Radio Australia reporter interviewed President Rector, DOE Deputy Superintendent for financial and administrative services Taling Taitague, and Speaker Judi Wonpat on DOE’s lack of funding.
HOFMAN: Guam’s Department of Education says it’s become accustomed to operating on a budget that falls far short of its needs. This year it was allocated about US$193 million. But it claims that’s still about US$63 million short of what it would need to meet the standards set out by law, and works out to about a third of what is spent per student on the US mainland. Matthew Rector, President of the Guam Federation of Teachers, says he and his counterparts are losing patience with the situation.
RECTOR: For decades now we have underfunded the school system and it has just been incredibly insane. If you correct for Guam, our budget for our school system should be about US$500 million just to be on par with the United States, what they spend per child. So you can’t do this year after year after year after year and expect the system to function. We’re to the point now where our entire system is about to collapse and it’s just not right for our children. It’s just not right for our island.
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