by Devin Santos for KUAM News

As teachers and staff continue to clean and prepare their campuses, there could be some light at the end of the tunnel or hallway, so to speak. Senator Chris Duenas said, "In the current budget year, the budget was adjusted and I introduced a bill to appropriate $20 million for maintenance and repairs of our schools out of the local appropriations. That is Public Law 37-5, but the governor has yet to transfer that money to Department of Education.

"So, I’ve included this as an amendment into the Fiscal Year '24 budget under education to ensure that this appropriation is carried over into the next fiscal year. We are not sure if the governor is ever going to transfer over any of that money to DOE and they’ve made it clear that they need that money particularly as a dedicated funding source for maintenance and repairs of our schools. I had unanimous support on that public law before and I want to make sure we speak through this budget again that we are insisting that $20 million go to DOE."

Duenas, the Education Committee vice chair, is proposing to amend Bill 32 - allocating much-needed funds to GDOE. The amendment, if approved by the legislature, will allocate $20 million to GDOE for the purpose of maintenance of schools infrastructure and grounds.

Asked about the source of the $20 million to allocate to GDOE, the senator replied, "During this fiscal year currently, we’ve been tracking excess revenue upwards of as high as $60 million and so I introduced a bill for this appropriation with the excess revenue in the current fiscal year. So it’s a very sound public law and it has all the funding that it needs. This will not affect next year’s budget because of the fact that it is already a public law, which means it’s already appropriated. So the funding source is very solid. In fact, this years fiscal year was adjusted to accommodate this year’s appropriation. So the money we want to make if it doesn’t make it to DOE this fiscal year with only two months to go then it will be available for them next year."

Duenas also noted that the money is what the schools want, citing how GDOE's budget was cut from $247 million to $220 million.

And with this much money now being offered, one question comes to mind: why not propose to shift it GDOE's way sooner?

"As a matter of fact, PL 37-4 and 37-5 we passed all during emergency session back in February. So the whole idea was to make sure there was actually money there to support this. So you are exactly right that the money is there now. If the governor transfers it today so that they can use it, we wouldn’t even need this, I can remove the amendment. But if that money doesn’t get transferred, we want to make sure they have that money because they asked for a funding source for maintenance and repairs," Duenas said.

KUAM also reached out to the Governor's Office for comment.