The fate of this upcoming school year for approximately 12,000 Guam Department of Education students remains murky. 

As GDOE clarifies, 19 public schools look to have their doors shut as they await sanitary inspections by Public Health. 

The legislature headed into day two of an emergency session with education and Public Health officials as they sort out if Bill 317, which seeks to keep schools pending inspections open, is a solution worth passing. 

Francine Salas is a Health Management Analyst with the Department of Public Health’s Division of Environmental Health and she said, “The thing is, once the school hits 41 demerits, they cannot operate. They pretty much failed the inspection. So should Bill 317 pass the way it is written now and they had failed before the enactments, they wouldn't be able to operate if we were to shut down that school.” 

Salas added whether or not the legislation passes has a greater impact on Guam DOE. 

However, on the DEH inspector's end, she said on average, inspection of a school takes roughly one week. 

The start of the school year begins Aug. 8. 

“The beauty of that is it allows our inspectors to make sure everything is in compliance with the sanitation rules and regulations, but it also allows for GDOE facilities and maintenance to follow the inspectors around and make necessary corrections onsite or maybe the next day when the inspector comes to say ‘hey we fixed this, this, and this’ so that would reduce the number of demerits,” she added. 

While lawmakers posed a myriad of questions for panel members during the session, Guam DOE made it clear Bill 317 is a critical path forward for this upcoming school year. 

“We’re talking about 12,000 students and families impacted by our inability to open on time, and we want to make sure that this is not supposed to be on the families, and we take care of this before the 8th of August,” said GDOE Administrator of Student Support Services, Chris Anderson.