By Trina A. San Agustin
Variety News Staff

THE Guam Police Department is looking into how Guam Public School System textbooks, workbooks, television sets, VCR players, old computers, and a karaoke system ended up stockpiled in an abandoned building on “F” Street in Tiyan.
GPD public affairs officer Allan Guzman said some of the boxes of books were labeled “M.U. Lujan Elementary.”
The textbooks and workbooks included those for health, math, English, and Chamorro.
The equipment and school materials were stored in buildings 108 and 106.
It was not known as of press time if there was a dollar amount on the items.
“We don’t know if someone was storing them there to sell later. The books don’t seem old and some are in their original packaging. It appears that the books were recently placed there,” Guzman told Variety.
The Guam International Airport Authority is the name on the lease of the property in Tiyan where the books were found, and confirms that the then Department of Education was their tenant but in a different building on the same street.
“Buildings 110 and 112 were leased from us (for DOE),” said GIAA spokesperson Rowlenda Fa’asuamele. “It was the DOE JROTC program that occupied the building at the time. They vacated the premises in December 2002. When they vacated the place, they took all their office equipment and furnishings.”
Coincidentally, the buildings that were leased from GIAA share the same lawn as the building where the books were found. Buildings 108 and 106 used to house GPD’s War on Ice program.
Puzzled
GPSS Superintendent Luis Reyes said he was “puzzled” at how the textbooks ended up in those buildings in Tiyan.
Reyes was questioned by Chief of Police Paul Suba and other officers.
During the questioning, GPD presented Reyes with photos of the items in the building.
“I don’t know where those books came from,’ said Reyes. “Some labels on the boxes appear to be from M.U. Lujan Elementary School. I talked to the chief of Police about that because that building has been abandoned for a long time.”
Reyes, late yesterday afternoon, sent several GPSS employees to the abandoned building to take a look at the items found.
“Some of the books are new. When I say new, I mean they haven’t been used,” said Reyes.
Late yesterday afternoon, Reyes was working at gathering more information from GPSS employees as to where the books may have come from.
“Right before 6 p.m. Tuesday, I was told that the books may have been donated by GPSS to a non-profit organization. I am not sure about this. I cannot confirm that this time. This information is pending on GPSS property management department,” Reyes said.
Variety sources said they expected the boxes of books and school materials to be wet from the rain that occurred in the past couple of days, but they weren’t.
The purchase order numbers “2002-01725” were on some of the boxes of textbooks. The shipping label had a DOE post office address, and was directed to “Guam DOE Curriculum and Instruction, central receiving warehouse.”
The sender’s return addresswas that of “Houghton Millflin” in Geneva, Illinois.
According to the company’s Web site, they are distributors of educational and classroom textbooks on various subjects.
An unnamed employee of the GPSS curriculum and instruction department said the purchase order was closed and had been made in 2002. It was not known what was on that purchase order as the employee did not have the information available.
Another unnamed employee of the GPSS procurement office said that going by the purchase order number, the file was not immediately available as it was in their warehouse with other old files.
The financial scramble for textbooks
The discovery of these abandoned textbooks came a week after a roundtable discussion between GPSS and members of the Legislature led by Speaker Mark Forbes, R-Sinajana, in which the speaker urged GPSS to review its textbook procurement policy which, he says, has resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars being wasted.
GPSS earlier said that they need about $3 million to purchase new textbooks, especially language arts textbooks.
Forbes, in an interview late yesterday afternoon, said the discovery of textbooks is “fairly uncommon.”
“The specifics of this I do not know anything about. But if you go to schools, you will find textbooks that have never been used. That is why I pressed the issue before. Maybe we don’t need to buy any new books. I don’t know if it is necessary to spend $3.5 million for all those books,” Forbes told Variety.
Because of the problems plaguing GPSS’s textbook policy, Forbes asked Reyes not to place a new order for textbooks until more information can be provided to the Legislature.
Forbes also requested an inventory of the current textbooks that GPSS has, and the number of students that need new textbooks.