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If the three-foot social distancing requirement isn’t eased, the school system is considering splitting students into two groups, attending face-to-face classes on alternate days, Fernandez said. He said Guam DOE needs to make a decision about scheduling, that because it doesn’t make sense for half of the schools to have daily instruction and the other half on a split schedule, there needs to be a single policy applied to all schools.
The plan, Fernandez said, is to push for increased vaccination of employees and students, in hopes Public Health will ease social distancing requirements.
But that hope isn’t a real plan.
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Guam’s schools will receive an additional $110 million in federal pandemic assistance, according to Department of Education Superintendent Jon Fernandez, who said the public schools plan to use some of that money to: continue the online learning option through next school year; help struggling students catch up; and ensure school facilities are safe for face-to-face instruction.
DOE plans to phase out the hard-copy learning option, he said, in order to focus on face-to-face instruction and online instruction.
“We were awarded an additional $110 million from the U.S. Department of Education through the latest stimulus package that was passed by Congress,” Fernandez said, noting the governor has been awarded an additional $33 million in federal funding to support education.
As 250 middle and high school students return to Guam school buildings on Tuesday for the first time since March, a question looms: How will the schools enforce safety and balance instruction?
The Guam Education Board, in weekly meetings, has argued that giving schools the option of hosting classes in person supports schoolchildren from poorer backgrounds.
But parents have resisted, reasoning that schools are not safe while coronavirus circulates on Guam. Since the last month, numbers for middle and high school students who signed up for in-person classes wavered in the single digits, while elementary school students improved to the mid-20 s range, with a few schools approaching 50% or higher.