HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — It’s no secret that Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero didn't agree with Public Law 37-4, which she has stated is the cause of “chaos” within the Guam Department of Education. On Saturday, she acted on four measures that will allow most public schools to open by Aug. 23.
On Saturday, a release from the governor's office announced that after careful review, the governor signed Bill 91, Bill 159, Bill 158 and Bill 156 into law. The release stated that “each of the bills represents an honest effort at solving the crisis that the flawed passage of Public Law No. 37-4 created and the severe damage Typhon Mawar caused.”
Prior to signing the bills into law, the governor criticized Public Law 37-4 and its author, Sen. Chris Barnett, and she said she was glad the Guam Legislature stepped in to “fix” the law.
“P.L. 37-4, which is authored by Sen. Chris Barnett, was the cause of all this chaos because there has already been a public law in the books that says to (the) Department of Education, 'We will give you until 2024 to fix whatever you need to pass sanitary permits.' Chris Barnett’s law moved the deadline from 2024 to 2023, so that’s (the) No. 1 cause of this chaos, Leon Guerrero told the Post on Friday.
Upon signing the four bills into law, Leon Guerrero thanked the bill's authors for their bipartisan efforts, noting Republican Sen. Frank Blas Jr. and Democrat Sen. Dwayne San Nicolas recognized “a failure in policy” and chose to “resolve it rather than lay blame, demonstrating that government can come together to do good for Guam.”
The governor, however, did recognize that the measures don't solve the challenges GDOE faces with health and safety concerns. Instead, the measures removed the “unreasonable burden of an arbitrary timeline — one that changed from one Legislature to the next.”
“For the past several weeks, a communitywide effort engaging a myriad of organizations, government agencies and the Guam National Guard has worked to help GDOE prepare our public schools for the opening of the school year. That effort has called on people from every walk of life. It is blind to partisanship or the last election and, most importantly, it has been focused unwaveringly on our schoolchildren,” the governor said in the release.
Blas’ Bill 159, now Public Law 37-31, reverts the sanitary compliance deadline to school year 2024-2025. San Nicolas’ Bill 158, now Public Law 37-32, allows schools to open, even if not inspected or if they failed inspection, at the discretion of the superintendent. Both bills require GDOE to provide progress reports to the Legislature addressing sanitary issues at schools.
Bill 156, authored by Speaker Therese Terlaje and Barnett, now Public Law 37-33, expedites GDOE school inspections by authorizing variances and increasing small purchase limits. It also allows for additional health inspectors and retired government of Guam inspectors to be hired to aid in GDOE school inspections.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joe San Agustin’s Bill 91, now Public Law 91-37, is meant to attract facilities and maintenance personnel to fill vacant positions needed to get GDOE schools up to par.
