Guam Department of Education Superintendent Judith Won Pat said Friday she intends to lease out Lyndon B. Johnson Elementary and Chief Brodie Elementary schools, both decommissioned more than a year ago.

"My plan is to lease out those two schools, LBJ and Brodie. We have potential interest right now to be able to lease those schools. We want to try to do it even before the end of this year," Won Pat said during the Guam Education Board meeting, responding to Yona Mayor Brian J. Terlaje, the Mayors Council of Guam board representative.

Terlaje raised the issue; he said that six or seven village gymnasiums designated as Tier II storm shelters — under the purview of the Mayors Council of Guam — are not ready for use due to funding shortfalls.

I met with the mayor also from Dededo because of the Astumbo Gym which is also a Tier II shelter. The gym incurred a lot of water.

"The Mayors Council is doing everything in their power to make sure that we do get the funding so that we can open up when we're ready ... my question to the superintendent is ... would the Department of Education be willing to allow one of these decommissioned schools to be utilized as a Tier II shelter as we are waiting for the funding for our initial Tier II shelter to be in place," Terlaje said.

Won Pat cautioned against the approach, noting that GDOE schools designated as Tier I shelters were effectively forced to absorb Tier II populations during Super Typhoon Bavi when village gyms could not open.

"I caution us to go that route because as you know right now, whenever - for example - we are a Tier I school at the beginning and because none of the community mayors could open Tier II, we had no choice but to hold them. So, we continued to remain like a Tier I, Tier II school in a sense," Won Pat said.

Instead, Won Pat suggested hardening the mayors' existing gymnasiums, pointing to FEMA's support of GDOE's Tier I schools as a model.

"The good thing that the mayors could do - and I've spoken to some of the staff at the governor's office and also had some conversations with the Guam Housing and Urban Renewal Authority Fix in Six program - is that FEMA paid for my schools, all the schools that are Tier I schools. Meaning they provided a generator and a water tank. That is something that I've requested at the governor's office and even at GHURA - at the mayor's level, those gyms that could be identified as Tier II, that we harden your gyms," she said.

Five GDOE schools were initially opened as Tier I shelters across the island in response to Super Typhoon Bavi which passed north of Guam in early July.

"The two schools that we were going to open in the south, their generator wasn't working. So that we rolled that out and decided to open instead Chalan Pago ... one of the 15 shelters. We did not open George Washington (GW) High School primarily because in our restrooms ... we don't have the capacity for flushing of those toilets," Won Pat said.

By the time Governor Lou Leon Guerrero reverted the island to Condition of Readiness 4, GDOE has three shelters open of the initial five.

She said that GDOE has difficulty manning the shelters "because they (school personnel) needed to get back to get their schools ready so we consolidated further and left two open."

Won Pat reported shelterees have since been sent to the Chalan Pago and Astumbo Gym shelters.

"I really wanted to close down our Tier I schools because we needed to prepare for the opening," she reiterated.