It’s back to school on Monday for the students of the Academy of Our Lady of Guam, as preparations for their return have wrapped up. Dr. Rita Duenas is an alumna of the Academy - a 1988 graduate and she’s returned to serve as its new president. She gave KUAM a rundown of how they prepared for their students to come back.

"Our teachers, they’ve been here all week and they have been through training, as well as preparing their classrooms," she said. "And of course last week, we brought in our students at orientation, they were invited to come in, so that would help them get back to the mode of coming back to school, get them excited and one of the main things we took care of was making sure they were ready."

AOLG is expecting some 300 students for this upcoming school year. Since COVID is still around, Duenas shared the precautionary measures in place to avoid infections at the school.

"Face masking is no longer required, but it is highly encouraged and we will always provide our school community, whether it be student, faculty, staff and visitors, that we will always have masks available," she said. "We will also provide the student with hand sanitizers. We have all of our handwashing stations available in our restrooms. Hand sanitizers available throughout the campus and of course, our classrooms will also be supplied with disinfectants to help clean the surfaces and we just want to make sure that everybody still is in that mode of remembering to wash their hand and sanitize as frequently as possible."

AOLG also cleans their classrooms at the end of the school day to keep it COVID-free. They also do deep disinfections monthly as a precaution. They also provide COVID testing with the help of Public Health when necessary and follow the COVID guidelines when a student or staff tests positive.

Duenas gave a message for both the new students coming in and the ones returning.

"We know it could be a little scary, especially for our new students, but we want them to know that the Academy is family and we welcome all of our new students, our returning students back to their second home, which is the Academy," she said. "We want our parents to know that their safety is most important to us and that we will definitely do our best to inspire, educate and empower their daughters."