by Mindy Aguon

Guam - Governor Eddie Calvo signed Bill 103 into law. The legislation addresses the looming September deadline for the Department of Education to spend stimulus funding by reprogramming the $60 million intended for capital improvement projects to instead go to cover operational costs.

DOE has only spent about $18 million of the federal stimulus funding. The measure was introduced by Senator Ben Pangelinan at the request of Governor Calvo. DOE superintendent Dr. Nerissa Underwood said, "It's important because our backs were against the wall in spending the $60 million that were ARRA funded and the due date would have been September 30 to obligate and for us to have spent every single cent of the $60 million by December 31, 2011 so that would have meant that we would have had to do all the capital improvement projects."

The measure has already been run by the U.S. Department of Education, which supports efforts to reprogram the funding. By reprogramming it from CIP to operations, local leaders say this will prevent the ARRA funding from being lost or given to other states and territories for education.