A unanimous vote by the Guam Education Board extended Guam Department of Education superintendent Jon Fernandez's contract through June 2025. Fernandez told KUAM News how he will continue leading the largest agency through the battle against COVID-19.

"We are going to have to make a decision at some point as to how we plan to provide a continuous stable learning environment for our kids, and that's where we are," Fernandez said. The superintendent of public education says he expected this year to be unpredictable and now with Guam reporting more positive coronavirus cases than ever before, the time has come to determine the long term district wide plan for educating our island youth.

An immediate shift last week closed public schools and ordered employees to telework. As well, students had to take to their devices for online distance learning. Fernandez says the next step is to work with the village mayors to make contact with the families and students that haven't participated in instructional learning this school year.

"Of course, one of the challenges right now is the public health situation, but we are going to do what we can to work with the mayors' offices to make that contact happen," he assured the community.

Other challenges the agency is faced with include students without internet access and the need for food services. In addressing these, Fernandez says they have asked Public Health for guidance on three matters.

"Number one is to ensure that we are able to start up our food distribution, which we hope to start on Monday, August 31; and with that, that's the commodity distribution and we will e working with village mayors to push the commodities to their residents," he described. "We are also working to get clearance in regards to the hard-copy distribution, they have asked us to submit a plan for them to review and approve, so we are working to get that done.

"And the third item is that with the ongoing shutdown there is still some business that needs to get done including a lot of procurement which is really the purchasing of more laptops and the purchasing of more technology."

This is Week 2 of remote learning, as this is likely the new norm GDOE has lined up a series of regional virtual meetings for parents beginning next week to answer any questions or concerns.