Staff Reports
The Guam Department of Education confirmed on Monday that one GDOE employee at Capt. H.B. Price Elementary School tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Joint Information Center.
The Guam DOE is working closely with the Department of Public Health and Social Services to conduct contact tracing.
Any close contact of the confirmed case will be notified directly, and areas of the offices where the employee works will be cleaned and disinfected as needed.
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.
The pilot pre-kindergarten program sites are as follows:
No. 1, district Lagu: Finegayan Elementary School. Contact Marites Garcia at 632-9364;
No. 2, district Kattan: J.Q. San Miguel Elementary School. Contact Elizabeth Hanzsek at 477-9368;
No. 3, district Luchan: Lyndon B. Johnson Elementary School. Contact Renielle Ranan at 646-8058; and
No. 4, district Haya: Marcial Sablan Elementary School. Contact Geraldine Pablo at 565-2238.
Beginning Feb. 10, applications may be submitted to participating schools for the voluntary pre-kindergarten program. Children must be four years old by July 31 to participate in the program during the school year 2021 - 2022.
Applications for the program may be picked up at participating schools.
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.