Guam Education Chairwoman Maria Gutierrez  has a message for island lawmakers: "heads up senators, we are coming in with a supplement budget."


A large portion of the recent Guam Education Board's monthly meeting discussions focused on the supplemental budget the department plans to submit to the legislature. After getting a significant cut of $15 million from this budget cycle, they plan to request for additional funding.

"Remember we have 30,000 students," Gutierrez said. "We need to provide them services. We have students with special needs. We appreciate the federal funding that we are receiving but that can't get by. Interscholastic, I understand yesterday the coaches had their own forum of what to plan in the event they are going back to offering the interscholastic sports and so those are the things that if people are saying DOE is getting too much, no they really need to be there to know what's going on."



A set figure has yet to be determined but expected to be announced by Dec. 15. We should add since 2008, GDOE has experienced a budget cut of $30 million.

And further during the board meeting Safe and Healthy Schools committee chair John Burch provided a school readiness update on the re-opening dashboard.

"The dashboard is based on the CDC framework and public reports from the Department of Public Health and Social Services," he said. "Basically the dashboard has two core indicators the number of new cases per 100 people within the last 14 days and the percentage of positive tests within the last 14 days. And based on the latest core indicators given to us our community is at the highest risk level.  " with 838.1 new cases and 14.3% positivity rate for the last 14 days."

Jan. 4 has been set as the moving target date for re-opening public schools. Every Friday at 11 a.m. the safe and health schools committee is briefed by the district's school readiness taskforce.