The main governing body in the region is the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Public School System (CNMI PSS) whose headquarters are located on Capital Hill, Saipan.
Education in the Northern Mariana Islands has historically been determined by the different foreign powers that assumed ownership over the native Chamorro society.
The first attempt at a formalised education system occurred in 1668 when a small party of Spanish Jesuit missionaries arrive in Guam on 16 June 1668.
[2] With their primary objective being to convert the population to Christianity, they established a school for reading and prayers for a select group of boys.
The Germans concerned themselves with the commercial value of the islands and established schooling as a way of training a cheap labour force.
This was completed under the expectations that the Chamorro people could then fully immerse in American culture, and thus could easily United States citizenship.
Through all of these changes in educational policies, the islands ended up with a complex mix of language establishments as schools across the region either spoke Japanese, English, Chamorro, or Spanish.
[2] 22 years later, in 1944, this education system was disseminated across all of the islands, and the divide between administrations was removed when the United States officially took possession of the region.
[3] The main language of instruction had then moved to English which formed the basis of the current 21st century educational system.
[4] The board is made up of five elected members who are representatives from the three senatorial districts of Northern Mariana Islands – three from Saipan, one from Tinian, and one from Rota.
[6] As of 2017, there were no regulations from the US Department of Education regarding accreditation, teacher certification, length of school year, record keeping, testing or tax exemption.
[6] From 1978 onwards, the Northern Mariana Islands began receiving funding for a special education program to implement within the public school system.
At the time of the Glenn Muna's statement, they had spent around $1.8 million on cleaning up debris and using the schools as typhoon shelters.
The main aim was to bridge the financial gap between in-state and out-of-state tuition costs for students seeking to complete a degree in a public university.
[15] The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands received $29.8 million in this emergency relief fund to help minimise the impact on the educational systems.
[16] There are a number of academics and policy-makers that have critically engaged with different parts of the Northern Mariana Islands educational system and curriculum.
[17] There are calls for the colonial relationship between the United States and the islands to be critically discussed in schools in an attempt to minimise the effect colonisation has on students' civic life.