Ellis, said ratification of Frederick's victory in the appellate court would make all the more daunting "the vital task of teachers, administrators and volunteer school board members in attending holistically to the needs of millions of students entrusted every school day to their charge."

Hello, the goal of a teacher is encouraging students to speak their mind and question authority. Please leave me out of your brief Mr. Starr and the rest of your platoon.

"Frederick was one of them, five years ago, though he was not a particularly happy student at Juneau-Douglas High School. One day, he refused a vice principal's order to leave a student commons area where he was reading Albert Camus, and the police were called. The next day, he remained in his seat while others stood for the Pledge of Allegiance and was sent to the principal's office. He described it all in a mini-treatise -- "This is a story of a high school senior who refused to bow down in submission before an authority . . . ." -- he posted on the Internet."

Congratulations Mr. Frederick. I'd practically donate my left nut to science fiction (Steven Wright paraphrase) to have a student like you just once. At the same time, I hope the principal gets her tongue endlessly stuck to some frozen pole in Alaska, ala Christmas Story, for her attempt to neuter a raging educational success story -- the kind if we had more of the U.S. would do better than ranking 24th of 38 in mathematics, 9th of 38 in science, 7th of 38 in reading, and 20th of 38 in problem solving.

Focusing on nonsense

Given all the problems this island faces regarding increasing crime, overcrowded schools, unreliable and exorbitantly priced power, horrific, stagnant wages and the absurd and otherwise disturbing fact that a discount shoe retailer in the island’s shopping district can’t stay open, to see such an outcry over some children playing dress up is a sad misdirection of sensible focus and priorities.

If you are a parent of a student, the thing you should be most concerned about is the fact that the PSS budget just got slashed probably by at least $6 million dollars. Of course, this was done politically, so you have to read between the lines to see what actually happened. The PSS budget was technically increased $1.4 million, but PSS now has to pay for power, which was $4.7 million last year before the vast majority of the massive power rate increase took effect. My own power bill has tripled, at least this month, so even conservatively, it is fair to expect PSS’ bill to come close to doubling, so figure on a bill this year somewhere in the ballpark of $8 million. That figure can be arrived at by simply subtracting an $8 million increase via a new power bill PSS didn’t pay before from the 1.2 million increase in its budget. This new power bill should leave PSS almost $7 million worse off -- conservatively. PSS already operates on an outdated shoestring budget that hardly provides, if at all, for books, athletics, custodians, substitute teachers, a fair and reasonable salary for principals and vice principals, paraprofessionals and even the commisioner, all now impacted by the ten percent cut -- among other things.

None of this even considers the fact there are more students transferring to the public schools, and probably even more to follow, as the power situation and poor economy puts the squeeze on parents’ ability to pay for private schooling. Students are crammed like sardines into classrooms with a staff full of disgruntled teachers since many just took a pay cut, and now these teachers have even more students and probably less preparation time. This is the huge problem facing PSS and the island, not a couple of kids playing dress up.

Two Separate Rebukes, Eric Atalig and Bruce Bateman

This was my response to Eric Atalig's race base attack in the Tribune.

Samuel Johnson once noted that “Patriotism is the last refuge for scoundrels,” a wise quote everyone should ponder as racist statements dressed up in the guise of patriotism, like those of Eric Atalig, get published in the local newspapers. Mr. Atalig never discusses the crux of my argument, which is that the United States has been nothing but benevolent to these islands. He brings up, and is correct about, the unrelated point of the unjust treatment of African-Americans and Native Americans. African and Native-Americans certainly do have grievances that are, and should continue to be, addressed. None of those things apply to the CNMI.

Probably the number one factor that separates the CNMI from the truly destitute islands in this region is the enormous amount of federal dollars that gets pumped in by U.S. taxpayers, who are largely unaware of the sweetheart tax deal the CNMI gets. It would take about a day for a demagogue like Bill O’Reilly on Fox News to have people furious about it. Places like Puerto Rico don’t want to become a state, and thereby get senators and voting representatives, because that would mean residents would pay the same taxes that all the other states have to pay, and the elected minorities, and their groupies, can’t abuse the system as easily as they do here and there. They wasted so much money in Puerto Rico that they had to close the schools last year!

Perhaps Mr. Atalig can’t see this because he views things through a “failed politician” perspective. People like Mr. Atalig often get elected, or if not as in his case, become hangers-on or appointees of those that do, and do the bidding for the people that ignore the power plant, waste money on Rose Bowl floats, give tax breaks to garment factories, never raise the minimum wage and use the third world to bloat the labor supply and make sure local people can’t get a job that pays a living wage in the private sector. For dessert they go on government funded trips to Hawaii and the Philippines to party it up, keep people’s land prices artificially low with Article XII so a few rich local families can buy it all up on the cheap, and then pass out a few crumbs to the normal people and hope the party continues. Now the party is ending and they’re hostile, so they try to stir people up by bashing Americans and immigrant workers for thinking maybe they should get more than $3.05 an hour after ten years at that rate. Plus they want to defend a racist system where someone born here can’t own land, such as my sons, who committed the crime of being Filipino-American. If you are born in a place, live there your whole life, and aren’t indigenous, like my sons, then let’s just change the meaning of the word. The world grows increasingly international, but a few scoundrels can’t accept it.

The next step is to talk nonsense about imperialism, as if raising the minimum wage to something human and denying a cheap maid is imperialistic, which is the real basis for why these crackpots are upset. And as for submerged lands, stop letting the hotels dump their sewage into the lagoon and I’ll be more sympathetic. Who is more devilish, the abusers and their enablers, or those who try to put a spotlight on the abuse? I wouldn’t be surprised if they hold their “$3.05 is great money/keep our cheap maid” rally in a phone booth somewhere and still have room to do jumping-jacks since virtually no one thinks higher wages are a bad idea. How nice it would be if the views of the majority were represented -- not just the views of the rich and connected.

I know what it is like to have embarrassing leaders. As an American traveler, people sometimes want to view me through the prism of dupes and incompetents like Fox News or George Bush. That is why I’m quick to realize that racially inflammatory blowhards like Mr. Atalig are the rare exception to the very welcoming and friendly local people of these islands, perhaps the kindest people I’ve encountered in six years of living, traveling and working overseas. I think Tina Sablan’s profound letter and new leaders like Cinta Kaipat giving office money for police uniforms instead of picnic tables and parties, are clear illustrations that people have had it with the mediocre, failed system we have, and no amount of stirring up faux patriotic feelings via immigrant and mainlander bashing will work this time. George Miller and Nancy Pelosi aren’t the problem, keeping people dependent on a flawed and dying cheap labor/government handout model is the problem.

Finally, the numerous local people fleeing this mismanagement and heading to the states aren’t “guests” in the U.S., and I’m not a guest here. I’ve made better readers and writers out of almost 1,000 island residents since I’ve been here. I’ll stack that up against your job of serving a few rich and powerful people and appealing to the worst instincts in others – all to protect a failed model that serves a small minority while life gets much worse for the majority of the indigenous people because of these policies!
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This is in response to something Bruce Bateman wrote about PSS. Links are in the first graph.

It was good of Bruce Bateman to admit his blatant statistical mistake regarding per pupil spending in the CNMI, but in claiming his conclusions are still valid, I wonder if Bateman's sour grapes led him to drink too much sour wine.

A more sober analysis of his comparison about the per pupil costs and effectiveness of the private schools versus public schools would reveal an obvious point: the public schools must educate everyone -- including those with expensive special needs like autism, mental retardation, etc. Private schools can and do rebuff these students due to the high cost of educating them. The speech and physical therapy specialists, among others, that assist the most vulnerable members of our society won't be found in the private schools, and they won't have to be flown to Rota and Tinian, either. In a March 2002 report, the Special Education Expenditure Project calculated that in the 1999-2000 school year, the per student cost for students eligible for special education services was $12,474, or 1.90 times the $6,556 per student cost in general education

Private school students generally come from a wealthier background, have more educated parents giving these students improved academic modeling, and these parents are also more likely to be involved in the schools. Countless studies reveal home life has more influence on academic performance than the classroom teacher. It also doesn't take too long on any educational database (I'd recommend http://www.eric.ed.gov/) to find research showing the relationship between poverty and poor academic performance.

Teachers in private school tend to make the bargain of a smaller salary for smaller classes, fewer discipline problems and more academically motivated students as a quality of life issue. Often times these teachers have spouses in more lucrative careers that allow them this career freedom. New York just offered housing stipends and other financial incentives to get teachers to work in the poorest, most violent and challenging schools. Private schools wouldn't attract many teachers at the salaries offered with a class full of juvenile delinquents, which is a social problem far more rooted in broken homes and income disparity than the public schools. School budgets revolve around faculty costs, and since trust fund academy doesn't have to offer urban incentives to hire its faculty, these costs are held down, which shows the silliness of Bateman's comparison.

Far from getting poor results, given the geographic isolation, life support economy and stagnant salaries, I feel PSS does a remarkable job. I can assure Mr. Bateman that the meager taxes he pays here aren't going to a custodian to clean the classrooms -- the students and I do that. It doesn't provide a stipend to coaches or advisers -- we do that for free. When the paint loses it sheen, teachers often pay for that and students often throw on their painting clothes after school. And just to make sure there is maximum efficiency, my classroom is packed full of 30 students, and I have no preparation period. Most teachers do lesson plans and grade papers on their own time. When it is time for a salary increase, it is simply ignored, or teachers are told there is no money in the budget, or you started in the wrong year or how about a ten percent pay cut instead.

So no, Mr. Bateman, your conclusions aren't close to correct, and perhaps you should stick to subjects you know something about instead of needlessly insulting teachers and administrators with deceptive comparisons and failed right wing dogma about privatization as a cure all for society's ills.