The Guam Education Board (GEB) is slated to look over and approve the Guam Department of Education’s (GDOE) Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget, one that has been due to the legislature since the end of January.

GEB Vice-Chair Angel Sablan told KUAM the board has returned to GDOE’s proposed multi-million dollar budget request more than once.

“GDOE has the biggest budget item in the Government of Guam–we’ve already gotten it back three times for our review and returned three times because of our concerns of what's in that budget,” said Sablan.

He said the GEB did not find that initial budget request justifiable with even the current ask of three hundred million dollars hard to reconcile.

Sablan added, “We know that there are charter schools opening up, we know that the superintendent has made it public that he will be, with the consent of parents and even our stakeholders in the school system–will be shutting down some schools. And if that happens, how can we justify we keep increasing our budget?”

Sablan believes GDOE can cut costs in staffing GDOE’s central office.

“We need to get focused and go back out to the schools. We need school aides, we need people who are going to assist in making the food, we need people who are going to be able to act as school resource officers, and counseling and things like that–nurses. That's where the emphasis should be–not in somebody who is just sitting behind a desk to push paper,” Sablan said.

Meantime, Sablan asked how GDOE could go before the legislature to ask for millions more in funding with millions still unspent.

He said, “We have millions of more that haven’t been touched. And the schools are crying, our maintenance people are crying, our security is lacking.”

It's a conversation to be continued during Tuesday's Education Board meeting.