Some concerns surfaced from lawmakers Monday morning regarding two legislative measures that would exempt all public school students from fulfilling the required 180-days of instruction or its equivalence of 900 instructional hours as well as the 75 service learning hours for all current high school students.

A few senators questioned how would this affect our next generation?

Bill 286-36 waives the required 180-instructional days from Guam public schools. Bill 287-36 excuses all current Guam high school students from completing the 75 service learning hours.

Both pieces of legislation were introduced by Committee Chair on Education Sen. Telena Nelson at the request of the Guam Department of Education.

GDOE Superintendent Jon Fernandez appeared before the Guam Legislature in support of the measures.

"Because of the disruptions this last couple of school years that’ll be fair to approve the waiver for those who are in high school right now and require to meet those service learning hours to graduate," he said. "So, I want to reiterate that we do not want to be here next year requesting a waiver but we do feel for the last two years we do think it’s fair to extend the waiver and try to get back to normal going forward."

Currently, Guam law requires GDOE to provide 180 instructional days each school year and further requires GDOE students to complete 75 hours of service-learning in order to graduate from high school.  For high schoolers to earn their diploma, Guam public high school students are required by Public Law 28–41 to complete 75 service learning hours by physically volunteering and doing acts of service at non–profit organizations and or no–profit events, prior to the COVID pandemic.

Nelson aired her thoughts on the requests.

"The concern that I am hearing from our side of the fence is that the students are coming out of GDOE with like a third-grade math level comprehension and so those are the challenges I see you have to face," she said. 

Fernandez explained how GDOE has been addressing them.

"We do have as you are familiar with after-school and summer school programs that we have had to expand and provide in more schools to make room for those who are going to need that support this summer and going forward identify who is need of that support and expand our interventions is really key to that approach," he said. 


For the last two years, GDOE has adapted to the challenges of the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic– offering three modules of learning: hard copy, online and traditional face-to-face. It was just this year when 92% of students returned to school for in-person instruction.

If Bill 286-36 does not pass into law, some 24,000 public students would have to make up at least 24 days of instruction. According to KUAM News archives service learning hours were waived for high school students enrolled in School Year 2019–2020. That means current high school juniors and seniors enrolled in GDOE schools this year are not required to acquire service learning hours however it does apply to freshmen and sophomores.

Sen. Nelson will continue to accept written testimonies for the next three days via email at [email protected].