Now that most students are back in spruced-up classrooms, using functional bathrooms, it’s a good time to look at the unintended consequences of having delayed the opening of the public school year to fix the many problems in our 41 public schools.
The purported intent of Public Law 37-4, authored by Sen.Chris Barnett and unanimously passed by his colleagues in the legislature, was to promote the health and safety of Guam Department of Education students by mandating that public schools must pass inspection by the Department of Public Health & Social Services before opening every school year.
Of course, we all want our children to go to clean and safe schools. One could argue that the unacceptable state of some of our public school campuses warranted the school opening delays caused by this law.
But here are just a few of the unintended consequences of P.L. 37-4 (of which one could also argue that if senators had done their homework before passing it, they should have known).
Child care challenges. Many of you had to scramble because of the short notice that your child’s school campus would not open on Aug. 8, the original first day of the 2024-25 school year. If you had to work and had no one (grandparents, relatives, neighbors) to watch your young children, hopefully, your boss was sympathetic to you either teleworking or bringing children to your workplace. Because that’s what happened. Either that or they were left home alone.
Hunger. This was probably the most severe consequence of this legislation. Our entire public school system qualifies for the federal free and reduced meals program - and has for years.
For a sizable portion of the Guam Department of Education's student population, the breakfast and lunch meals they get at school each weekday constitute the majority of the food they eat that day. This is why you saw GDOE and village mayors’ offices scrambling to distribute meals to students’ households when classes were delayed by weeks or in some cases, over a month.
Safety. This is the most tragic unintended consequence of all. For some children, school is their safe zone. I serve as a member of the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) Task Force.
During our meeting on August 19th (12 days after classes were originally supposed to start), Child Protective Services reported that from Aug. 1 to 16, they received 44 referrals for suspected child abuse.
Most of the referrals were for neglect or physical abuse; some were for substance abuse on the part of one or both parents, and some were for sexual abuse.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, when students were attending school online, SART Task Force members shared their fear that children would be trapped at home with their abusers. Because often, teachers and/or school nurses are the first ones to recognize that a child is being abused, and they are mandated reporters. So for some children, keeping them home because their school doesn’t pass inspection is far more dangerous than any leaking school toilet or bathroom faucet.
Which brings me to the Department of Public Health Violations and Demerit Assignment Checklist, which at best can be described as “vague.” For example: “Classrooms are clean, orderly, waste receptacle provided.” It doesn’t say “covered” waste receptacle, yet if inspectors find an open wastebasket in a classroom, that is one demerit. Granted, plumbing leaks, non-operative bathrooms, mold, rodents, etc. are unacceptable.
But during the inspection at Machananao Elementary School in Yigo, where the Bureau of Women Affairs was assigned to help, I went through the school with public health inspectors because I wanted to find out exactly what, to them, constituted a demerit. And remember, if your school gets 40 demerits, you are shut down. Here are some of the more ridiculous items that count toward those 40 demerits:
• Rust on the vents on the sides of a drinking fountain, even if said fountain water dispensing area is clean, operates well, and provides drinking water;
• A not-in-use Scentsy stored in a filing cabinet in an office;
• Unused hooks on a classroom wall;
• Bathroom sink fixtures that work perfectly but that are a bit corroded;
• A rusted pipe collar underneath a bathroom sink because the sink pipe was repaired and the collar was pulled back and no longer needed but never removed;
• A dark accent wall painted the school’s color (presumably because it could hide mold);
• Doors on bathroom stalls are not 5 feet high and 10 inches from the floor at the bottom.
I’m pretty sure no parent cares if the height of the bathroom stall doors is a little off the required measurement, or if a bathroom fixture has a little corrosion. What matters is that the bathroom toilets flush properly and sink faucets work so students can wash their hands with clean water and soap.
(Remember that in some areas, students live without running water or indoor plumbing, so school is where they wash up in the morning). Only major problems should warrant school closings. Minor infractions like toilet stall door height or one accent wall in the school’s color shouldn’t count toward those 40 demerits.
GDOE currently has 41 schools and 45 maintenance personnel - some of whom are in their sixties or seventies. The most urgent request by ALL schools to the School Opening Readiness Teams (SORTs) was for skilled labor - plumbers, carpenters, electricians, masons, etc.
I asked Chris Anderson, GDOE student support administrator, why GDOE doesn’t simply hire more skilled maintenance personnel. “We can’t afford to,” was his reply. GDOE’s pay scale is such that skilled maintenance personnel are paid better almost everywhere else.
So, yes, senators, the $10 million the GDOE is requesting for ongoing maintenance support is most desperately needed.
Another point is that the inspection schedule set by the law was completely unrealistic. Gov. Leon Guerrero, in letting the bill lapse into law without signing it, noted the “impractical timelines” of the measure, including the fact that we did not have enough DPHSS inspectors to inspect all of the schools before the start of this school year. DPHSS testified to this fact during the law’s public hearing.
Make no mistake: all of the work that everyone did in getting the schools to open was wonderful, but it was a band-aid fix. These school maintenance problems have been ongoing for DECADES. I was reporting on them back in the mid-1980s (yes, I am that old). Call it neglect, mismanagement, whatever you want. But until we as a community decide that we are going to:
• Hold GDOE accountable for its funding (for example holding administrators accountable when they sign off on their own overtime to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars);
• Force GDOE to hold contractors accountable for the work they are supposed to be doing at the schools;
• Make our procurement process less of an utter nightmare; and
• Provide our public school system with a dedicated source of funding;
No one should be surprised that our public schools remain in deplorable condition decade after decade.
Well before the 2025-2026 school year starts GDOE should figure out its maintenance issues and the legislature should figure out how to fund them, so that we do not again have parents scrambling for daycare, or children going hungry, or children staying at home with abusers.
It might be good to remember these unintended consequences well before next school year, and definitely before the election next month.
Jayne Flores is the director of the Bureau of Women Affairs.
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