The Election System of the Virgin Islands and Board of Education had their day at the Legislature as both defended their Fiscal Year 2014 budgets before the Finance Committee at the Earle B. Ottley Legislative Hall on St. Thomas.
With the word out that the Department of Education is woefully short of teachers for the upcoming school year, Board of Education Director Carol Henneman said that having a bad teacher in the classroom is worse than no teacher.
“It takes two to three years to undo the damage from a bad teacher so students accept instruction,” Henneman said.
At issue as students return to school Tuesday is the problem caused by teachers who waited until the last minute to indicate they weren’t coming back.
“Many teachers just don’t trust the government,” Board Chairman Oswin Sewer Sr. said.
Teachers pay is spread out over 12 months. Sewer and others said they fear they won’t get their full yearly pay if they give notice when school ends in June. If they did give more timely notice, the Education Department would have a better chance of hiring teachers to fill the slots, those at several education oriented meetings this week on St. John said.
Sewer presented the board’s request for a $3.3 million General Fund budget Wednesday.
Another challenge the board faces is reducing delinquent student loan accounts, Sewer said. “The delinquency rate holds at 9 percent,” Sewer said.
The board is writing off delinquent accounts that predate 2000, but Henneman said that even though some of those from 2000 onward will never be collected, the board continues to try.
A total of 164 accounts were turned over to a collection agency, board accountant April Vialet said. She said the collection agency gets nothing when the delinquent borrower pays during the first phase of the collection process, which includes letters and calls, with the borrower paying the board directly. When it moves into the second phase, the collection agency gets 50 percent.
The delinquent amount from 2000 to present totals $488,644, Vialet said.
As for the Election System, Arturo Watlington Jr., who chairs the St. Thomas/St. John Board, said it’s up the Legislature to pass a law mandating how long the Election System has to keep the paper ballots to be used starting in the 2014 elections.
“We’re going to run out of space eventually,” Watlington said.
The new voting system calls for voters to fill out paper ballots at voting booths. They will then take them to scanners where they will be scanned in.
“It’s going to present challenges because it’s a different system. A lot of people are resistant,” Watlington said.
He asked the senators to craft a plan to make early voting easier. Watlington said that currently only absentee voters can cast ballots early and the Election System can challenge whether they are really out of the territory.
Watlington spoke about a draft audit report he said couldn’t be made public but indicated there were irregularities with the V.I. Election Fund and Voter ID Registration Fund.
“The use of that fund is referred for investigation. It is totally under the domain of the supervisor of elections,” Watlington said.
He later said the audit report provides a good road map for how the Election System should operate.
Watlington also said that having seven members from St. Thomas/St. John and seven from St. Croix can pose problems when territorial decisions have to be made because a tie can result.
The Election System requested a budget of $2.3 million for both districts and the supervisor’s office.
St. Croix Chairman Adelbert M. Bryan introduced the new supervisor, Caroline Fawks, who started the job a couple of weeks ago. She replaces former supervisor John Abrams, who retired in May.
The meeting was chaired by Sen. Clifford Graham. Sens. Donald Cole, Myron Jackson, Terrence “Positive” Nelson, Nereida “Nellie” Rivera-O’Reilly and Clarence Payne attended the meeting. Sen. Judi Buckley was absent. Noncommittee members Sens. Kenneth Gittens and Tregenza Roach put in appearances to ask questions.
