HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Hundreds of broken air conditioning units, along with theft of newly installed units, have left 50 classrooms hot — and the students in them sweating.
“Right now there’s about 300 air conditioners in schools that are broken but, please don’t get that confused with 300 classrooms,” Sean Monforte, Guam Department of Education acting facilities manager said. “It doesn’t mean that the classrooms do not have air conditioners. If we are looking at classrooms that do not have air conditioners we are looking at 50.”
Monforte said AC units breaking down is just one of the issues contributing to hot classrooms.
“The reason that some of these classrooms don’t have air cons is because they were stolen, six in the last three months,” Monforte said. “It’s not just the fact that they broke down or it’s poor maintenance, it’s the fact that once we implement them someone steals them. It’s frustrating when you have four brand new air conditioners installed in a school and then not even the Monday before school someone cuts the fence avoids the cameras and takes the air cons, it’s ridiculous.”
Deputy Superintendent Joseph Sanchez of curriculum and instruction said GDOE is doing what it can to address these classrooms which he described as being “unbearable” at times. Each classroom is supposed to have two air conditioning units.
GDOE has a contract with JRN for air conditioner maintenance — which expires in July. GDOE is trying to get as much done as possible under that contract even, as it begins the procurement process for a new contract.
GDOE has been working on the maintenance, repair and replacement of air conditioning units at its 41 public school campuses in advance of High Efficiency Particulate Absorbing, or HEPA, filters being installed.
Over the summer, GDOE got creative and was able to shift $1.6 million towards the existing contract to cover the installation of about 200 split units as well as several other larger units.
“We replaced what we could with the current contract as well as updated the maintenance for the air conditioning units that were part of that contract,” Sanchez said.
The new contract, funded by American Rescue Plan monies, should go out on bid in the next few weeks, he said.
“Our intent is to get that completed before the end of the school year, so that the new contractor can begin towards the end of the school year, as well as over the summer, in preparation for next school year,” Sanchez added.
To fill the gap between now and when the larger contract is done, there will be a smaller procurement to replace units — particularly in those classrooms without any working air conditioners.
Transferring working units
Monforte said addressing the classrooms without any air conditioning is GDOE’s priority.
“We do have a plan … we took some air cons that were replaced from Juan M. Guerrero Elementary, we surveyed them, we clean them up, and made sure that they’re reusable. We went to the old J.P. Torres campus and pulled out all the working air conditioners over there. We cleaned them up, made assessments to make sure that these are fixed and capable of being installed in another classroom,” Monforte said.
The second step in the plan was to identify where these units would be placed.
“So we identified the (Special Education) classes, elementary school and Head Start classrooms, those would be the first classrooms that we are going to hit. Then we did a small purchase order for 210 additional air conditioners until we get the contract back. So we should be in pretty good shape,” Monforte said.
The only thing GDOE is waiting for to install the refurbished air conditioner units is the procurement process.
“We had to do another procurement because we dismantled the HVAC department for GDOE, and I just resurrected it, because I started using data to address the tickets and modernize the way we look at things,” Monforte said.
The new HVAC department was reassembled in mid-January to form a five-member certified HVAC team and they have been busy visiting school sites. Last week, the HVAC team did work at P.C. Lujan Elementary School, Finegayan Elementary School and Benavente Middle School providing spot checks and repairs to smaller units they are able to handle.
But work is far from over.
“We are actually going to be putting two air conditioners in every classroom. We are also working on another plan on how to save energy and how to make timers, we need to ensure that the teachers are using the (air conditioning units) correctly and at the right settings. We will have a whole new memo going out in how to preserve the ACs as long as we can,” Monforte said.
The procurement for HEPA filters remains under protest
An air conditioning unit at George Washington High School is seen in this Aug. 17, 2017 photo. Guam Department of Education officials are working to cool classrooms as a current maintenance contract is about to expire.
