HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Six weeks until the start of the new school year and it’s clear not all Guam Department of Education schools will be able to comply with Public Law 37-4.
On Friday, the sanitary permits of all 41 public schools expired. None of them can open for the new school year unless they pass inspection, GDOE acting Superintendent Judi Won Pat said at a legislative oversight hearing on Thursday.
As of Thursday, 12 schools were scheduled for public health inspections and five schools had completed the inspections. Results raised some concern as a couple of schools education officials thought would pass inspection instead failed.
Adacao Elementary School received a “D” grade, as did John F. Kennedy High School, unofficially. Both are leased schools.
Won Pat told Sen. Chris Barnett, who has oversight of the committee on education, that during a board meeting two days prior to the oversight, it was shared that JFK High received 57 demerits. That prompted the senator to question what conversations have occurred with regard to lease-back schools.
“According to some of the leases that we have, … what they’re responsible for will be structural damage,” Won Pat said. “We … have actually sent all of the lease agreements, or the contracts, rather, to our legal counsel to review. There might be a window for us to get back to them again and have that conversation.”
Barnett said lease-back schools are placed on a pedestal in terms of the “gold standard” example of how other public schools should be maintained.
“The lease-back schools, they do the maintenance. It’s included. Everyone says that’s the model we should use moving forward. So, I am just having a hard time reconciling in my mind how these lease-back schools, …. how badly did they fail these inspections,” Barnett said.
While Won Pat didn’t have JFK’s inspection report, she did share how GDOE came to understand the situation with regard to maintenance of lease-back schools.
“The lease schools, they have their own people to, you know, to go in to clean their schools, … because the government does pay for this annually, the debt service. When we approached them about work that needed to be done in our facilities, like, for example, the mold, this is what they told us: They said, “Well, you cut the (purchase order), give us the number and the amount and then I’ll have our people go in. Meaning we were going to be the one to pay, not them, so it’s a problem,” Won Pat said.
“You’re right. We were just totally surprised ourselves because you’re right, we were all saying the same thing, that the leased schools were going to be better off then our schools we are taking care of,” she added.
Under the impression that maintenance was to be handled by the owners of the schools, GDOE pushed for the lease-back schools to be inspected by Public Health first.
“The reason why you wanted lease-back schools inspected first is because the assumption was that they would pass and then they would figure to be a key part and shuffling and double sessions and all that. So, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen,” Barnett said.
As of Thursday, it was clear at least two schools wouldn’t open in the new school year: Simon Sanchez High School and Oceanview Middle School. Barnett said the move of Oceanview students to Southern High School, which has not fared well on inspections in the past, concerned him.
“I know that you’ve painted a rosy picture of the move to Southern High School, but, with all due respect, … I have been bombarded with communications from so many of the stakeholders (of) Oceanview Middle School,” Barnett said.
While the move will go forward, Won Pat said it won’t happen until the issues at Southern High are addressed.
“We are not going to send children from a bad situation to another, so our staff from (the GDOE Facilities and Maintenance division) have gone there to identify all the things that will be done and the work will be done. The supplies should be there Friday. The people today were there cleaning,” Won Pat said on Thursday.
John F. Kennedy High School is shown June 8, 2023, in Tamuning. The lease-back school recently failed a safety inspection.
