GDOE’s failure to repair schools leads to confusion about school start date, fears some unsafe schools will open

It’s a confusing and evolving story, especially for public school students and their parents who are waiting for concrete answers about the start of school and the school year that will follow. So far, the Guam Department of Education has pushed the start date back from August 8 to August 15, 2024, with few other confirmed details and the possibility that several schools won’t open, several schools will experience double sessions, or that all schools will open with many of them failing to meet safety and sanitation standards. Today the education superintendent told senators he may request another pushback to August 23.

These details – including the broader issue of when school really will start and what schools will be open by that start date – are all up in the air as senators, the Guam Education Board, and GDOE officials all fumble about at the eleventh hour in what quickly is becoming a crisis.

From last week to today, senators have been entertaining a last-ditch effort to repeal a statute implemented last year that forbids GDOE from opening schools that have not passed Department of Public Health and Social Services inspections for safety and sanitation. Senators at first voted against the proposal by Dwayne San Nicolas to make the exception for this school year. Then, senators were called into emergency session today to debate the bill again.

“There’s no way I’m gonna sign off on anything that’s going to compromise the health and safety of any child,” public health director Therese Arriola told Kandit. She is grateful GDOE officials pushed back the school start date and said her agency is rushing to inspect 17 schools before August 15. She said DPHSS’s Division of Environmental Health which conducts the inspections will be able to inspect those 17 schools, but whether they pass is another issue. The majority of the 17 schools, she said, are the schools that have needed the greatest amount of repair and other work to bring the campuses up to standards.

“[Ten] of our public schools need serious refurbishment from a contractor in order to pass public health inspections,” a statement from the governor’s office this afternoon says. “A contractor has already been procured to perform these services, and funding has already been identified. But the work cannot be performed overnight. Even the most aggressive renovation schedule will take time, an issue that a declaration of emergency will not resolve.”

The Guam Education Board this afternoon passed a declaration of emergency that ultimately solved nothing but allowed the board’s politicians to blame school officials for the current controversy. The declaration of emergency is a power under Guam procurement law that the superintendent already had, according to the governor’s office. And the only thing such a declaration does is allow the faster procurement of goods and services up to $250,000.

GDOE’s legislative oversight chairman, Chris Barnett, is trying to get the San Nicolas bill amended to allow for the lifting of the emergency procurement threshold to $1 million for GDOE. The problem, all parties agree, is not funding, but the ability for and the pace of GDOE in spending millions in federal funds to repair the schools.

“GDOE and its private contractors simply need more time to complete their work responsibly,” the governor’s office statements says. “Therefore, if the GDOE leadership determines that a school is safe pending inspection, we agree that the school should be permitted to operate while the formal inspection by the Department of Public Health and Social Services (DPHSS) is pending.”

And that is where the contention lies.

The Barnett statute from last year forced GDOE to bring several schools into safety and sanitation requirements. “That’s because we kept the pressure on,” Mr. Barnett told Kandit. “Keeping this basic standard in place is what our students and schools deserve.”

Despite the statute and the availability of tens of millions of federal funds to make the repairs, GDOE has arrived at this juncture, having failed to bring 17 schools up to legal safety and sanitary requirements.

“There’s been a lot of need for repairs,” Ms. Arriola confirmed, with Mr. Barnett adding that he believes 14 public schools are failing GDOE’s self-inspections, which are based on public health standards.

“[I]t’s clear GDOE needs to make sure things like rat infestation at GW and Finegayan and toilets that don’t work at DL Perez are addressed before we send kids back to school. I think we all agree that’s what has to happen, and we have consensus on that,” Mr. Barnett said.

The education superintendent, Erik Swanson, told senators in session today that he may request the education board to push the start of school date back to August 23. He said he will make an announcement this Friday if that is the decision that is made. If that happens, it will mean that students – whose summer vacation began on May 24 – would have been out of school for three months.

A study published by the Brookings Institute on the well-researched phenomenon of summer learning loss concluded that, “(1) on average, students’ achievement scores declined over summer vacation by one month’s worth of school-year learning, (2) declines were sharper for math than for reading, and (3) the extent of loss was larger at higher grade levels.”

Major decisions regarding Guam public schools – from the amount of funding schools receive to the times schools start the instructional day to the repair of schools and construction of new schools – historically have rarely had any grounding in the learning outcomes educational leaders have drawn for their students.

It is unclear as of yet how the push back to August 15, or the proposed push back to August 23 will affect the school year 2024-2025 calendar, which sets the end of the school year at May 23, 2025. That calendar has very few so-called make up days built into it to cushion unforeseen events that cause students to be out of class and unable to meet the 180-day instructional requirement set in law. Kandit has asked GDOE spokeswoman Maria Reyes for answers on this matter, but she has yet to respond to our email sent to her this morning.

Thus far, the matter of when schools will open – a new start date of August 15, 2024 notwithstanding – along with the details that flow from such decisions are fluid as senators, the board, and GDOE official rush to resolve what can be resolved.

“Obviously, there’s still a lot of work to do, and I think the Legislature, in bringing all the relevant parties together, is working toward solutions that will work, without compromising health, safety and sanitation,” Mr. Barnett said. “It’s good to see this, it shows commitment to work together and finish what we started. You don’t take off your shoes and go home in the middle of a marathon, you stay the course and finish the race.”