House Standing Committee on Education

Good afternoon, everyone. Aloha. Happy New Year to everyone in the audience. Today's date is the 13th of January. We are in Conference Room 329. And this is the first agenda item on the schedule today for the first agenda item on the schedule for this year for 2025. This is your Committee on Education.

And we have three entities in front of us, the Department of Education, the State Libraries, and School Facilities Authority. And we just like to start off each year with top level information and to try to get a feel for potentially what that agenda is going to look like for the session.

And so we will take the State Libraries first, and then SFA second, DOE last. Members, what we'll do is after the three presentations, we'll ask libraries to answer questions first and then SFA and then DOE. And that's just because DOE usually takes longer. Not always, but usually does. Doesn't mean, that's not good or bad. They just normally do. And with that, we will start off with State Libraries. Thank you. And my eyes are getting so bad I can't even see, like, your faces, it's like all blurry. It's not a good development.

Good afternoon Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee.

Happy New Year.

Share my screen here.

No, you're okay.

There's a little bit of a lag.

I do see that the Jedi Master has returned, so I want to acknowledge Chairman Takumi. Board Chair Takumi is joining us today. Yeah, he's the new Board of Education Chair, and he had 15 years, I believe, or so, as Chairman for this Committee. So thank you for coming, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Again, it's so lovely to see you all today. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to share what we have been working on and what our agenda items are this year for the budget. I'm Stacey Aldrich. I'm the state librarian and I have with me my colleague Mallory Fujitani. And we're here to share with you a little bit of an update. And I thought I would start with a message that we...

Sorry, there's a little bit of a lag in the Wi-Fi. But a message that we've received from our youngest of users of the library at the Wailuku Library who like to draw pictures and tell their librarians how much they appreciate all that they do. My favorite is the poem to Wailuku Public Library.

Roses are red, violets are blue. A bookworm couldn't have better friends than you. So these are our future. These are folks who really believe the library. It is Important to them. They come to story times. They come with their families. And so we're excited that we're continuing to improve our libraries.

Just to give you a sense of usage. Last year, we had over 3.4 million items, physical items, moved in the branches. 1.5 million digital. Digital keeps going up, so more people are reading ebooks. We had over 466,000 Internet usages. So computer access at our libraries is still very important, including Wi-Fi. So we had about 143,000 uses of Wi-Fi. And then programs offered. We actually increased the number of programs this year by over 600 programs and had 98,000 attendees come to these programs. So people are using their libraries.

And if you look at some of the e-content that we have, two of the services that we offer. Kanopy, are streaming movies. I don't know if any of you have used Kanopy, but you can stream movies and learning and also children's programming. We had 81,000 plays, so that's 81,000 movies watched, which is the highest it's been.

So people are finding streaming movies as something important for them. And then we have PressReader, which is over 6,000 magazines and newspapers that are available online through your mobile device or through your computer. And 1.7 million articles were read last year just through PressReader. It's a great service. You can type in a particular topic and set up searches. And a lot of people do that so they can follow different topics.

When we look at the areas of focus that we have, which are designed to help us focus our attention on what's important to our communities, we've been working on strengthening literacy, igniting our digital futures, creating opportunities for life enrichment, and deepening relationships. On the far left, strengthening literacy, that's Michelle Young at our Waimea branch in Kauai, and she's doing a story time with her community. And it's a very popular story time. This was done, she actually did a little film for us about the work that she does.

On the right hand side at the top, you'll see Ka'ala Souza, who is teaching a digital literacy class. We have digital literacy classes in all our libraries across the state right now designed to help people with the very basics. And we've had over 600 people attend those classes since August. It's really important.

It's amazing how many people don't have the basics, but the library is there as a place for them to learn. And we're very grateful to Representative Case for identifying funds for us in order to provide this service through the library in partnership with Workforce Development. At the bottom for creating opportunities, it's a mom and a kid reading.

Our libraries are special places where families can have quiet time together, can read, can learn, can use technology together. And on the bottom right hand side, we did a survey this year where we asked the public what's important to you and what are the best ways that we can communicate with you.

And you'll see the word cloud where the things, the words that were most important to people. But at 13,500 people, we learned a lot about what's important in their community and why libraries matter to them. This year we completed our RFID project. Many thanks for supporting this project. It was designed to improve our services and our efficiencies.

So in every single library, and I know, Representative Woodson, thank you for stopping by the library to try it out. But we have self check stations in every single library. Because it's RFID, patrons can put a stack of books on the pad and it checks them out all at once versus having to do one at a time.

And it's the same for our staff, so we don't have repetitive motion issues. So all of our libraries are now RFID. We also are testing out, to the right, you'll see a smart shelf. Smart shelving allows people to return the books. They can just set them right on the shelf. It checks them back in.

And then other patrons can walk in and see what's been checked out and just returned and pick it up and check it out right there. So we've just started to use it and patrons are finding new ways of seeing what other people are reading and finding new materials.

So with that, I would like to share with you our General Fund budget request from the point of view of our patrons and some of the feedback that we got from them when we did our survey. So if it weren't for the Makawao Reference Librarian, I would not have my present job. So in order for people to use our services and to feel comfortable in using all these important services that are available, we have to have security and has to feel safe to come to the library.

So we recently last year did a bid using the state price list to get a new security guard company and the cost is much more than we expected it would be. So we need an additional 1.2 million to be added to the budget to fund the 43 libraries that we have security already in.

Library is a place for using computers, taking commuter classes, and using free Wi-Fi. We know that it's Important for people to have access to these resources. They use them to connect to government, they use them to connect to school, and they use it to connect to the people that they love.

We have several projects coming up that are going to require temporary closures and we want to make sure that these communities still have access to a library. So we're asking for a total of 48,000, 484,000 in FY26 and 27 to make sure that we have pop up libraries available in Wahiawa, Pearl City, and Makawao.

And then from a patron in Lihue, we heard that the Lihue Library is an important resource for our rural community that does not have access to the things that Oahu residents have. Our family and friends find it to be safe and welcoming community hub.

That said, we want to make sure that we have spaces that people have access to wonderful places. And we are going to be opening a new wonderful place in Waikoloa. And in order to have that space, we're going to need a new branch manager. So as we start the building, we want to hire our new branch manager in FY27.

This would be half a year's salary to bring that person in and to begin working with the community and help us with the construction and getting the collection going and getting ready to hire further staff, which we'll be asking for as we move closer to opening. And then I love it that it is a statewide system that gives me access to every island, every branch and every island. And this one specifically is an addition that we want to do, as we've added the smart shelving with RFID.

We would like to add some automated handling systems to our distribution points across the islands to help our staff. We have a small number of staff who are by hand manually sorting materials. Automated handling system allows the system to actually sort the materials.

So somewhat like Amazon, where you see the rails and the boxes going to places, our staff would not have to manually sort them. So it would help our staff, but it also help us get the books to people more efficiently. So in the first year we're asking for 500,000, sort of FY26.

And in FY27 we're asking for 250,000 so we can slowly start implementing across the distribution points and then eventually across our largest system, our largest libraries. So I'm thinking of Hilo, which has seven book drops, the most book drops I've ever seen anywhere. And they do fill up.

So having to not go out and dump from the book drops and then take those books back to the library and then have to hand sort is a huge, will be a huge savings on staff time so they can put their time in other places and helps us use our staff more effectively. And then library as a haven for air conditioning. Our libraries are a space that people come for comfort, especially when it's hot. And so we're asking for an additional $500,000 to add to our repair and maintenance based budget.

This will help us to repair, make big repairs which we're starting to see more of like elevators and additional preventative maintenance projects for our 51 branches and to administrative offices. These repairs are important. We're trying to move away from what we like to affectionately call the Whac-A-Mole.

Just deal with a project to a maintenance so that we can start taking care of all the issues that we have. And then we're in a maintenance mode for long term care of our buildings. And then we have just a few CIP requests, and I'll turn that over to my colleague Mallory Fujitani.

Good afternoon. Mallory Fujitani for State Library System. So we only have two requests for this next biennial budget. There's the $2 million for the Kapaa planning and design project. That project has been under master planning effort for the last several years and so we want to, and the environment assessment has already been completed.

So we're ready for planning and design of that new library. The existing library is in the tsunami inundation zone, so we do not plan on doing any renovations to that existing structure. The 25 million is much larger than we request annually for our lump sum budget. But we are requesting 25 million in fiscal 26 as also in fiscal 27. Last year, we in the last biennium budget, we lost about 10 million in our lump sum. So it actually slowed down our progress to finish construction on projects that are ready to go out to bed. So with that lump sum funding, it has afforded us the flexibility to both initiate projects as well as to complete construction.

How so?

So, so we have approximately 50 open projects right now and they're in various stages of design and some are ready for construction. We have 10 projects that are going to be starting some form of construction in 2025. Line item appropriations usually are not always the best or most accurate guess of how much the project will cost to complete construction. So we use the lump sum funding to shift over money sometimes so that we have enough funding to award to that contract, rather than stalling the project. We also simultaneously use the lump sum funds to initiate projects where we see a need is coming up.

I've been thinking a lot about community, and I've been thinking a lot about Mr. Rogers. He's from Pittsburgh. That's where I was born. And one of the things that he taught us was about being good neighbors. And it means working together to solve complex issues and cultivate a world in which all people can fulfill their true purpose. And I feel, we feel the library is the place where we do that work. And it's a place where the community can come together and help each other fulfill their purposes. And with your support, I know we can meet our mission.

We can support people, and we can inspire people's curiosity and create opportunities for all to read, learn, and connect. And if you want more information or you'd like to watch some videos about the things that are happening in our libraries, it's in our PowerPoint. So those are links. These were produced by the Friends of the Library of Hawaii. And they're really nice vignettes about the things that are available at the public library. Thank you very much.

Thank you, State Librarian Aldrich. We greatly appreciate it. Members, we will hold the rest of the questions until the end and other presentations. Okay, so next up, we have School Facilities Authority. Thank you for being here.

Good afternoon, Chair Woodson, Vice Chair La Chica. Riki Fujitani with the School Facilities Authority. The School Facilities Authority is a startup agency. Hasn't been along very long. Hasn't been existing very long. Just to give you a brief history, it was established in 2020. It was minimal activity for two years.

In 2022, the first executive director was appointed, confirmed by the Senate in May. And appropriations of 20 million for Central Maui schools and 200 million for preschools were made that year. The subsequent year, workforce housing was added, and that was 170 million. Unfortunately, in 2024, you're looking at the second executive director for the School Facilities Authority.

And I was confirmed in June of last year. The authority itself is, or having an authority is not unusual. Other states and school districts across the nation have implemented school facilities authorities, primarily as a result of a lawsuit where as a result of inequities in financing.

If you look at comparable models that we're trying to compare ourselves to, it would be Massachusetts, where it was created to basically reform the process of funding and using capital improvement funds for schools across the State of Massachusetts. But, you know, that whole model has been applied to New Mexico, Rhode Island, Arizona, New York. So it's not unusual for states to have school facilities authorities. Yeah. So that's the background. I just want to give you a brief idea and answer three basic questions of why, how, and what, what we do. Yeah.

So the why is that we provide modern learning spaces for public schools and preschools and contemporary living environments for workforce housing. That's the why. How we do it is through standards, standards based designs through our goal is to use prefabricated construction for speed and efficiency. And then the key is building maintainability, that it'll last.

Most school buildings should survive eight generations. So it has to be built to be maintainable. And then finally we want to do innovative ways for procurement. Things like pre-qualified vendors for speed, best value versus low bid for quality. And then we're also using design, build, finance, operate, maintain as an alternate delivery model for public sector projects.

So that's the how, how we intend to make this happen. And then the what is what basically the Legislature assigns us. And right now we have three programs. One is preschools, two is Central Maui schools, and three is workforce housing. So the methodology where we're approaching this is through a programmatic approach to our problem.

We have a tendency to just solve a problem, do it as a one off or ad hoc. What you want to do is you want to develop a program that's scalable and then once you do that, then you scale it. So the first example was preschools. It started with a pilot. You established clear standards and design guides for preschool renovations. We used pre-qualified vendors for speed, and then again best value, not low bid contractors. So you got great value. And the result was in seven months we were able to renovate 11 classrooms for 321,000 per classroom.

In the previous way, it took two years at almost double the cost. So again, it's a programmatic approach and that's what we're trying to do for each of our sign programs. Our budget is very, very straightforward. Right. There's basically three major appropriations. The amount of appropriations are significant, a total of 389 million.

But what was released is drastically different. The amount released is 106 million in the three areas. 81 million for preschools, 20 million for Central Maui schools, and 5 million for workforce housing. All that money has been encumbered. A third of it has already been spent. And then we're going into this session for the next biennium.

Our operating budget is even simpler. There's eight of us, eight positions, four civil service, which has been very challenging to fulfill. We hope to post two of them soon. And the budget is pretty much very flat. Then I just want to briefly go over our three programs. Preschools, we already talked about the pilot. Then we scale it.

The next year, 45 classrooms. We're done again within 11 months. The next year we're working on 25. You create this program so you get efficiencies. But what will happen is we will run out of schools to renovate. We have to build new preschools. That's why we're pivoting now towards what we call hubs, which are just preschools.

So we're going to have to build preschool buildings, but we want to do it quicker and more efficiently. So again, based on very strict standards, using prefabricated construction. That's our intent, so we can do it faster. Once you permit it, it's always permitted. Then you go to the next site, next location.

The slide shows you how that can be accomplished. So in Hawaii, we already have three references, actually four, for the technology we're using. These are built in a factory in the Midwest. There's a facility in Kauai built by Dao. There's actually Skyline is not here, but that's been built.

There are actually five classrooms built in Hawaii using prefabricated construction already, two on Kauai and two at University, at University High. Then the most recent example they've used, they built a hospital on the Big Island. Kaiser has adopted this same methodology to build hospitals quicker and more efficiently.

That's what we're going to do for these new preschool. Hubs are, I think, the key. If you look at other models, LA Unified, Oakland Unified, Boston Pre K. The model is preschool hubs or preschools. That's the better offering. Right now, it's primarily classrooms. That's the first swim lane, preschools. Second swim lane is Central Maui schools.

Again, the key is to develop a programmatic solution. I guess the best way to explain this is we're going to go back to the past. Everyone knows that in the past, when we built schools, they all looked the same. They all had slope roofs, wood louvers, hollow tile. They're still around. They've been around for a long time.

If you look at Hawaii from 1949 to 1980, most of our schools, 70% of our school capacity was built during that time with the same standards. Kind of boring, but was cost effective, done really quickly. We have to go back to that model. Yeah, back then they were building a new classroom every three days. So that's the model, unfortunately, we have to go to if we want to do it fast and efficiently. So that's a result of building a lot of standards, and there are five key standards that needs to be established.

The first is what we call ed specs, and those just are the programmatic requirements to meet what a school does. But the ones really important for construction are design guides, construction specifications, standard technical drawings, and commissioning plans. Those all have to be developed in order to, you can get a standardized design and you can move quickly.

And then you have to embrace prefabricated, prefabricated construction. That's the intent. The Central Maui school will be built heavily on these standards, where 60% of the build is going to be classrooms, all standardized. I just put a real brief site plan for the Waikapu site. It's still very, very, very early. But the intent is to build a school as the development, as the new homes come online. Right. This is years and years later. So that's Central Maui schools. The third swim lane or appropriation is workforce housing.

This one, though, because of the Maui fires, most of the funds from that original appropriation had to be used to deal with the fire. So what was started as 170 million resulted in only $5 million being released. That 5 million is primarily being used by a consultant to frame up this whole process.

I mean, I anticipate the legal fees alone to get a deal like this done is probably several million dollars, along with bond council, topographic survey. So all that money will just facilitate the actual contract. The pilot site, though, has been awarded. It's Mililani High School. We've selected a very good local developer that's done this before even.

They actually did a project in Mililani and they've been around for 40 years. That's in process, but it's going to be a long road ahead. We're just at the point where we awarded the developer. But the model, again, it's not proven. And the best example is what's happening at the University of Hawaii.

They actually accomplished two design, build, finance, operate, maintain projects for student housing. The first one was the undergraduate one called the Rise. And the second one, which is in construction now, is at the NOAA site. Again, 270 million private developer building it for the University. They're going to build, finance, operate, and maintain it for the life of the project. That's the model we want to embrace for workforce housing. And that pretty much concludes what we have to talk about, but we'll be open for questions after.

Okay, thank you so much for being here. And last and certainly not least, we have Superintendent Hayashi presenting on behalf of the Department of Education. Thank you for being here too.

Thank you. Aloha, Chair Woodson, Vice Chair La Chica, and Committee Members. Thank you for the opportunity to present the department's budget request for the upcoming fiscal biennial along with other requested topics. Joining me today are, as I shared earlier, Board of Education Chair Roy Takumi, Deputy Superintendents Heidi Armstrong for Academics, Deputy Superintendent Tammi Oyadomari-Chun for Strategy and Administration, and Deputy Superintendent Dean Uchida, Operations. Our team of assistant superintendents are also here sitting in the back to answer any questions.

Our core mission in the Department of Education is education. We develop the academic achievement, character development, and social emotional well being of our students. We are deeply committed to working together with our families, communities, and partners to ensure that every student can achieve their aspirations from early learning to post secondary education and citizenship.

This mission is at the heart of every decision that we make and is the foundation of our budget proposal today. To give you a sense of our scale and scope, we serve over 152,000 students across 258 public schools. Our students come from diverse backgrounds.

Nearly 54% of our students have significant challenges including being economically disadvantaged, requiring special education services, or are English learners to carry out our responsibilities. We have over 42,000 employees including nearly 13,000 teachers.

This makes us one of the largest employers and service providers in the state and the quality of our services has a direct impact on the well being and future success of our state. Under our 2023-29 strategic plan, we're working towards implementing strategies to ensure our graduates are globally competitive and locally committed. Our goal is for every student to graduate on time and be prepared so that they can choose to attend college, enter the workforce, or join the military. It's important for our students to be prepared so they can be successful anywhere in the world.

But we really want our students to remain connected to their communities and choose to stay home here in Hawaii. Our budget request aligns with those goals, ensuring that our public schools receive the predictable and reliable resources to support successful student outcomes. Next, I'd like to highlight the long term progress we've made in student achievement.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered the nation's report card. Hawaii's performance on this national benchmark has shown steady growth over the last two decades in key areas like fourth grade reading and eighth grade mathematics. This growth demonstrates that targeted interventions and investments can yield meaningful results.

This slide shows how our 4th graders have improved over the last 20 years in reading on the NAEP in comparison to the rest of the country. The shaded graph at the bottom of the slide shows where we were back in 2003. Hawaii is the orange bar. The yellow bar is a national average for public schools.

The top graph shows our ranking in 2022, the most recent results that are publicly available. Our reading scores have surpassed the national average and now rank in the top 10 states. On the next slide you can see our 8th grade math scores on the NAEP over the last 20 years.

Again, the bottom graph shows where we ranked nationally back in 2003, with the yellow bar representing the national average for public schools. The top graph shows our ranking in 2022, the most recent results that are publicly available. Our math scores have improved over time, but we're still below the national average.

Our NAEP gains underscore the importance of sustained funding. To continue improving, we need to address persistent challenges, such as learning loss caused by the pandemic and resource gaps in underserved communities. Mathematics and middle school are two of the areas of focus reflected amongst our strategic initiatives in our budget request. Attendance is another focus area.

The pandemic created unprecedented challenges for our students. One stark example is attendance. Our students need to be in school on time every day for the whole day. Before the pandemic, approximately 86% of our students attended school regularly. In the wake of COVID that number dropped to 66%.

We are implementing targeted strategies and are seeing improvements, but we're still not back to pre-pandemic levels and need to invest more. On the next slide you'll see why such an important investment, why it's such an important investment in this area. Inconsistent attendance has profound implications for academic success, social development, and long term outcomes.

Regular attendance is defined as students attending 90% of instructional days in a school year. On this slide you can see the difference in outcomes between students who attend school regularly and those who do not, starting with on time graduation to the left, followed by language arts proficiency, math proficiency, and science proficiency.

Addressing this issue is a top priority and our budget request includes resources to help our schools expand programs designed to engage students and support their academic and emotional recovery. In developing this budget, we sought to balance fiscal responsibility with the urgent needs of our schools and students. This proposal is built around three core principles.

First, alignment with our strategic plan, ensuring our investments directly contribute to student success. Second, balance. Recognizing the fiscal constraints shared by lawmakers and state agencies alike. And third, reliability. Providing students with the consistent resources they need to plan effectively.

Providing schools, I'm sorry, to support our students with the consistent resources they need to plan effectively and support students. This biennial presents challenges and opportunities from addressing inflationary pressures to supporting our workforce and overcoming the lasting impacts of the pandemic. Through this budget, we aim to ensure every student in Hawaii has the opportunity to succeed. I'd like to turn things over to Assistant Superintendent and Chief Financial Officer Brian Hallett to go over our budget requests and the items requested by the Committee.

Hi. Good afternoon, Chair, Vice Chair, Committee Members. Happy New Year. Thank you for the opportunity to review our biennium budget request with you. What I'll be sharing with you today, much of it is what we shared with Finance last Friday for the operating budget request.

I do apologize that the tables that we did provide to the to that Committee, 322 pages in all, they're not linked in this presentation, but you can find them linked on the Finance Committee's website if if you want to go see the line item details. But high level starting with this slide. Quick background, a little more background on development of our budget. The department began its work on the biennium budget request back in April of 2024. To come up with the biennium budget proposal before you, we established a budget review group in response to calls from policymakers that the department make a greater effort to look within its existing budget to fund its operations where possible.

This review group went through a really very rigorous process to review the base budget and requests for all of our offices, for example Office of Information Technology, Facilities and Operations, Fiscal Services, Talent Management, and so on. And we developed recommendations that were ultimately presented to the department's executive leadership team and Superintendent Hayashi for consideration.

The result of this was a flat budget proposal which which is before you, before the Legislature. Through this this budget, it's as mentioned, it aligns with our strategic plan goals. It works within fiscal constraints, as were communicated to us by lawmakers and the governor. It provides schools with predictable, reliable resources and support, and it also recognizes the projected enrollment decline that we're looking at. Next slide. We still face several challenges for fiscal year 25 and beyond.

The first challenge we face is that the base budget for the fiscal biennium 26 and 27 provides nearly $100 million less in state funds than the current fiscal year. The base budget is the starting point for building a budget for the next biennium. Second, we continue to face high inflation. Examples include utilities, athletics, transportations, teacher sabbatical costs.

Third, as mentioned, we still have lingering pandemic impacts, which we see as a national challenge, taking longer to recover than earlier anticipated. And fourth, like all state departments, we face recruitment and retention challenges to having a high quality workforce.

And fifth, we do face uncertainty regarding what type of partnership we can anticipate from the federal government in the years ahead. Next slide. This bar chart, this is our flat budget request. This bar chart provides perspective in relation to the current fiscal year 25 General Fund appropriation compared to the next two years of our request.

So the first bar shows the department's fiscal year 25 General Fund operating budget in blue, nearly $2.2 billion. The second and third bars show the fiscal year 26 and 27 base appropriations in blue, $2.08 billion plus the request. The request is 89 million in the first year and $87.7 million in the second year.

And I would just add or footnote to this, this does exclude collective bargaining, previously approved collective bargaining, which is something that's folded into the budget and you'll see increases in the budget for that. We wanted to show the picture without that and that's how when we speak about our flat budget, this is what this is exactly what we're talking about.

Next slide. The Governor's Budget Request. This table details the proposed changes in FY26 by EDN or these are the programs through which we request funding from the from the Legislature. It also incorporates a previously approved collective bargaining, which wasn't in the previous slide that we showed. So you can see how our budget is being built.

Our request is being built. And it's that second to the last column that is what we consider our quote request. Next slide. Same table just for FY27. So the next slide. While the prior slides broke down the budget by EDN, this slide breaks down our budget by request category.

And from this table you can see that the single largest category by far is non-recurring appropriations reappraisal or the seeking of continued funding in the next two years for funds we have, we're currently enjoying this fiscal year. That set $65 million in the first row, which is again probably three quarters of everything that we're asking for.

The next slide. The Department CIP request is significant because we manage over 21.5 million square feet of facilities across 266 sites statewide. Our prior approaches to the implementation of the department CIP have not been effective in managing our school facilities and meeting the needs of our students across all islands.

This is why we need to return to a risk based and proactive approach to address our facilities and infrastructure needs. Much of our CIP budget is organized into 11 categories or buckets, as seen on this slide. For each bucket, we have developed a prioritized list of school projects that we believe is an efficient and manageable categorization of the department's necessary facility and infrastructure improvement needs for all schools statewide.

It's important that we have the flexibility that is provided by appropriating funding in lump sum buckets as it gives us the ability to manage and execute more projects more efficiently and in order of needs within these respective buckets. We understand that for some this is a change in the management and implementation of the department's operations.

We have continued the education and communication with our complex area superintendents and principals as we move forward to realign management and operations of the CIP and repair and maintenance program. We have also begun to reach out to legislative leadership and others to work with our partners on these changes.

The department has reevaluated and will continue to reassess the CIP and deferred maintenance priorities with an updated perspective and is in the process of refining its prioritization process to distinguish between necessities and wants. This CIP request is the department's first step toward a more fiscally responsible, targeted, and sustainable strategy to address the basic infrastructure needs of an evolving and dynamic public school system. We are humbly asking for and need your support for this approach to best serve our students and staff.

You can see the department's board approved request for $1.8 billion in the biennial for the biennium and what the governor has included in his budget. We ask for your support of the department's budget request, both the strategic lump sum approach and the amount to meet the needs of our students statewide.

For student transportation, providing reliable transportation is a critical service that ensures our students can access education. The department contracts out for our bus services to safely transport students to and from school. Because of the ongoing shortage of school bus drivers with the required commercial driver's licenses. In order to prioritize transportation for students with disabilities, we announced temporary suspensions of 138 bus routes at the start of the school year back in August. This impacted 3,720 students on three islands, Oahu, Hawaii island, and Maui.

Thanks to Governor Green's emergency proclamation to help address the situation and in working closely with our bus contractors, the department has been steadily restoring routes over the past 4 months. As of today, significant progress has been made and 86% of the effective routes has been reinstated. Efforts to restore the remaining 18 suspended bus routes are ongoing.

Our contractor, Ground Transport, is actively recruiting new drivers, leveraging the governor's emergency proclamation to streamline the hiring process. The proclamation allows for drivers with a commercial driver's license, a CDL, and a P endorsement permitting them to transport passengers to operate school buses temporarily.

In lieu of the S endorsement specifically required for school bus drivers. This the company will also engage with tour bus operators to further expand capacity. The department also initiated an after action review of school bus issues, which was completed in December.

Key takeaways include various strategies to increase the number of available bus drivers, strategies to reduce the current need for bus drivers, better preparation for school staff to communicate and respond to any future driver shortages, and language in future bus contracts to better address instances of non-compliance.

Next is organizational alignment as part of our strategic Plan, we have launched an organizational alignment initiative to ensure our department's structure, workforce, and resources are fully aligned with our goals of delivering high quality education, supporting our employees, and improving operational efficiency. Ultimately, this effort is about creating a department that is more effective, equitable, and agile in delivering the support our schools and students need.

It reflects our commitment to continuous improvement and the belief that an honest look at organizational at our organizational structure is necessary for us to achieve our goal of becoming a world class educational system that best serves our students. We are committed to transparency and collaboration through this process, engaging employees, unions, and stakeholders.

Key focus areas include redefining roles and responsibilities, adjusting duplication of services, and modernizing systems to meet current and future demands such as labor market shifts and advancements in technology like artificial intelligence. Part of this initiative involved a comprehensive review of our state offices conducted in partnership with the Council of Great City Schools.

The council brings together 78 of the nation's largest urban school systems in a coalition dedicated to the improvement of education for children in inner cities. The department is a member district. The CGCS review focused on five of our seven state offices.

The primary aim in asking CGCS to perform this review was to identify opportunities for streamlining processes, improving internal controls, and ensuring more effective communication within and outside the department. This review was not merely a routine audit. It was a proactive step to address long standing issues and to position our system for long term success.

The department's executive leadership is thoroughly analyzing the CGCS report and exploring alignment proposals that prioritize student outcomes and enhance collective impact. These efforts are informed by employees' suggestions, professional conversations, and careful consideration. Any changes to organizational structures affecting staff will follow the union consultation process.

Future phases of this initiative will address alignment at the tri-level in complex area offices as well as modernization efforts. Updates to our organizational structure will be submitted to the board in phases, ensuring alignment with our strategic goals and fostering trust among our school communities.

In closing, our budget request reflects the department's commitment to improving student outcomes and addressing the need for our schools and communities. Over the years, we have seen progress in key areas, from academic achievement to initiatives that foster equity and opportunity for for all of our students. These gains demonstrate that thoughtful investments in public education yield meaningful results.

We are confident that with your continued support we can build on this momentum ensure every student in Hawaii has access to the high quality education that they deserve. Thank you for your time and attention today. My team and I stand ready to answer any questions and look forward to continuing our work together to strengthen public education in our state. Mahalo.

Thank you, Superintendent Hayashi for being here. We are going to go back now to State Library System. Members, do you have any questions for State Libraries? Vice Chair La Chica.

Thank you so much for your presentation. I just have a follow up question from last in from last year's info briefing. I believe in your briefing last year you had shared an update about wanting to issue an RFP to work on communications and rebranding for your program. So just wanted to ask if you have an update on that and how it's going.

Yes, thank you for asking. We are, we have just completed it. The reason our presentation was so plain is because we're about to move to some new imaging and also our new brand story and we'll be sharing it with our staff in February and after that we'll be launching in March to the public.

So we used all the feedback from the 13,500 people to really understand what's important to them and what are the best ways we can communicate with them. And we hope to use all the strategies that we are going to be presenting to our staff in the coming years.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Members, any other questions?

I have a question, Chair.

Go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you, Stacey. Anyone who has a pleasure of knowing you knows that you're enthusiastic about our Hawaii State Public Library System, so thank you for the work that you do. I just had a question about the nexus between the Hawaii State Public Library System and the Friends of the Library of Hawaii and how that kind of contributes to funding and just the support that that provides. It's my understanding that that's like a nonprofit arm, but I know that they've been doing really good work with the Village Books and Music, which I support, and all the book sales. So can you just kind of explain that relationship?

Thank you.

Sure.

So the Friends of the Library of Hawaii are in statute as our fundraising arm. Originally they were a foundation, but they're the Friends. And so they raise money, and that money helps us to do programming. So large programs like summer reading. And then they also provide support to our libraries. It can be for projects.

They support education of the librarians to get library degrees. And they also are a partner with us sometimes with grants that we have been able to obtain to support various projects like E-Rate. When we first did E-Rate and got involved, we were short on funds, and they were able to identify a funder who was able to help us with our match.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Members, any other questions for State Libraries? I have a quick question. So regarding one of your focus areas, you say that you try to strengthen literacy rates amongst patrons. Do you have any data as to how your work is increasing literacy rates in the schools? Do you partner up with them on a systems level or individually as libraries to school?

Not yet. That's something that we hope to do in the future so that we have some actual data. We don't have a lot of data, but we do know that, from Hawaii itself, but from studies that have been done nationally, children who attend story times and are part of library programs tend to do better and are ready for school. They test better when they take tests for, like, kindergarten for readiness, school readiness. So we're hoping to. We've been talking with the schools about literacy and can we target. I think the best would be to target a small population and really see if we can get some numbers.

Okay. Is there an appetite for that, that kind of work?

From our side, it would be nice to know how we can support the schools in getting ready and actually have some data and, and I think for the schools too.

Okay. I'm seeing some, some nods. Okay, very good. And you said that you're, per your CIP request, you have a need for security guards and that's because of the recalibration of a higher price point it takes to fulfill that obligation. Is that the highest CIP need or are there other competing equal needs?

So the security is separate from CIP.

Yes, but just in terms of resources allocated to the system.

At this time we're really focused. I can't think of any for CIP, CIP related. I think for us security is important right now. We do still have people who are not, cannot self control themselves. And in certain communities we have more problems than others. And so the security guards are vital to have.

So being able to fund the security guards is important for the safety of our libraries. So security and safety are at the top because we want our staff and our public to feel safe in our libraries. And if they don't have that, I know some people occasionally don't feel safe coming into our libraries and I've had conversations with people where it's been a challenge.

So that's like a must have in your mind request? Okay. All right. Thank you so much for that. Members, any other questions? Go ahead.

Thank you so much for your presentation. I'm curious, do you have an idea or general knowledge of how many of your libraries are in flood zones and will need to be relocated?

That's a great question. Yes, we've been working on that, actually. Kapaa is one for sure.

Kihei Library is one as well.

Yes. Kihei is right there at the bottom as well. I think we have a couple. We're working at the statewide level. There's a group that's looking at locations. We don't have that many, but we do have a few. But Kapaa is probably the closest to the water right now. So we're trying to get them moved, but eventually we'll have to move Kihei, I think as well.

Yes. Every time we have a mud event, I think it, it gets hit.

It does. And it gets, it closes the library for the community. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Representative. Members, any other questions? Okay. Seeing none, we will move on to SFA. Thank you so much.

Okay, Members, SFA. Any questions for SFA? I have a couple questions. You have questions? Go ahead, Vice Chair. Go ahead.

Thank you so much, director, for your presentation. Can you share again with the Committee your, I know you shared your staffing, but like your, just the, the governance structure as it relates to maybe particularly like the, the CIP process and just how it's, the, maybe the governance structure of SFA. How is it different from the DOE? Anything that you would like to highlight or share?

Sure. Because we're so small, the key is building programs. So the people we hire, and we have a mix of architects, two architects, one engineer, and one accountant. They run programs. So one is assigned to preschools, another is for Central Maui schools, and a third for workforce housing.

The whole goal is to hire the right consultants and manage them well in a program model. So given that we have that, we split them up and their whole goal is to, when I say see the forest, not the trees, don't worry about the onesies and twosies. Think of a program in terms of building your consultants, your standards, how you're going to do construction. So it's repeatable.

So I guess given that we're so small, that's the only way we're going to be able to do this, to build scalable programs for preschools where we're going to have to build hundreds of classrooms and then new schools. There's a need for new schools to replace schools.

So you have to build a model again that can be repeated over and over again, no matter which island, which location. Then finally, for workforce housing, we have one, hopefully that gets past the finish line. But in order to meet the needs of the DOE workforce, you're going to need to build thousands of workforce housing. So it has to be very cookie cutter, very programmatic.

Thank you. Because we do all know that capital improvement, a lot of our projects, there's just been a lot of challenges. There's been a lot of delays, a lot of lapses. And so what is the Ready Keiki initiative goal? Well, how many total classrooms and by when are we supposed to deliver, like, the total number of preschool classrooms? And how are you able to really get through those, like, yeah, those, like, hurdles, like those construction delays, permitting delays? What, you know, like that typically we've experienced in the past as it comes to like, government agencies.

Yeah. The first part of the Ready Keiki initiative is very bold. If you want to build universal pre K for the State of Hawaii, you're looking at almost 8,000 underserved children. You're going to need approximately 400 classrooms at 20 students per classroom.

So in order to achieve that, you're going to have to build 30 or 40 preschool hubs. So that's a daunting tax. You're not going to do that every year. But the idea is five or six every year for the next decade. That's the only way you're going to get it. But that's just the facility side.

You still need to have the workforce developed. So all these other components have to line up. Our hope is that we'll have the first hub open in two years. And again, we're not creating consultants. We don't create architects and engineering firms, we don't create contractors.

We're working with the same pool of contractors, but we try to do everything we can to take away that time and energy and what slows you down ahead of time. So for example, you can select all your consultants months ahead. And when the money comes, they've already been selected and awarded the contract.

So when the governor releases the money, then they can start going. Similarly to contractors. We just closed an RFP for General A and B contractors statewide. 30 contractors applied. So all the contractors will be set up already way before the money is even appropriated.

So you can do all that ahead of time, which that alone saves you almost a year in the whole process. Take all what you can out of it ahead of time. You can't control permitting. That's an exterior force. Right, those things. But everything else, you can deal with it ahead of time to expedite the entire process. That's basically what we're doing and that's what other school districts across the country have done.

Thank you, Vice Chair. And just to piggyback off some of that line of questioning, per the Pre K, the ECE expansion for 3 and 4 year olds, you articulated 20 students per each teacher and teacher assistant. That's statutorily articulated in the EOEL Pre K classrooms. Is that same requirement embedded for Preschool Open Doors and the preschool, the private sector preschool classrooms? I know that that's most certainly a best practice, but are you looking at that same ratio and is that embedded into your calculations per that build out?

Right. So the renovations by EOEL, those are by Office of Our Learning. But the model with hubs has to, has to pivot where you're going to follow models like the Seagull Schools in Honolulu. City and county built the facility, but it's outsourced to a provider.

So we predict over time in order to meet the need, you're going to have to outsource more than half of these hubs where the private industry gets to use the facility, but all the curriculum is based through a private provider subsidized by Preschool Open Doors or other means of...

You don't know if they have that same ratio, that 20 to 2 ratio?

Yeah, that's I think the Department of Human Services kind of requirement, which is the regulatory agency for preschool.

Okay. And how are you defining hubs? When you say learning hubs, how is that defined?

Yeah, we use hubs. It's basically a preschool, but it's between four to eight classrooms. So you have critical mass. And the best example is what's being built at the NOAA site. So we are working with the University of Hawaii for graduate student housing building a site that houses six classrooms. That way you get critical mass. Right.

Okay, go ahead.

So I have a question on your workforce housing component. And you mentioned the NOAA site. So we just did a tour through Manoa's campus a few days ago. And so that's a P3 project. Now I'm concerned. One of the challenges is that the rents will be essentially market rate. So are there any plans to ensure that these workforce units that you are creating will remain affordable?

Right. So that's based all of the RFPs. So the RFP for Mililani had it in the gap region, where that big, I guess gap is between 60% AMI to 120. The winning bid though did a blend between 60 and 110. And that was one of the reasons why they were selected. So that's the requirement of the RFP.

It'll be a requirement in the eventual development contract. So the developer has to meet that requirement in order to get selected. Yeah, yeah. Right. With, with housing. And the UH project is different. Right. Student housing is a whole different calculation. And they actually want. So, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't have to comply with specific requirements. If the project though is funded even by HUD or LIHTC funding, then it's even more stringent. Right. Because those are the requirements of all the federal guidelines.

Thank you.

So per that HUD in LIHTC, how are you working out the timing with those particular projects? Because oftentimes you're not aware if you qualify for those credits until sometimes after the fact you're doing your PNLs for that type of development. And so how are you folding that in?

That's the challenge. So like you said, we're at the beginning in the procurement stage where we awarded a vendor. Financing is part of that process. The vendor we awarded is using a combination of LIHTC, Rental Housing Fund, HUD community block grants, and that's all tenuous spirit based upon a year to year evaluation on when you apply.

If they don't get funding at that time, it gets pushed out or it doesn't even go through. Yeah. What we're trying to tell the developer is build contingencies on private bond funding, tax exempt bond funding, but then that affects the economics of the deal, which means there may be less units. Right. With different terms because the financing doesn't pencil out in the original proposal.

So that's how they're addressing it. They decrease the density level per that benefit they were going to obtain from the LIHTC or HUD?

They have to in order to make the deal work.

Okay. And so you mentioned that there is, you manage consultants and that's one mechanism in which you are able to complete these projects, you know, quicker than what's traditionally the case. You referenced earlier. You said that you are completing projects, a particular project within seven months when typically it takes two years and it's double the cost. I know you talked a little bit about some of the processes as to how you're able to do that, but can you just explain a little bit more? Because we're trying to get a feel for the rhythm and some of the best practices as to how we can get to a better place.

Right. The hard part is, right, everything's looked at ad hoc, one offs. You know what's in vogue now? You fund this, you do it for a couple projects, and then next year you decide to fund something else, and then you find whatever's next. So there's no programmatic approach, no rhythm, no cadence in it.

It's difficult to have that kind of discipline where you're going to consistently fund preschools for the next decade or you consistently going to repair roofs for the next decade or air conditioning. But once you, if you're committed to doing that, then the SFA or the DOE then can build a programmatic approach.

One critical, one that's necessary and it's part of the DOE's budget request is fire alarms. You can't fix all the fire alarms in one in a short time frame. It's going to be a systematic funding for the next decade where they can build a team solely focused on standards for fire alarms and then fix them regularly for the next decade. Same thing with preschool, same thing with air conditioning. You know, if you don't have that discipline to fund it, then you can't build the long term solution that's repeatable, scalable.

Okay, so probably a longer term conversation we don't have time for today. And you also said that 2/3 of your projects are already encumbered, defined as they're under contract, Is that correct? Did I understand that correctly?

Yeah. So what happens is when, once the allotments were received, they still were subject to lapsing. In order to prevent from lapsing, we encumbered literally most all of the funds that were allotted. So we have enough design money for quite a while for preschools. And so all the money that we're being deployed now is purely for construction.

Construction of the hubs. Yeah, construction of the renovations. So the designs can keep on going. We can still plan for it for this biennium, the next biennium, and as construction funds are appropriated consistently, we just keep on building preschool hubs.

Do you also have that same three year lap period?

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.

That's in your provisions as well? Okay, what is, and it's early on. But do you have an idea or an estimate as to how much the cost is per classroom, price per square foot, which is the unit of measurement a lot of developers use for schools?

Yeah. With, you know, on a school campus, there's such a wide variety of buildings. Right. You have, well, you have the parking lots, you have the play spaces, you have the cafetorium, you have the gym. Those are much harder to estimate. But we think with the classrooms, which is 60% of your build, based upon the models we're developing, where you can't deviate from it, we hope we can get $750 square foot for a prefabricated classroom.

750 per square foot?

Yes. Built in a factory in the Midwest.

Okay.

Shipped to Hawaii. Flat pack.

That's pretty low.

Yeah. Assembled on site.

Okay, thank you for that. And what is the best example of a prefab built out in Hawaii? Not just schools, but just in general.

Kaiser Hospital, Kona. That's a prefab. They're rolling that out nationwide. Kaiser has made a commitment in order to scale and build hospitals in a cost effective, timely manner. They're going prefabrication.

And I'm not familiar. Is that a project that's already started or. It's open already. I should know that. Because we probably want to go take a look at that design to kind of see... When people think prefabrication, they think not as sturdy. I think Is, is the idea. But you're saying that's not the case.

Not the case at all. Yep, they're building hospitals. They built. I mean, lots of schools in the mainland have embraced prefabrication. And there are actually two prefabricated classrooms at University Lab School. That's been around for about a decade now, and they're working out pretty fine.

You said 750 price per square foot. 750 for classrooms. Okay, that is very good.

Very basic classrooms, nothing fancy.

And what is, what is your, what is your communication between SFA and DOE when you are working with them to enhance neighborhoods or looking at, you know, adding on like pre K classrooms or et cetera, et cetera?

Yeah. So there's actually three different groups. The first group is preschools, and we work with Heidi Armstrong on that because although, you know, under the Constitution, the DOE only does preschools for sped, but she's the key person. So we have a regular steering committee with her, along with EOEL and charter schools, all the preschool people.

So that's the avenue for it. In terms of Central Maui schools, we have a monthly meeting with Facilities Development Branch, who's tasked to also build new schools in Hawaii. So that's the group we meet with every month. And we're at the process of setting another steering committee group meeting for the workforce housing. And that's going to be a different group, probably the land group at the Department of Education.

Okay, Members, any other questions? First, go ahead, Rep.

Hi. So I wanted to come back to the $750 per square foot on the prefab. What is the lifespan and durability of a prefab versus a concrete block and mortar?

This is a stick model. Actually, I think it's the same thing. Everyone thinks it's a, it's just everything's fabricated in a factory, then assembled on site. So you're still laying slab on grade. It's just everything's panelized in steel.

And just help me understand prefab. We're not prefabbing concrete slabs in the Midwest and shipping.

So you said, you had said earlier in your presentation that the schools out here that were built with concrete and hollow tile lasted 80 years. You had said that earlier.

Yeah, no.

Probably longer than that.

Probably longer. So when you, when you take the original cost and the length and the life of the that building, is that comparable to the 750 per square foot prefab? I mean, in light of everything that's going on in our, in our world today with fires and everything, the concrete and stuff like that stand a little more safe.

Yeah, our intent is not to put all our eggs in one basket. So there's basically three fabrication models that we hope to build with. The first is prefabricated panelized, which will be built in the Midwest because there's no factories in Hawaii. The second one will be mass timber, which is another very popular way where everything is cut in factories but assembled on site. And the Carpenters Union's behind it, they've actually had a training session for the carpenters apprentices already to train them on that new technology because they think that'll be real key in the rebuilding of Maui.

And then the third one will be traditional building materials like HPM where they're built on site. The idea is we don't want to go all in on any one thing but, but have a variety of frameworks depending upon the situation, the site, and where the supplies are. So yeah, traditional hollow tile slope roof is still viable except you need windows with light and air conditioning, unlike the old schools. Yeah, but our first one up intends to be the panelized construction, the one that was just built in Kona.

We have to try in addition to schools, and there's a lot of them, the State of Hawaii has 594 buildings that have reached end of life, meaning they're over 70 years old, that they should be reduced. 594 buildings, that's another billion dollars that has to be replaced. There's one more one. We have 1800 portables.

We have 61 elementary schools of portables in Hawaii. We have to replace the portables, and those are all stick frame, wood frame. So the task at hand is tremendous. We have to look at different ways to replace this physical plant that we have.

Go ahead. One more.

I want you to circle back. In your presentation you had mentioned best value versus low bid. So I understand that, but why wouldn't you guys go with a low bid LPTA contractor? What, what would, what is the benefits of going best value if you have a LPTA contractor? LPTA is lowest price technically acceptable by a qualified contractor. So the government, I know the government does a lot of value based awards, but historically value based awards cost more.

Unless you do like a JOC, a job order contract and or a MATOC, which is a multiple award task order contract in which you get a bunch of contractors approved, and then when the project comes up, they're already in the system, already approved, they again, they then bid on it. It would help save.

Right. So that's exactly what we did for the preschools. It's a sort of a MATOC, not a big one. Of 30 pre-approved contractors and each time they do a job, they're scored on how well they did. So on the next job, four get invited to bid. Price is only one factor. It's still very important.

But what's more important is the rating on how well they did in the last one. So you reward good behavior. So that way you get a cadence on good contractors doing good work that's repeatable. So then you get scale in terms of what they can do and value and quality in what gets built.

So our recent RFP that we just closed is again similar to a MATOC. It's General A and Bs between jobs, between 1 million to $10 million. And they're gonna be bid on subsequent jobs, preschool hubs, school classrooms, as we get the funds to deploy it. We're not reinventing the wheel.

This is how government does it, this is how other school districts does it. You can always low bid. When that's not a good option, you can always say, no, we're going to low bid this one because we think we can get the best value. But generally that's not the case.

I mean, if you're going to fix your house, you generally don't go with the lowest bidder, you go with who you think can provide the best value. Right. So we want to give that same avenue, but you have to do it through pre-qualification, through RFPs versus a low bid statute.

Vice Chair.

Director, just confirm again. So thanks for sharing the history. You've been in existence for the last five years, fully, I guess staffed in the last couple years and also funded. But right now you're limited as to what, in statute, you're limited as to what legislatively we assign to you.

Right. There's three people can give us work. One is the governor, the second is the Legislature, and the third is the Board of Education.

So only the Legislature, the governor, and the Board of Education can give you projects. And right now your only projects are preschools, Central Maui school, and workforce housing.

That's correct.

In the models that you've studied, like Massachusetts, for example, how are they set up in terms of their authorities?

Oh, completely different. They actually get a percentage of the state tax base. I don't think Hawaii is ready to give that to us yet. And then they control the CIP budgets for all the schools in the State of Massachusetts. Hawaii is unique because we only have one school district. Massachusetts has 64.

And to get continuity among 64 school districts, the school business school facilities authorities creates all the standards, manages that money, allocates those grants. So they're the gatekeeper for a vast majority of CIP funds for the State of Massachusetts. So that I think is one model that aspirational that we should evolve to where then you have continuity statewide amongst 264 schools. You have an agency solely focused on building that kind of reform of the CIP process.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Members, any other questions?

I have a quick question, Chair.

Please go ahead.

Thank you. I just wanted to know if you guys have some sort of internal database or how do you organize and prioritize your projects? Is there a ranking system? Is everything happening simultaneously? How does that work? Just generally.

Sure. So for preschools we have this thing called a preschool heat map, which will... It's a database that overlays need based on student demographics, birth rates, and where people work. So with the heat map, it tells you where you should build preschool hub.

So everything we build, right now there's 8 projected, is based on a preschool heat map that shows that's where and what should be built. So I can provide you with the projects that are being done and why they're there. We want it to be defensible and auditable. In terms of Central Maui schools, the first system that was built is called a classroom capacity assessment, which takes more than just student enrollment data, but takes housing data for Central Maui for the next decade.

And based upon that, based upon that projection, you're going to need three or four schools in Central Maui because that's where all the housing is being built in Maui. So these are the systems that need to be built. So it's a defensible decision, it's a data driven decision. Right. On why you should build there. Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

I have a quick question. Okay, so these schools that are being built. In my district, none of them are ADA compliant or accessible. So these schools that are planned out, are they going to be ADA accessible and will they have accessible playground equipment as well?

Oh, it has to be because they're new schools, so you have to meet that ADA requirement. So if you build a second floor, it has to have an elevator. That's a requirement. On the old schools it's not. Right, but. And then unless you consistently give significant amounts of money for ADA compliance, the amount of money needed...

I understand it's expensive, but getting sued is even more expensive.

Yeah, but that's a consistent funding that should be provided in order to meet the requirements of the federal law.

Do you have an estimate of how much that would cost to bring our schools up to compliance?

That I do not have. But I think the Department of Education has a pretty good idea of the scope of that problem. Yep.

Thank you.

We might need to ask OFO that question, the DOE. Okay. Thank you. Okay, going on to Department of Education. Thank you guys for sticking around. Appreciate it. She's still here. Members, are there any questions for DOE?

I have a question. Thank you, Chair. I just basically wanted to know, there's, you guys have a general curriculum or just a general, basically umbrella of what the DOE stands for. But it's obvious that schools in certain locations or whatnot kind of diverge and just have the autonomy to create their own curriculum. I know Makakilo Elementary.

They're doing big things with their reading program. I know Ewa Makai Middle School. They have a very innovative curriculum. So how does that work as far as allowing each school to have that autonomy and what does that structure look like, just generally? Thank you.

Thank you for the question. I have sitting with me Deputy Superintendent Armstrong, who's responsible for academics. And all of our curriculum within the department, we are focused on Common Core, English, mathematics, the NGSS for science. Deputy Armstrong, talk about viable curriculum...

And you can explain how Common Core is a is a internationally benchmark standard that 43 states adopted initially. Most states still have that in place, but it's different from curricula. The standards are all the curriculum. But there is a distinction between the two because I know Common Core is like a, it's like a dirty word now.

Okay, well, we do have our English language arts, our science, our math, all of our core standards that we have on a regular schedule to update based on the research, the national organizations, and so our standards are solid and up to date, and that's what we expect the students to know and be able to do.

Just this past year, we've required that all schools have a viable curriculum, which is a curriculum that has been vetted that addresses the standards that we follow. So prior to that, schools could, schools don't have to have the same curriculum. Schools could make up their own resources.

We have just a few schools who still have teacher created curriculums, but they've gone through a lengthy vetting process to ensure that they address all of the standards and they have a track record of showing success, meaning continued proficiency and growth using that curriculum.

We also realized that the teacher, not the curriculum, is the most important thing in the classroom. But we do need the curriculum to keep that bar, to keep us focused on the standards that we teach and what the learning should look like at the particular grade levels or the content areas.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Members, questions? Please go ahead.

So I have a question. Maybe you can, she can help you. So I know when we do these numbers and percentages, everything is based on averages. So, you know, Wai'anae High School, which is in my community. It started out with seven kids and it was really concerning.

And then it grew to 20 kids in the last month. I want to say 35 days. And I've been asking, I've been trying. So we have really good graduation numbers. However, proficiency and retaining is really poor. I know. Sir, you had mentioned one of the options is military. So I'm going to base this 20, these 20 kids on military. Five of them graduated in 21, 6 in 2,2 and nine in 23. Not one of them has placed over a 22 on the ASVAB, which means in today's military they cannot even get in. Is that, can I, I don't know.

Like you said, it could be the teacher, it could be the curriculum. How often are we checking in on these things? How often? Averages. When we do averages, communities like mine, communities like Wai'anae High School tend to fall behind. It's a known. Our graduation numbers aren't falling, but the level of education they're getting is subpar.

So we do have checkpoints. With our ESSER funds, we were able to purchase and through superintendent's direction, universal screeners, which allows us to assess three times a year in English language arts and math. We also have the Smarter Balanced assessment at the end of each year.

We do realize we need to triangulate the data, make sure that grades do reflect the assessments that we do take in. And we are continually working to ensure that the grades that are given matches the work that is produced, which is based on the standards that we're expected to teach.

So what happened, and I'm not sure, but I'm going to give away my age here, but when I was in high school, we had to take the HSTEC, the Hawaii State Test of Essential Competencies. And that was a placement test in 10th grade. And if you didn't graduate, if you didn't pass it in your three years, then you graduated or you finished school with a certificate of completion. What's the chances something like that can be re-implemented? Because you actually hurt these students a lot more by graduating them with a diploma, and their scores or their education is, like I said, subpar.

Thank you for that information. And we are looking into what assessments we have, whether they be end of course exams, our summative assessment at the end of the year, which is currently our Smarter Balanced assessment. So we do have continued work to do in that area, and we will continue to work and focus on that.

Thank you, reps. I mean, that's, that's a, those are salient questions, and I think oftentimes parents conflate grades with proficiency and those are two very different things and it's not just happening here in Hawaii. It's happening across the nation and so those are very real conversations that we very much need to have.

So I have a quick question about enrollments. And so you're, you're saying that it continues to decrease. Do we know as to why there is a decrease where those students are going and this is a part of a national trend or if it's something specific to Hawaii?

Assistant Superintendent Elizabeth Higashi and--well, Beth's getting ready. There are a number of reasons, and Beth is the Assistant Superintendent for the Office of Strategy, Information and Performance, and her office has been looking extensively into trends across the state and long-term, both here and nationally, so...

Thank you so much for asking that question. I think, to be honest, enrollment is a very complicated issue and it's something that we are actually still continuing to evaluate. And the reason why it is complicated is there are multiple factors beyond what we have access to in regards to data to navigate.

I think one of the things that we look at the department is not only students who enter, but also exit the department, but that doesn't really also capture students who never enter our schools, and so one of the things that we are looking at is doing deeper enrollment studies to take a look at other factors, external and internal, that impact our enrollment, but we are aware that there are current projections that we have that show our declining enrollment. That is due to factors such as declining birth rates and also national trends that we see across the nation around enrollment in general.

Okay. Thank you so much. Go ahead.

So I just want to have a follow-up question in regards to how school and catchment areas are determined. So I just was a member of the HIDOE up until a few months ago, and one issue that we have noticed--I worked out of KMR--is we had students geographically that didn't make sense attending a school.

One example is in Waikiki. So a geographic boundary was right on Ala Moana Boulevard right before you cross over from Waikiki to Ala Moana side. A student that lived right at that corner would have to attend Jefferson Elementary School on the complete opposite side of Waikiki.

Meanwhile, they could walk to Lunalilo Elementary School, which would only be two or three blocks from where they actually physically live. I understand the geographic barrier was Ala Wai Canal, but there's also another case where students that lived over near Atkinson, so near Ala Moana Shopping Center, would have attended Ala Wai Elementary School.

And the same concept. They would have to actually pass by Lunalilo Elementary School to go to Ala Wai Elementary School. So for us--we always think about child safety--so working out of the Honolulu District Office, when we think about a student having to cross through downtown on foot--because more oftentimes than not kids are walking to school than they were getting--catching rides--sometimes it just didn't make sense.

And having a child have to cross completely across Waikiki in the morning where it's very, very busy to get to Jefferson didn't make any sense versus they could just walk to two and a half blocks to Lunalilo Elementary School. I understand the districts push down.

So I understand the districts move into different areas for different encatchment based off of population, but that was one thing that it just didn't make any sense to us. And when parents would reach out to our office about it, we just tell them, 'well sorry, this is the area that you have to live in.'

'You have to apply for a GE to Lunalilo or whatever to get closer to the school.' But one thing I do want to discuss, I have another follow-up question is, your attendance. What kind of examples in terms of initiatives are the DOE putting into place to increase attendance?

Thank you very much for the question. As far as the geographic exception for the parents who, for the students who were crossing having to cross Waikiki, do you know if those particular instances, GEs, were submitted but not approved?

In this one example, they didn't apply.

Okay.

And they stayed at Jefferson.

Okay, thank you. The other question was about attendance. So let's see. Attendance is very much important and I think as we showed in the presentation that when students--which would make sense, right--students need to be in school in order to get the education, connect with the, most importantly, with the teachers, get the supports that they need.

So we do have an attendance campaign going on in the department, specifically 'Attend Today, Achieve Tomorrow' is what we're focusing on, and we have reached out to our schools for schools to implement various strategies that they have found to be effective, but I'll let Deputy Armstrong go and then I can share a little bit some of the strategies if--yeah.

Sure, sure. Thank you. We are working hard on attendance and one like Superintendent mentioned, our Attendance Matters campaign, where we continue to promote the importance of regular attendance and the ramifications of non-attendance. Schools that--schools use a variety of techniques based on the reasons that their students are absent. So it takes a whole school effort.

And our schools that have shown success have dug deeper into the reasons why the students are absent. Are they not coming to school because they can't get to school? Are they not coming to school because they have other obligations that are put upon them from their home? Are they not coming to school because they don't like school?

Are they not coming to school because they don't feel accepted? So each one of those reasons would take take a very different intervention, and our schools who've been most successful have dug deep in that data and they continue and then they provide the appropriate interventions for the individual students.

Our schools are also being very proactive in sending out communication and messaging to the families, reporting the number of absences, who they can contact to to get assistance or to get help if they're struggling getting their child to school, and there are several apps that have been very effective or parents have reported they like that communication.

Many parents are very aware that when their student or when their child is not in school, but some parents aren't aware and they appreciate that information. So there are a variety of interventions, but it's the school's relentless focus on the reason why and what are we going to do about it and then intervening, and we'll need to continue to do that until our attendance gets back up to even pre-Covid levels, but then we can go higher after that.

One strategy has proven to be very effective is building on the importance of attendance, but also somewhat of a challenge to students in each grade. We have schools that for each grade level, they look at the average attendance for each month and the class that has the highest attendance rate within each of the grade levels are awarded, like for example, like a WWE type Championship belt, but it's an attendance belt.

And so the students are able to take a picture by the school's marquee, and they all are very prideful of being able to win and to hold on to that belt, and they actually tell their parents, 'you know, I need to be in school because we want to get the belt.'

And I think it's inventive, but it helps students. We want them to be in school because learning's important, but hey, you know what, if a belt is going to get them to school and to encourage them to get there, that works. And so schools are--our principals and teachers--are doing whatever it takes to get students in school, and like Deputy said, to get that attendance rate up.

I'll just add one more thing. There have been a number of reputable studies that have come out, not in Hawaii, but nationally and internationally that following Covid, the attitude, many families' attitude toward the importance of attendance has shifted. And so we're hearing more.

And nationally and internationally, they're hearing more of 'well, I'll just keep my child home today,' you know, whereas prior it was 'you got to get to school.' Also shifting with--there was such an emphasis for, what, two years or a little longer, if you have a runny nose, you have a headache, don't leave your house, stay home, and I think some of that still persists. But it is a challenge, but we'll continue to use our strategies to address the challenge so we can get our kids back in school.

It's interesting cause I know that, of course, as everyone in this room knows, the distance learning did not yield the results that I think everyone wanted, and so you think that parents are aware and want their kids to be in school where there's more effective education learning.

I want to quickly ask, Superintendent, you mentioned that there are certain strategies that you folks are using to increase attendance, and as Dr. Armstrong mentioned, that there are different individual methodologies as to how you achieve that. One of those strategies is to leverage some of the partnerships like with Community--Hawaii Community Alliance and Community Schools.

They have shown increases in attendance up to 30% in some cases, and so is there like a, a preferred best practice? I know this is hard question that you are leveraging as a department to get to a place to increase attendancy in these schools.

I think, Chair, that's a very good point. As we kind of shared, it's the most--in my opinion--the most effective way to get students to school is working together with parents, helping students to feel connected, helping students to feel that a desire to be in school, to learn that they have friends, someone that they can turn to, all those things and that need for the importance of safety in school, peers, counseling.

I think all of our teachers, our counselors, we oftentimes say that, you know, is there a significant adult on campus that our students can turn to should they need support? And that's really important. And so I think, as you shared about the community school model, it is about engaging individuals, it is about building connections, building relationships with not only internal to the school, but as you said, also external partners. You know, some of the things that help connect students happen in school, but also some things happen after school.

Some of the things, for example, for our middle school kids, I think back to when I was in middle school, it was a difficult time for me. You know, moving from elementary to middle, lot bigger kids, bigger school, and then moving to high school. That's another transition.

Those transition points are really important. For middle school, for example, it's a challenge for everyone, all of our students, and to help connect them, we have a request. Part of the budgetary request is for after-school supports. Athletics.

Chair, as you shared, there are other organizations that are out there that partner with our schools to provide opportunities for athletics, for culinary. I seen a number of things that--sewing--that will connect students.

It's what are their interests or what other kinds of experiences, opportunities, can we provide for them, will connect students, and want them to come to school and then stay engaging in these activities, but also at the same time getting academic supports, tutoring and so forth. So we continue to look for ways and, as you shared, bring everybody together. It's a total community Kakua community effort.

Yeah. Multifaceted efforts indeed. Okay, go ahead.

So I just wanted to make a small suggestion because I know school buses was a big problem this year and you guys are doing procurement. So when I was in school--and the reason I bring this up is, out in Waianae, so many parents have to work two jobs.

Both parents got to work, so sometimes most of the time they aren't able to take their kids to school. So the bus is so, so important, but when I was in school, we had the late bus, you know, so the school bus does its route and then there was a second route.

Catch the late kids. Far too often, if the kids don't get there on the first bus, the easiest option is, 'ah, I'm just gonna stay home today then,' cause they cannot get to school. When I was going to school, I rode the bus, you know, all through high school, intermediate, and there were days where, for whatever reason, you missed the first bus, you would still continue to get ready, get out to the curb because being late is better than not showing up.

And there was a second bus come around. Maybe in your procurement, I don't know if you can work that into the budget or not, work that in, but maybe as a late bus. That's what we used to call it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, go ahead.

Thank you so much for your presentation. Along the lines of busing, I have a question. I was wondering if you could kind of expand a little bit more about what, I guess, your organizational structure for each island when it comes to bus coordinators because it came out in one of our last hearings that there was only one bus coordinator for the entire state as opposed to a specific bus coordinator for each island. Can you talk a little bit about that and if that has been changed?

Sure. Currently we do have one coordinator that sits at the State Office in the Office of Facilities and Operations, that our bus coordinator actually has a reach into each of the islands, and within each respective county, there is a coordinator that helps to coordinate buses there. We do have, I believe on one island, we have not been able to secure an individual that lives on that island. So there is a network there, if I'm not--

What island is that?

Maui. Yeah. Other than that, all of our--but that individual flies into Maui to help to coordinate on Maui. Other than that, all of our, I believe all of our counties have coordinators on the respective islands that--

There is an individual coordinator for each island that reports to one overarching coordinator?

And I can get you the information, specifically which island and what person, and if we are short anyone, I can let you know.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Were you going to add to that?

Oh, I, I think I might just be saying the same thing. But just in case, we do have a State Coordinator and each complex area they have a--or each district like Superintendent said, has a School Transportation Officer that helps, is the linker between the state level and the complex area level. We do have someone flying in from Maui, but if you need more information than that, we can send--

I was just curious because that's, to me, I think that's one of the biggest issues when you're, when you're looking at specifically Hawaii Island, which is so big, my district is the size of Maui and Oahu combined. To know that there wasn't a specific coordinator earlier this year at the start of the school year, that was really concerning to me.

And I mean, I think that also addresses some of the questions that were brought up earlier on the committee about whether it's needing a late start time or a late bus. If you have someone on island, they are much more aware of how we can fix those little issues that can be tailored to like, smaller, more rural schools. Thank you.

Thank you. We definitely can look at expanding the coordination. Thank you.

Okay.

While we're on the topic of school bus services, so as you all know, this topic is very important to me as well, and so over the interim, I met with all the school bus vendors, spoke to the different schools that were affected as well as the families.

And so, last two school--two years ago, we had the cancellation of routes, and then again, the last August, this past school year, we had 138, right, canceled routes affecting 3,700 students, including my district. And so we knew, you know, part of the--and I read all the, I read the RFP, and so in the contract it states in there, right, that the contractor is obligated to inform the department to provide a roster of drivers.

And so if you have 138 routes and the contractor tells you that they don't have enough drivers to meet the 138 routes that were canceled, shouldn't there have been, I guess, you know, sufficient time to have to have addressed that gap?

You know, alluding to what Representative Kapela is saying, if we--is there part of a strategy across a department to work and assess the needs of the community so that we--we're really accurately assessing transportation needs as like, you know, part of the community because it's not just looking at it from an operational and objective, you know, objectively speaking, like who can service what, but where exactly is the need and being able to like address that.

So my question to that is, since our last info briefing, which was focused on the school bus services, one, I believe we were promised an after-action report on this last school bus services. So we were just wanting to follow up on that. So what, since then, has the department done on the after-action report to let the Legislature know how we can prevent future disruptions to school bus services?

And has there been any effort to collect feedback from the schools or the community to accurately assess transportation needs, not just what is the status of, status of restoring routes, but need? Like now that we're restoring, who else needs future services?

Thank you for the question. And you're right, Vice Chair, that the last meeting that we had with the House Committee on assessing what happened with a bus issue and the cancellation of routes, I think what was shared that there was a number of things that happened this year. In the past that--in previous years--there were a number of bus companies and a number of vendors.

However, this year, this coming--for this year, I think it whittled down to three. If I'm not mistaken, I believe there are five to seven, and this year was three, and it just so, it happened that this, for this coming--this year, the bus contracts all ended at the same time for the companies and so this year, being a very unique year that we switched statewide from a company to another vendor because the contracts were up.

In that process, there was a communication issue between the bus companies and the department which led to the routes being canceled. Moving forward, though, because those contracts are currently in place, they're not going to be ending at the end of this year. We are going to be working a lot closer with the--continue to work closer with the vendors, the contract vendors that have those specific routes.

We will be meeting with them definitely way earlier this year before the school year ends to assess whether we have drivers or not enough drivers. I think, over the years, what the department has experienced and the contract vendors have experienced is at the end of summer, drivers, for whatever reason, will stop driving and they'll leave the bus company, which leaves the company--at that point whenever they leave--having to scramble and get additional CDL drivers, and so that was one of the issues. Just, I think, overall there is a national trend.

Nationally, there's a CDL shortage, which is not any different from here in Hawaii, but for us to move forward to ensure that these things to do the best that we can in working with our partners and with the vendors so that this doesn't happen again, I think a couple of things, as you alluded to, we continue to work closely with the bus company, connecting with them earlier in the year to be sure that to the best of their knowledge, how many drivers they have, how many routes can be covered, what routes are in jeopardy, and that as we assess through our transportation office, that be communicated to parents and to schools early on.

So we will be reaching out earlier, earlier to them this year, hopefully before the school year ends, so that we can communicate to parents should there be any challenges. We will continue to work with our vendors, with our bus companies, to do the best that we can to ensure that we can get CDL drivers.

I do know that there is a need not only for student transportation, but I've seen other companies on television also advertising for CDL drivers for their respective organization, their respective companies, which actually competes with us. As you shared earlier, the passenger, the P designation versus the S designation, is another level that CDL drivers have to attain in order to drive students, which is a higher level. It's another certification.

So we are definitely very thankful to the Governor for his emergency proclamation so we can leverage and get additional drivers to be able to drive students. I foresee that this is not a, this is not an issue or problem that's going to go away anytime soon, but I can assure you that we will definitely try our best to do whatever we can to be able to provide transportation for students to the best of our ability. You're absolutely right, Representative, that getting students to school is important. If they're not there, they need to be there to learn.

And we will continue to do our best in working with our contractors and encouraging folks to get CDL licenses with the S designation so that we can get our students to school. But it is a national problem. We are trying our best in the department to take care of it.

But are you--because I only asked about the after-action report, Superintendent, because I did meet with Deputy Superintendent Randy Moore before he had left, and so he said this was the last thing that he had been working on.

And so it would be something that he would share and only because we would want something as a way for us to really look at how the department is going to execute on, as you said, all the various actions that you have reviewed and systematically how you're addressing some of the deficiencies so that we prevent another disruption this coming school year.

I'll check in through that, Vice Chair, and get back to you on that. Definitely. Thank you.

I want to quickly follow up per your first response because isn't it also the case in your current contracts that if a provider cannot fulfill the obligations of their provisions in the contract, you find as they cannot for whatever reason obligate their CDLs to fulfill a route within 30 days, then that provider is supposed to reach back out to the department and then the department could then give that route to another--different provider. Is that happening or is that not a provision in your current contracts?

Chair, I can get back to you on that because I'm not sure if that's currently in our contract or it's thanks to the emergency proclamation that we're able to do that. But I could--

Yeah. It is in the, it is in the contract that if the department has the ability to--if a contractor is unable to service the routes, the department has the ability to either move certain routes or even terminate a contract with the existing provider or move in certain routes.

I believe we can move routes--

Or give it to a different provider completely.

I'll check on that with our procurement, that if we can actually give it to another provider at all. I'll check. Okay.

I just wanted to follow up on the CDL part. And how long is the Governor's proclamation to allow the P designation?

We are actually, I believe, requesting another extension to the proclamation. I think as you speak, we're working together with the Governor's Office, and if I'm not mistaken, is it by quarter? Two months?

I'd like to see something done to address that sooner than later. Previously, before I was here, I do have CDL operations. So the P is a passenger which is intended for like TheHandi-Van or tour companies where we have responsible, respectful passengers. And I'm not saying our children aren't, but that S, you go through a different training and I'd like to see that address sooner rather than later because I'd hate to see the news one night because this driver wasn't able to handle the students.

Students get unruly sometimes in the afternoons, especially when they're cranky and they're fussy and they're on their way home and without the proper training, you know, let's try and avoid that. Let's see if we can get that designation back sooner rather than later. I know the easy way out is to rely on the P, but if we continuously go to easy way out, we're welcoming a disaster eventually.

Maybe, Superintendent, someone can explain the difference between the P and the S designation per the requirement. And also if you can, and also if you can share about some of the work that was done with the Department of Transportation to work with the federal DOT to make sure that it was okay for us to initially have that designation, that watered-down definition, that watered-down designation granted to the State of Hawaii.

So, so, Representative, thank you. You're correct that the, the P designation is for, for passengers and the S is an additional designation and additional training for individuals to get the S designation.

We did reach out to our Department of Transportation who have been very supportive and they also, I believe, reached out to the federal DOT for us to work on, I believe with our congressionals, to work in helping to support our next steps forward. Deputy Chun.

So we are able to allow P designated drivers to drive under the Emergency Proclamation. That is not our first choice. Our first choice is that drivers also have the S designation. It's only because of the shortage that--so I believe there's training opportunities underway. Leeward Community College, for example, is putting on some additional training.

I think the challenge is the number of individuals who are interested in the occupation, getting all the training necessary and doing the job of driving school bus. This is a national issue. During the pandemic, some states activated their National Guard to be able to drive to get students to school.

So, so, I just, it's an ongoing challenge that will continue to have to work together to be able to get our students to school safely. So, so agree with you, Representative, that we do want drivers with the, all the licenses. So that's what we're, that's what we aim to do.

You go. Yeah. Did you have a question?

I want to respect everybody's time. I don't want to steal all, you know, retire because we spent so many years in here, but just a follow-up. So here, for those that are on the community don't know, so in Honolulu, we don't use the school buses. We have to use the city buses.

Is it tangible for us in a crisis like this to be able to access the bus here in Honolulu? Because I know the outer islands' transportation is different. The neighbor islands--excuse me--neighbor islands, apologize. Is that something that--especially for here on Oahu--that we can mobilize to meet the shortage in order to get these kids to school?

So once we were short on bus transportation, the mayor on Oahu, Mayor Blangiardi, was very supportive in supporting us, as well as Roger Morton for Transportation, Department of Transportation Services. We did engage with the City and County of Honolulu with the HOLO card, and so if I'm not mistaken, all of our middle and high school students, all of our high school students and some middle school students have the HOLO card outside of Honolulu and I believe even within Honolulu where there wasn't any school busing.

The reason for that was we wanted to shift any available buses and routes to our elementary students first because we wanted to take care--all of our students are important, but because they're the youngest, wanted to ensure that our elementary students had transportation then our middle school students.

So our high school students were all given a HOLO card, and that's in partnership with the, with the City and County of Honolulu. So we, we are--and we continue to explore that, working together with the city and with, with Mayor Blangiardi. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Oh, you go ahead.

Just on the, on the topic of that, I, I did see a memo that was actually given to our BOE, one of our BOE chairs--I think it was the Chair of the Finances Committee, where you talked about, you folks are planning on raising the prices of bus transportation across the board for all students. Specifically bringing up Honolulu, you're planning on raising it to match the city's HOLO card, which is actually quite expensive.

Can you talk a little bit more about that and why these massive adjustments--not only for bus transportation but also for lunches? I saw that by 2028-2029 fiscal school year, you folks are planning on raising the price of lunch to about over $5. That's a lot of money for a family, especially if you have three kids.

Thank you for the question. Maybe the lunch, lunch one first? There is a statute that for our public school lunches that we are charging 50% of the cost of the meal, and what we haven't--we haven't reached that threshold. Over the last couple of years due to the pandemic--well even before that--but over the last couple of years due to the pandemic, we did leverage ESSER funds to support our families so that there wouldn't be an increase.

Now with ESSER funds no longer there, we are looking at working with the board. We will present it to the board to look at a phased approach to school lunches, and that is--as required by us through statute. So that's something we are looking at.

For the last couple of years, there has also been a push through the Legislature to potentially have free school meals for students because--and looking at your report, almost half of all students here in our state are eligible for either free or reduced school lunch.

So I recognize the statute, but I also hope that you folks will be open to finding a way to make a move towards free school lunches. I mean we talk about--there are barriers to education, right? Being hungry is one of those barriers as well. So it's a little stark to see, and if you do the calculation, if you had three kids, you're spending over $180 or over $280 to to pay for those kids to have lunch at school. That's a huge barrier.

Yes, and we definitely are open to any means to support our students in their education. We're definitely not closed to any options, so in any way that we can support students and education, hunger, definitely, I understand. Students are hungry. It's very difficult to learn, you know, so I agree with you on that. So--but we are open to different options. I will--we'll keep you updated and we can get back to you, Representative, on that.

Okay. Rep Olds and then Rep Amato.

I apologize, Rep Amato. So just to shift gears, from my own experience working in Honolulu District, so we have a rising COFA migrant population that is going to school in the district. We've been seeing that population has been struggling in all data points and we have--I'm sure you guys already know--schools with heavy populations that their data is not awesome. Through our own experience, the Office of Education for Homeless Children and Youth, I've interacted with a lot of the school-level assistants. I really love PCNCs.

I really appreciate that you folks have funded school level BSHAWS, particularly in Trakhees, in the areas that we need it, but what other initiatives are coming up through the pipeline to help really kind of reach out into that community to get them, one, to bring their kids to school, to show the value of school for their children?

Because we do know like at Kiolani, all they have to do is walk across the street, but it's not happening. And so, I know there's been a change of administration at that school. I know Dr. Davis is picking up and she's going to try to do the best she can, but because this population has been struggling and we have data showing they've been struggling for decades, what are we going to do different to help ensure that we reach this community so that these children can thrive in our society?

Okay, thank you for the question and thank you for the work that you did in Honolulu District, but yeah. We have our children who are in unsheltered situations. We have our students who fall under COFA and the positions that you mentioned, the BSHAWS, we have our homeless liaisons, we have our PCNCs, we have our counselors, we have our school-based behavioral health specialists.

So we utilize those role groups to really do the outreach to the families, and our most successful--as I'm sure you experience--situations are when the outreach to the family leads to some kind of connection to additional supports because some of it is beyond the school, right? Some of it, it's home situations, it's a living situation, it's factors outside of education.

But we rely on others to help the family get back on track or get the resources or connections that they need. But the school is the hub and we, we have the knowledge and we have their children, and so utilizing the existing positions that we have to help do--to help the families get the connected outreach and support that they need to address the, the barriers or the situations that you were talking about.

I can just add maybe, Representative, that I would wholeheartedly agree that the bilingual school home assists play a critical role together with the PCNCs. As a former principal, I was so thankful that we had our bilingual folks.

You know, they're committed to students, they spoke the language, they understood the culture, they would go out to the home, do the home visits with our counselors, get kids, bring them to school, work with the parents to be sure they understood the importance of school and why they needed to be in school on time every day.

It's those committed individuals working together with our teachers who make those phone calls or connect with the students. It's a full court press in supporting our kids, and especially students who struggle and experience, experience different various issues at home. It's also working together with parents.

So parents understand that there are compulsory education requirements for students to come to school. So it, I agree with you 100% that bilingual school, home assists, PCNCs, all the support personnel outside of the school, inside of the school, make a difference in our, in our community. So we continue to work on that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Rep Amato.

Thank you. Thank you so much for all of your time. I know we're running long. So quickly, of course going to school should not be a game of Frogger, as you know, and at Kulanihakoi, there was the LUC requirement that there be a grade-separated pedestrian crossing constructed.

Thank you for supporting my 2023 appropriations request to Senator Schatz's Office. Where are we in that construction phase? Because kids are actually playing Frogger and running across a four-lane highway and that roundabout.

Currently, as we went to the LEC Commission, I believe it was maybe a year and a half or two years ago--a year ago--we did--we with the LUC and the agreement at that time currently is for us to build a grade-separated pedestrian overpass. And so we are working with the Department of Transportation to see where we are with that and what the next steps are moving forward.

Okay. So no updated timeline?

I can check with a DOT representative and get back to you on that. Definitely.

Okay. Thank you. And then also you heard my question earlier about accessibility at our schools. Do you have a plan in place to prioritize campuses that are not ADA-compliant to bring them up to up to speed in code?

Thank you. I'll ask Jadine Urasaki, our Director for Facilities Development Branch. As she's coming up, I think it's really important that I had shared in our presentation that where we were as a department a few years ago is not where we want to be. We need to be back at a place that we were several years ago, a decade ago, where the department was able to take funds, expand funds, and address the needs both CIP and deferred maintenance.

And so Director Urasaki together with Superintendent Hidano have worked on a process--because she was actually in the Facilities Development Branch back then--worked on a process to get us back there. And part of that is that we're asking the Legislature for support on, is on a health and safety on a health and safety area as well as one of the buckets being a compliance lump sum.

And so I believe that the compliance lump sum would also help provide flexibility for us to be able to address the needs of schools as you have shared, but I'll let Director Urasaki go into more specifics.

Yes. Afternoon. Thank you for that question. With respect to our compliance bucket that Superintendent talked about in our budget request this year, the compliance bucket includes all of our requirements that we need to meet in terms of mandates. So our gender equity, our Title IX requirements, as well as ADA. So that's included in that bucket.

And you know, again, it goes back to needs, right? There's just so much more needs than we do have on funding. And so within ADA, which is specific to your question, we do have that prioritized in there. So it is a matter of when we get the funding and then where does that take us to.

Thank you.

I think, if I can add too, that the department, we will definitely try our best based on the funding that we have, but we ask also that, to consider that this has been a number of years that we're trying to course correct on, so, you know, we'll do our best to prioritize and move forward as quickly as possible. Chair Takumi.

Yeah, I don't know--I think, Chairman, with your indulgence, I think for the, especially the new members, it's kind of an interesting homecoming because I don't recognize half of you, basically. It's a--keep in mind what the department is proposing as the board approved in its budget at the October board meeting, that what the Department is proposing is to say that they want the flexibility and the autonomy to determine its RN--particularly the deferred repair and maintenance budget.

How it used to be done in the past is all of you would call your school principals in your district, ask them what projects they would want--a covered walkway, repaving the parking lot or whatever the case may be--you would relay that to the Money Committee, and say this is what I want.

And then whatever the Legislature came up with, whatever projects you guys wanted would jump the line, basically. And so if you look at the request that the department had, it's for hundreds of projects. There's something in every district. And so--but their rubric, their matrix is based upon health and safety. It's based on very objective criteria, these hundreds of projects.

Whatever the Legislature appropriates, then they would just go down, fund it, and the rest would have to wait. But when the Legislature puts in money, puts in their projects, it jumps the line, because after all, you are the Legislature and you appropriate the money. So I think the department is too polite to say this, but from the board perspective, is that we're urging the legislators to accommodate the board's request and refrain.

I'm not going to eliminate, I know how it works, but to be very cognizant because I know the counter is that you guys know your districts better than any of us, which is true. You know your district as you should, frankly. You should know your district more than the department knows, more than the board knows, but you represent 2% of the state, and the board is charged or the department is charged at looking out the interest for the entire state. And so whatever priorities they come up in their matrix is with that in mind.

And so, I know it's going to be challenging, this is a new approach, and when I was here, I was guilty of that as well, putting into the request for whatever the case may be in my district, but this is a new way of doing it and not a new way. It's going back to the way it used to be and I think that's a good approach.

Thank you, Chairman Takumi. Members, we're going to talk about CIPs here in a little bit. It's probably going to take a while. If there are any non-CIP or RNM questions before we go into this larger discussion about the proposed change in methodology as to how we address CIPs and RNMs, any non-CIP questions?

I have a couple, so I'll answer then. Can we quickly circle back to--part of your mission statement, Superintendent, is you say that you, you want to produce students that are internationally or globally competitive, and I'm curious to see how you, you define that term.

You did cite, I think rightfully so, some of your NAEP scores, which it's not the only metric, but it is significantly relevant in that it is one comparison that we have when we are looking at our counterparts on the continent and you reference primarily fourth grade reading scores, which I would define us in that terms--in that respect as being internationally competitive.

We do have some work to do with math, both eighth grade reading and also fourth and eighth grade math. Wanting to know, you know, what are some of the strategies that the administration has taken, the Department of Education administration is taking from a systems perspective? How do you overlay Complex Area Superintendent and office support and what is happening at the school level to move that needle in the positive direction that we want?

Thank you, and you are correct. We have a lot of work to do in math and we'll continue to do our work in reading. For the past few years, we've been laying foundations and putting statewide systems in place, one, to be very clear on what students should know and be able to do, assessing them three times a year, and then putting in a multi-tiered system of support or a way of schools to identify who is on target, who is exceeding the target of where they should be, and who is behind and who needs support so that they can ensure they get the interventions.

The Complex Area Superintendent then monitors the school and looks at their students--who's in the green, who's good, who's in the yellow, who's in the red--and to ensure that proper or appropriate interventions are put into place and are making a difference, and if they're not making a difference, what are we going to do to change it?

We also have, this past year, ensured that in English language arts and in math, that viable curriculum is in place. It sets the floor. It's not the ceiling. We have that, and we also are looking, moving forward into the importance of coaching and what does that look like at a school or at a complex area because we do know that having--and we're starting with literacy coaches because this does take person of--trained personnel and funding--but starting with literacy, what does the coaching model look like in each school to ensure that there is someone there to support the teachers in the very important work that they do?

We've also recognized that the science of reading is crucial. To implement, we have our schools who've received a literacy grant who are paving the way for us and have been able to pilot supplemental materials to really help students with the components of the science of reading, the phonics, the phonemic awareness, etcetera.

We recognize that in math, we also need that coaching support and we also have a dedicated position which is funded. We are currently recruiting for someone to really look at--over statewide, we have a math team, but this is an administrator position to ensure that the teaching strategies, starting especially with high school, the appropriate strategies, the appropriate instructional practices are in place.

With math, one of our other challenges is that we have a teacher shortage and we have some math classrooms taught with substitutes or emergency hires, and how do we support them in delivering the content and the methodology that the kids need to move forward? That is a challenge that we need to continue to address.

Thank you. So you said a lot there. One of the things you said was coaching. The DOE already does have a coaching system in place to finance a coach for a teacher entering into service?

Yes, yes. So we have coaching for our new teachers, our induction and mentoring program. We also recognize that coaching in content areas is another very highly effective strategy.

Okay. Content area coaching. Okay. Thank you. Superintendent.

Oh, no, if I could just add really quickly that as we came back from--we came back from Covid, we started back school in the system--I think, Chair, you asked about what are the systems, what do we have in place for the system, and how the complex areas and the complex superintendents play into that.

So we did focus on healthy habits, healthy schools, as well as an overall strategy, action-oriented data decision making. So how are we taking data and actually making decisions on them? Responsive capacity building speaks to mentoring and supporting each other. So those are some of the strategies that we, systemwide, moving forward.

In each of the schools, as you know, each school has a academic and financial plan that connects up to the broader complex area plan. So each Complex Area Superintendent has a plan that supports the direction that the department's moving, as well as what Deputy Armstrong talked about, and then also our state offices, state office plans, how we support. All of it is focused on supporting schools and supporting students. So as you can imagine, the department, 258 schools and number of employees, to shift an organization our size, it doesn't happen overnight.

And so we are, we definitely, I believe that we're so fortunate to have teachers, administrators, school staff at the school complex and state offices that are nepapaiing together. We're moving forward together, and I think building that culture is really important because that will, that will be one component of helping, getting our students to be globally competitive but also locally committed, meaning that they embrace the values that we feel here in Hawaii. That's so important.

And you folks have access to those ACP plans?

Yes.

We do.

You do. Okay. Any other non-CIP questions, members? I have a quick question for CFO Hallett regarding budget before we get into the CIPs. Thank you for being here, sir. And so I think it's important that we do acknowledge that there was concern and the department did submit a flat budget and you're able to operate effectively with that budget in place.

I just don't want to see that budget cut any further because I think you guys did a lot of work with your review--with a review group at first and then approval with your leadership and then approval with the board and then approval through the Governor's Office. So hopefully we can maintain at least that current level.

You often talk about the difference between recurring and non-recurring funds and there's a portion of your funds that are non-recurring. How does that potentially impact operations moving forward when you're trying to plan out effective strategy of learning, broadly speaking?

I think it makes it very difficult because it's so interrelated. Our schools, in particular, their academic financial plan process, they start that process eight, nine months before the start of the school year and really in earnest, six, seven months before the start of the school year.

So if we can't give them or provide them predictable, reliable figures, I think it makes it very difficult for them to have to build in a lot of contingencies. So that's why that recurring funding is so important. I think thus far, we've received a pretty good welcome for our proposal, which would be to provide that recurring funding.

Just as a quick history, last session we ended with about $100M of our line items being coded or identified as non-recurring, and that was that first challenge I was mentioning in the earlier presentation. I think we've gotten support thus far from the Governor, and early indications are positive.

Okay. Thank you. Members, any other questions not related to CIP or RNM? Okay, we will then skip to that part because it's getting late and people are getting tired, and so, members, questions about CIP, RNM?

Question. So on page 18, capital improvement program request, we Department is asking for 250 million for deferred maintenance projects, correct? Correct. Yes. Can you speak a little bit as to the how you are your plan to prioritize those projects?

Right, sure. So for the deferred maintenance projects, we look at an overall, we've looked at an overall allocation in terms of how we will divvy up that amount across the different seven districts that we have. And that is based on the square footage, the age of the facility, the enrollment, Title 1, isolated schools and climate.

And so with that weighted assessment, we run the allocations out and that's how the percentages would go to the different districts for the actual projects itself within each of the districts. It'll get prioritized now based on a metric which is different than what, which is what we did previously like 8 to 10 years ago.

And so now we're looking to also bring that back so that there is the rationale as to why this project is moving versus something else. And so on the deferred maintenance projects, we do look at the conditions. We're looking at the age of the facilities.

And so it comes and we do a priority and you know, at the top of it is our building envelope, which is the roof. Right. That's the highest priority because if the roof is leaking, we will have all types of different issues and so that becomes the highest priority.

But basically we do have a matrix that's set up and that it does a priority. And we will be, we go back to the complex area superintendents to have that dialogue with them and the principals to make sure, you know, this is the list.

And what that does for them is they see the list and they can provide us some feedback, say they don't want like this drainage project, they rather have this other project. And so we will have to look at what that means. Right.

And we have that dialogue with them as to, okay, well if we don't do this, there could be much more bigger problems. And so we do need to take care of this. We understand you want this done, but so, and so, so we do have that conversation.

And if it's such that that drainage project could wait or whatever project it is and we would make that switch again, we have that conversation with the complex area superintendents as we move forward within their amount that is allocated to them.

And then can I add real quickly, I think that one of the strengths of this is that the lump sum budgeting, for example, Vice Chair, you spoke about the deferred maintenance $250 million bucket for that request. The complex area superintendents, as Director Urasaki shared that work together with the principals.

And so state office comes up with their priority list. The CAs and the principals take a look at that list and if there's questions, the schools can ask the state office or facilities, what was the reasoning for that priority?

Again, as a principal, we're asking them to now take a step back and not only focus on the needs of their particular school, but look not only as a complex area, but now there's actually greater needs as a state. And I'll be the first to admit that as a principal, I didn't look at that.

My focus was just on my school. But now we need to look broader because there are other schools on other islands that need the support, that need the help.

And I gotta tell you though that I am very grateful to the principals in the Department because they have, I believe they have stepped up and really understand the magnitude of what we need to do. And when they say, cause I've seen some email and I've talked to some legislators.

Legislators are great at asking principals what they want. Because you want to take care of your schools. We totally get that. When the principals are, we're asking them to say, you know, please support the department's request. That is, I cannot explain how huge that is because as principals, we've been brought up fight for your school.

But now they're taking a step back. They're looking at it broadly and looking at the needs for all schools in the Department and all students. So I think that's huge, that communication now between schools and the facilities at the state office. When you talk about everybody's strongest together, that's exactly what it means.

We're all working together on that bigger picture.

Thank you, Superintendent. So other items in here that are lump sum, right. Health and safety, 50 million, project completion, 45 million. There's some line items. So Lahaina Elementary 145 Kapolei East Kapolei 130. So total is $1.2 billion request, right? Correct? Yes, that's correct.

My question is you are attempting to provide an objective methodology for a plan moving forward. But how does this plan translate to in the DOE CIP portal? On the website, there is currently $1.0 billion of obligated CIP funds already obligated and encumbered and 1.8 billion total unspent CIP funds. Last year we had 500 million that lapsed.

This November we got another letter that said 39 million of projects legislatively appropriated, passed by the Legislature, signed into law by gov. Community projects that were again lapsed. So how does this plan translate to the 1.0 something billion that's already encumbered and in the next. Yeah, in the next three years, how does. Yeah.

How does that plan translate to this?

Yeah, so that's a great question. So for the projects that are active in the queue like you've mentioned. Yes, we continue to work through that. I know a lot of them have to do with the permitting process and some of the delays that have gone through, but a lot of those projects have since been moving forward.

We've had much more dialogue to make sure that those ones that are being stalled are moving forward. And so there's been a lot more push in the management of our capital improvement program. And, and as much as we do, I mean it's chipping away.

I mean at it piece by piece, not gonna see like a total like from 1.8 billion, you're gonna just see like 100,000. Right. It's this continuing cycle as to where each of the projects are in their phases. The biggest chunk of what gets in terms of a curvature, in terms of getting spent is during construction.

That's the biggest chunk of monies that you'll see getting expended as the contractor moves forward in the project. You'll see that bell curve of how initially it'll be small money and then as they get into the bulk of the work, a lot of the requests for payments will be a lot bigger of those chunk of projects.

And Vice Chair, I think you bring up a really good point and that that amount has exacerbated to that, to that amount over this period of time before it's, we can't do business as we've been doing it for the last eight to 10 years. That's not going to help us, you know.

And so this is actually a very bold move to try to recognize that there is an issue and that we need to get back to what we were doing that was successful for us, but requires a lot of understanding and change from a lot of people, you know, from our school principals to the facilities office to our legislators, you know, that work together and support our schools.

But if we don't do it now, I'm really concerned that it will never get better. And so this is a time that we have to say, hey, you know, we need to do this change. So we're not continuing to do what you just shared that we start doing that course correction.

One more last question and I think that's just common. It's just like, Right. It's like you're telling us, we know there's a problem that exists. We're offering a different solution. Please trust us with a solution. But also because of all this history, that's why we're asking, okay, how do we know it's not going to happen again?

So quick, I have a question for Board Chair Takumi.

And he wasn't here to testify, but if you would entertain us.

So you mentioned earlier, right. We're providing a very objective approach to this, which we can appreciate. There's a scoring rubric, there's a methodology. We can appreciate that. But I think that's where I struggle with, is that qualitative element, the programmatic piece that does drive leadership in schools, the community part.

So that's my question is like, where does that, how is that taken into consideration? Right. If there's a school that excels and for example, they want to lead in like Ag Tech or something that they want to innovate in, how do you take that into consideration in terms of investing in a school?

Not just because they have a roof that's falling apart, but like they want to be able to justify a new classroom or a new, an expansion, because they are. Right. How does that factor into the rubric that they want something that's part of their investment in a strategy versus a very objective piece of renovation?

That's a good question. So each we have the 11 buckets that we were requesting. So depending on what that category. So if you're saying like an innovative, so more of a curriculum, so that would be our instructional bucket.

And so if that is an initiative that the school is looking to do and their complex area Superintendent of course supports it, that's a discussion that we would have with them as well as with our state office that deals with the curriculum and understanding so that we are all on the same page and that whether or not, okay, yeah, this would be a good pilot or this would be a good investment for us to look at programming this and determining, again, what does that mean?

Does that mean that that's a high priority? So that is a discussion we would have with state office input with the complex area Superintendent, the principal, and making that decision within that particular lump sum.

If I can add also that as we share this, the dilemma that we're in, the issues that we're in right now with facilities, with our school principals, many of them have shared that, hey, you know, I understand the magnitude of this. So I am willing to, to stay on my innovative new project.

Because we recognize the Department has to prioritize taking care of schools. That concrete is falling apart, you know, that the buildings are in disrepair, fields are in disrepair.

We need to address Ada or other kinds of Title 9 issues, you know, so that I'm very appreciative of our school principals that, you know, they are saying, okay, I understand, we'll wait, take care of this first, but hurry up and take care of it. But take care of it, but don't forget.

But don't forget us, but take care of it. Right.

Okay, thank you, Chair.

I was just hoping that you folks could confirm for me because from what I'm hearing from you folks is that this new prioritization of what you know, that the schools themselves really need, I feel that this is actually really going to help my community as one of those very rural neighbor island communities.

I have five schools in my district, five elementary schools specifically, and we can only request three CIP projects. All of my schools are crumbling because they are all very, very old. I'm hoping that there is going to be within this and your priorities that you're categorizing based on truly school need.

So schools that are falling apart, that need a lot more assistance just to keep the doors open, I'm hoping that that's where you folks are going to prioritize because that's where our rural communities and our neighbor islands are really going to benefit from this. Not just the pet projects.

Because it's really difficult to watch your school be covered in black mold or to have crumbling foundation or no covered walkways in a community that rains every single day of the year when there are brand new facilities that are being built that are also very important here in Oahu, but it's not the basics of what a school needs in order to make sure that their students can just have access to education.

That's a great point. And as we have been meeting with each of the complex area superintendents and their principals, a lot of those rural areas principals, we've had this discussion and they are fully on board. They see it, we've gone through it with them.

You know, they feel that we're actually hearing them more than what they've been heard before. And they're the ones who are in total support as well as all the others, but more so because they've been neglected or they felt that they have been neglected for this entire time.

So for them to see the list, for them to understand the matrix, for them to understand that we're looking at statewide needs and trying to put, again, less subjectiveness and more objective equity. Equity is the word that I want to hear. Yes, that is correct.

It is an equitable process that we are looking at, and that is why the allocations have been revised moving forward, as well as putting in that priority as to how the projects get prioritized. And so all of that is looking at the equity, and we're looking to do that on a statewide basis. Thank you. Thank you. Chair.

Can I add to that, Chair, somewhat related to your question about schools and the state they're in, the board will be taken up this year. We may not come to the legislation. It may be after the Legislature adjourns, but the Department now is in process of coming up with the criteria on how to consolidate schools.

As you all know, we have five elementary schools in the state that have less than 100 students, and we have schools that were built for six or 700 students but have only 300. And so the Legislature's marching orders many a time to the Department is streamline your operations, save money, reduce waste and so on.

If a school is underutilized in terms of its student population, the operating costs remain the same, utilities, groundkeeping, the whole bit.

And so when that list comes up, and I don't know what month is going to come up, it's historically what happens, and that's why the board has not closed the school in over 10 years, is traditionally what happens is a list comes up and the legislators who represent those schools oppose it, clearly.

And so the board historically has said, you know what, let's keep it operating, even though it costs more money to keep an underutilized school than a fully utilized school. And so, you know, I think when that list comes up, it's going to come up and the names of the schools are going to come up.

And I think all of you are going to look at the list and if none of your schools are on the list, you're going to say, okay, that's good. But if the school is in your community, I can imagine very few of you would say, you know, I think in the overall picture we should close that school.

I think that's going to be a very challenging decision.

Just very briefly, thank you for that. And I'm just going to reference that this is not a challenge that has to do with the Legislature pass cutting away duplication in statute and working with the counties. This is a Department challenge. And so we're going to continue to have the conversation.

A lot of the Members are not in agreement with this new proposal, but let's continue to talk about it with that. I want to reset this conversation with that. Go ahead, Rip.

Thank you for that. Like my colleague said, in my district, there's a lot of schools that are in big, big repair. I didn't like hearing what you said. When you ask your principals to not think of their school first and think of others, I didn't like hearing that the principal should be fighting for their school.

And you know, like my colleague said just before she left, these pet projects, we see them all the time, you know, and you can clearly see a pet project over a needed project. Do you folks have a tier system you guys can implement, you know, severity A, B, C, the principals can look at?

Because to ask a principal to not care about your school in light of caring about the other schools is.

Thank you for that, Representative. Thanks for allowing me to clarify that. My apology if I came across, my apologies if I came across saying that I'm asking our principals not to care about their schools, I'm definitely not doing that. What I am sharing, though, is that principals do care about their schools. They support their schools 110%.

I don't know of one principal that doesn't care about this school. They all do. But what it was intended to share was that although they care about their schools, they also understand the position that we're in and the dilemma we're in with the magnitude of repair and maintenance that needs to be taken care in the Department.

So with that, they understand the importance for them saying I care, but I also understand the bigger picture of the need for deferred maintenance across the state. And so it doesn't mean that they'll stop thinking about what they need. It doesn't mean that they will care any less about or their commitment to their school.

100% they're committed, but they're just taking a step back, taking a look at the bigger picture and say, I'm willing to. I understand that and I'm willing to work within the allocation for my district in my complex area. I may get what I want this year, I may not.

But I understand that it's not, I'm not getting, if I'm not getting something that I want, it is because there is a need for another school. And I am okay with understanding that for public education. Not to say that I'm going to forget about it because knowing our principals, they're going to continue to advocate, right? And.

But I give them props that they are willing to say I care about my school. But I understand there's a greater need and we gotta take a look at everyone. And so I apologize if I came across the wrong way. That wasn't my intent to say that.

And I apologize also. You didn't say don't care, but you did State think about the other schools. And that's why I asked if you guys implemented a tier system, when the principal looks at it, they could identify what type of repair or request they're asking for. What tier is it?

And maybe forego this, this year's request because it can wait till next year. You know, some.

So when you say here, you mean like a prioritized list of periods?

Yes. Like roofs would be number high, high priority. But if you wanted to repave your parking lot, you know, so.

So we do have part of the. The system is there is a priority where roofs is highest. And I forgot what was second and third. But there's a long list at each of those projects is there's a number designated to that. There is a formula that facilities uses to look at what type of project.

And the other side was the type of project.

So it looks at the type of project and the condition. And so there is that assessment that's done. And the dialogue that happens with the principals and the complex area Superintendent who.

Ultimately makes the decision on what gets.

Done would be our office at the end of the day and implementing the program itself.

Okay, thank you again for being here. I'm going to keep my question short because it's long on the day and I know people are getting tired. And so the Council of Great City Schools, they had a report that came out specific for the Office of Facilities and Operations. Not this past time, but in years past.

What did you folks do with that report?

So the Council of Great City Schools did a report in 2019, I believe it was for the Office of Facilities and Operations and the Office of Fiscal Services. So those are the. We have seven state offices. So those are the two state offices that went first and then now the five through this council's report.

As the Department was going to implement the recommendations from those two reports, if I'm not mistaken, that's when Covid the pandemic hit. And so the Department has been focused on addressing the issues of COVID and then on Maui, the Maui Wildfire. We are definitely looking to implement some of those, looking at implementing those recommendations.

Deputy Superintendent Chun I. The office of Facilities has done a point by point response as we have done with all of the reports from Council of Great City Schools assistant superintendents have done a point by point response on all of the recommendations that were made and considering them.

Some of the responses include accepting the recommendation, moving ahead right away. Others require more study and review. Some might be done but at a later time and others for different considerations are not going to be implemented as recommended. But the point is to say that there's been a point by point response on all of the recommendations.

There are some changes in organization that are in different stages of implementation at this point. The one that has gone to the Board of Education and is was approved by Committee. Going to full board this week is to change the reporting of the deputy superintendents and assistant superintendents to do some reorganization there.

And then we have some organization reorganization in multiple offices, including Office of Facilities that is going to be going to consultation with the union before prior to approval and implementation. So there'll be multiple phases in terms of implementing those recommendations or considering the recommendations. It's. It's not a.

We're not implementing all of them outright, but they are all being seriously considered.

Okay, thank you for that. So. And so there's some action happening for that prior report. So Vice Chair mentioned earlier that there is a current lapse list. Back two years ago, I think it was 2023, there was a lapse of $465 million that was reported.

That number was later revised to a smaller amount, but still hundreds of millions of dollars. What was the reason for those lapses? Half $1.0 billion.

That was before.

Those are. Those are specifically capital improvement project lapses.

Chair, My apologies. I would need to go back and revisit the, the reasons for that. I don't have it off the top of my head, but I can get that for you. But Director Rasaki wouldn't be able to answer that question because she wasn't working for the Department at that time. Okay.

Do you know, just, just keeping in line with some of the rationale as to why you want to switch to this new system of lump sum appropriations.

Do you know if once the Department was aware that those projects were in jeopardy of lapsing, did you reach out to the community, the principals or the legislators to let them know beforehand?

I can get that information to you. Let me check. I do. I do remember that the, the, each of the projects were line itemed and so that that added to the difficulty of us completing the projects with procurement and such. That's one of the reasons why we're asking for the flexibility with the lump sum budgeting.

I don't know offhand. I can't remember offhand what exactly was done, but I can go check and I'll get back to you on that.

Okay, I appreciate that. Submitted because, you know, I can imagine that if the legislators were aware that their projects were about to lapse, then they would have took action to help facilitate those projects to initiate and others to complete.

It was, it was, it was troubling to say the least. That's not even looking for the right term that the Department lapsed out that Fund, that amount of funding for our projects. That's just not acceptable.

And so that is one of the main reasons why we're looking to get back to a place where we were successful with our CIP and deferred maintenance and the request for this revised process to get back to the process that we were utilizing before the specific communication between the Department and impacted legislators.

I can get back to you. As I shared, I don't have the specifics on that. I can find out.

Okay, I'm not going to belabor the point, but you folks should know that there were some projects in that list that said were to be lapsed, but they were projects that were actually ongoing. And so I don't even know how you folks work that out. Definance.

The project actually started and so I don't know what the result was for that.

Can either of you let us know how many, out of the total appropriation that you folks have now in the entirety of the universe, how much a percentage of those funds are currently encumbered or under contract and so that they will not lapse per the statute? Do either of you have that number?

We can give that to you. Yeah.

And so even prior to this discussion, you know, with like Rep. Campelas example or even your Superintendent, you said that we need to address buildings that are crumbling. Rep. Capella gave an example of a building that had mold already in your existing toolbox. You have pots of money to address issues like hazard and safety.