Central schools face overcrowding issues

by Krystal Paco

Guam - As a committee of school principals are being put together to address the island's overcrowded campuses, the island's central schools continue to cope with the tight classrooms and hallways. Redistricting and consolidating schools may be options for upcoming school years.

George Washington High School isn't the only campus feeling the burden of too many students. According to Jose L.G. Rios Middle School acting principal Stacey Sahagon, her Piti campus is beginning to feel the load, saying, "It feels overcrowded in the last couple of years; we've seen an increase in student enrollment, that might be because more families are choosing to live in some of our districted areas…we are feeling the increase because the classes should only have about 28 students. So when there's 30 or 31, of course the teachers and the students are going to feel there's extra bodies or students in the classroom."

To cater to the extra students, the Department of Education has allowed Sahagon to hire additional staff. She said, "The other issue here at Rios is every classroom is being occupied by a teacher already."

George Washington High School principal Begona Flores says her campus has struggled with overcrowding for ten years. "We have gone through the process of looking at numbers and where they're coming from, and we did that routine four different times to come up with a redistricting plan, meaning these students where they're coming and where they should go…maybe it should be revisited the notion of redistricting 159 to alleviate the overcrowding," she said.

DOE interim superintendent Taling Taitano said, "We have enough classrooms for our district. The problem is they're all in the south, and so how do we balance that? Because certainly parents I'm sure want to have their kids going to school as close to home as possible, but you try to weigh that against how do you create a better learning environment for the students and certainly that's with smaller schools and smaller classroom sizes."

Taitano says consolidating schools may also be an option, noting, "In terms of cost savings is the possibility of consolidating some of the schools, so the management team is taking a look at that. We have a number of schools in the south that have relatively small enrollment. One of the ways we can look at saving money is consolidating schools - it's something that we're looking at it's not something that has been decided definitely."