Seated Front (L-R): Joannes Berdon (Chairman, Board of Education),  Innocente Oneisom (Speaker, House of Rep), Emanuel Mori (President, FSM), Nicholas Pula (Chairman, JEMCO), Johnson Elimo (Governor, Chuuk State), Gardenia Aisek (Executive Director, DOE).

While America celebrates the re-election of President Obama (and I am elated too), my heart is even more grateful for the children of Chuuk. Last week my beloved and struggling Chuuk State made a concerted step forward in her strive to offer better schools, to promote community involvement in educational reform, to develop ethical and hardworking teachers, to generate and sustain a lasting synergy among leaders to work together to put education as their top priority. There is no guarantee that the summit last week of all of Chuuk’s leadership will positively impact educational reform, but it is a new start.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have played a small part in the recent Chuuk State Educational Leadership Summit. I was blessed to have worked with Fr. Arthur Leger, SJ, Ph.D., in reviewing the Chuuk Education Reform Plan (CERP) as mandated by a Joint Economic Management Committee (JEMCO) resolution. During our CERP review, we found a disturbing lack of support by the Chuuk State leadership. We recommended a leadership summit focusing on educational reform and JEMCO leveraged it by withholding $7 million dollars of Compact funding for education pending the result of the summit.

Everyone pulled together for the children in Chuuk. The entire Chuuk State leadership led by Governor Elimo and his cabinet, members of the Chuuk State Legislatures led by Speaker Innocente Oneisom, the Board of Education led by Chairman Joannes Berdon, DOE Executive Director Mrs. Gardenia Aisek and senior members of her management team, and some representatives of the public.  It was also attended by FSM President Mori and members of his cabinet and a delegation from the United States led by Mr. Nick Pula, Director of the U.S. Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) and Chairman of JEMCO.

This meeting was sorely needed for the children of Chuuk, but there is a lot more work ahead. At stake was $7 million dollars of Compact funding for education in Chuuk which was withheld pending the result of this high level meeting. More importantly, this summit was sorely needed to bring the entire Chuuk leadership on board with educational reform efforts which had been painfully absent all these years.

While summits among politicians do not necessarily produce better performance output in schools, we can at least hope that having all the key leaders of our state together discussing educational reform is a start. But everyone knows that it cannot be left in the empty promises of politicians. Educational reform must become the work of everyone in the community supported by the elected leaders.

Now that my duties to the state is completed through the CERP review, I am now ready to  focus my attention on helping the Northwest Unified Schools (www.northwestunifiedschools.org).

For the complete transcript and proceedings of the summit, please click here.

Dr. Vid Raatior

Consultant at Raatior Ventures

Vid is an education consultant, web designer, social entrepreneur from Chuuk State in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). He earned his BA in communications from University of Guam, MA in school administration from University of San Francisco, and a Doctor of Education (Ed.D) degree from University of Hawaii at Manoa. Vid lives in Northern California and works at the College of Professional & Global Education at San Jose State University. Previously, he worked at UC Santa Cruz, University of Hawaii at Hilo, Santa Clara University, and Xavier High School in Micronesia.