GDOE: 14 schools could miss inspection deadline, shut down (2024)

Guam Department of Education officials told senators Friday that about 14 schools are not expected to meet the August cutoff to pass sanitary inspections and could force them to shut down.

Senators were simmering Friday over GDOE’s slow progress getting schools cleaned up and ready to pass sanitary inspections a year after Typhoon Mawar threw the school system into chaos.

Friday’s oversight hearing on GDOE came on the first anniversary of the Category 4 typhoon’s passage over Guam.

Damaged campuses, double sessions, and the threat of being shut down over noncompliance with sanitary regulations have characterized much of this school year.

But as of Friday, less than half of GDOE’s 41 schools have passed sanitary inspections, fence repair and mold mitigation haven’t gone forward, and a number of schools are still waiting on air conditioner installs, according to information shared with the legislative Committee on Education.

GDOE Superintendent Erik Swanson admitted to senators that the school system is not where he wants it to be, but said there has been a large amount of progress, and he has what he needs to educate kids in the upcoming school year.

Swanson said he also may ask the Leon Guerrero Administration to give back the remainder of $20 million that was transferred out of GDOE last year for typhoon fixes and mold mitigation. The fund transfer was supposed to speed procurement, but so far has not, he said.

Education oversight chairman Sen. Chris Barnett says the Legislature and school administration will be seeing more of each other over the summer.

Some schools not expected to meet deadline

Even with time in the summer, about 14 schools are not expected to meet the August cutoff to pass inspection, Swanson told senators.

Missing the date could force schools to shut down.

Seven of those schools are scheduled for major refurbishment work and won’t even be able to get inspected until construction is done, he said.

Campuses districtwide are supposed to get in line by the start of next school year with long deferred regulations from the Department of Public Health and Social Services. But as of this week, just 17 out of 41 schools in GDOE’s inventory passed muster.

That’s despite Swanson’s stated goal of getting every school in line by April.

Now, the superintendent wants uninspected schools to be allowed to operate until they can get an inspection. There was a limit to how fast GDOE and inspection teams at Public Health could work on the matter, he said.

Education chairman Barnett said he was “a lot worried” about schools passing inspection, but does not support “lowering standards” for GDOE.

He was not receptive to pushing the deadline back, again, he said.

Mold hangups

GDOE officials pointed at the General Services Agency for the still delayed contract to mitigate mold at schools, and stand-up fencing.

On Wednesday, the Pacific Daily News reported that a year after Mawar, a mold contract for schools had not gone out. The General Services Agency stated more information was needed from GDOE.

But GDOE Capital Improvement Project Coordinator Nikolas Cruz said Friday that it was “untrue.” Multiple meetings were had with GSA, and specifications for both mold and fencing projects had been submitted, Cruz said.

Normally, the education department would not even have to deal with GSA, as GDOE has its own, in-house procurement team.

But the atypical setup is a holdover from the aftermath of Typhoon Mawar, when the governor transferred about $20 million out of the education department with the agreement that the executive branch would help speed up emergency fixes for the schools.

The Mawar emergency declaration expired, and the mold and fencing projects ended up in the normal government procurement process over at GSA.

About $14 million of the original fund remains from the pot, the PDN has reported.

Swanson said he is now on the verge of asking for the money back.

Sen. Joanne Brown did not accept the explanation, and said Swanson had failed on the issue.

“I don’t care at this point, what the issues are. If they can’t do it, then pull it back and do it yourself,” she said.

Education chairman Barnett likewise blasted Swanson on Friday for not pushing the mold and fencing projects.

With the ongoing dispute between the Office of the Governor and the Office of the Attorney General on procurement issues, much of the information being shared about procurement was inaccurate, Barnett said, and help for the schools, “dies when it gets to Adelup.”

Kids were now caught in a “tug of war” between the attorney general and the governor, Barnett said.

Swanson told the PDN that GDOE could have got the mold mitigation done by now, if it had put the contract out to bid itself.

“We put bigger contracts through,” he said.

But there were issues at GSA, and several changeovers in the chief procurement officer. Swanson said he wasn’t definite on asking for the money back, and planned to meet with Department of Administration Director Ed Birn on Friday or the coming days over the issue.

“I don’t need to go pick a fight between political factions because we have to operate regardless of whether they agree or disagree,” Swanson said.