by Michele Catahay, KUAM NewsMonday, March 24, 2008 Subscribe to Michele's newsfeed
Guam attorney general Alicia Limtiaco and other representatives from the School Safety Task Force are spending another evening at Southern High School conducting yet another re-inspection of the Santa Rita campus. After failing Friday's first re-inspection and working through the weekend, the team began another evaluation this afternoon. The Guam Public School System failed last Friday's night's re-inspection because of hazardous materials that were still on campus, along with the pool not having been fully cleaned and pumped.As of today the hazardous materials have been removed, but work on the pool won't be completed until Thursday. According to Guam Education Policy Board chairperson Joe San Agustin, who just returned on island, he believes if the pool is the only obstacle to reopen Southern, then it should open. "We need to open the school not open the swimming pool; close the pool and keep the school open, then we can plan for funding to open the swimming pool. That's not an urgent issue right now - get the school open," he demanded.San Agustin says that if Southern High remains closed GPSS should consider having double-sessions at JFK High School in Upper Tumon or at GW High in Mangilao. Meanwhile, AG Limtiaco says today's re-inspection yielded more progress and that Southern is just the first stop of many more schools to come. "This task force is gong to be making inspection in other schools, as we said before," she promised. "We've inspected ten schools so far, there will be others and of course with the schools that have been inspected there will be follow up inspections."Limtiaco also added, "We're going to continue this effort. It's one that we cannot allow to happen again - complacency has to be out of our vocabulary when it comes to the school system, our students, as well as personnel here."