This is on top of the instructional hours lost by the students of the affected schools.
The governor declared a state of emergency at the schools supposedly due to water contamination.
BOE and PSS earlier turned down the governor’s “request” to delay the opening of classes.
Based on its policy, PSS has to provide its food vendors a 24-hour notification that it will cancel its food orders.
This didn’t happen because PSS was notified about the governor’s closure order at past 9 p.m. on the eve of the first day of classes.
PSS had to pay $6,025 in food orders and over $7,000 in personnel costs as a result of having some of its employees at the schools to clean their water reservoirs.
Board of Education Chairwoman Lucy Blanco-Maratita said they are disappointed by the unnecessary expenses caused by the governor’s declaration.
“It makes us realize that we need better communications [with the governor]…to avoid this situation from happening again,” she said.
Blanco-Maratita said the $13,000 could have been used for the pressing needs of the school children.
Sablan said to address concerns regarding school sanitary issues, nine public schools have been inspected recently by the Bureau of Environmental Health and certificates were given to the schools, which include Gregorio T. Camacho, Garapan and Dandan Elementary.
The fees for the sanitary permit application and renewal will be paid by the schools, which get meager budgets for their operations.
In other news, PSS yesterday said its enrollment reached 11,032 as of Sept. 22. The figure included enrollees of federal programs administered by the system.
Sablan said PSS has 5,570 elementary and 1,758 junior high school students.
The five public high schools reported a total of 3,218 students.
The PSS list included the 462 children served by the federally funded Head Start program and the 61 children of the Early Intervention Program.
Last school year, PSS enrollment was over 11,000 from kindergarten to 12th grade.
Sablan said their current enrollment figure shows a “slight decrease” compared to last year.
