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Longest. Spring Break. Ever.
For Dolphin seniors, the last week and a half has been the longest Easter Break of their high school careers. The Guam Public School System's "crowned jewel" (for lack of a more appropriate term), at least in terms of the agency's litany of problems, overwhelmingly continues to be Southern High School. Citing inferior resolution to the problems noted with the school's swimming pool and issues with an area used to house the Guam Community College's satellite automotive program, in the wee hours of Tuesday morning GPSS management made the decision to keep the school closed yet again.
Specifically, GPSS distributed a statement to local media - at 3:41am and via fax only, neglecting the more effective medium of e-mail, which us in the biz rely on religiously - announcing the cancellation of classes. An indicator of why the problems exist in the first place, perhaps?
The Santa Rita campus's tainted history displays a track record replete with issues and negative publicity several years strong, both in problems that are visible as well as hidden. It's the latter that's cause for the teetering-dangerously-close-towards-being-extreme delays in getting kids back in the classroom. "Unfortunately some new problems have come up," superintendent of public education Luis Reyes was quoted as saying in his agency's release.
And it's been quite the eventful last 11 days for GPSS, as the school was unexpectedly inspected by the Attorney General's School Health and Safety Task Force on the 14th, followed by a barrage of community criticism, public forums, media speculation, the introduction of proposed public policy, missed deadlines, lingering crises, and re-inspections, followed by re-re-inspections, followed by re-re-re-inspections. Seriously. And all of which failed.
The problems at Southern High also highlighted an infamous roster of the Top 10 Worst Schools on Island, published by GPSS. On an encouraging note, Reyes noted that a possible chlorine leak was suspected in the pool's pump room, but tests have since determined the air quality to be of a safe level. So one more problem down, numerous to go.
GPSS has previously indicated that an extra makeup day does exist in the current school calendar, although classes have been cancelled an additional two days since the initial inspection.
So the end result comes, of course, at the detriment of the young Dolphins. While they should be busily enjoying their high school experience - making lifelong friendships, interacting with mentors, developing worldviews, memorizing the Periodic Table, conjugating verbs in foreign tongues, realizing that Beowulf existed long before last year's movie - their squalid learning conditions make for a major blemish on their memory banks. Worse, they're not getting primed in the basic skills necessary to make in the real world.
And that's going to follow them long after they leave the hallowed halls of Southern High.
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