House Standing Committee on Education

Alrighty. Happy New Year, everybody. Here we go again. This is your Committee on education. Today's date is the 9th of January and it's about 2:06 in this conference room, which is 329. Today, we have the opportunity to see what the vision and the strategy of the departments are with regards to education. Education is very important.

It has nexus to everything. We know that it's important for preparing our futures, it's important for preparing our students, and so, we want to make sure that we hear what they have to say. And I'm excited about the opportunity in 2006. So, without further ado, we—what did I say?

2006.

All right, 2026. So, without further ado, we will have our first department which is the Commission on Charter Schools. Charter School Public Commission, please come up.

I feel younger already.

Welcome. Happy new year.

Happy new year. Okay. Chair Woodson, Vice Chair La Chica, Members of the Committee, thank you so much for having us. I'm here with Deputy Director of PJ Foehr, our Finance and Industry Director, Danny Vasconcellos, Jr., and our Commission Chair, Dr. Makatoa Allencaster.

She actually—Dr. Allencaster will be helping with our introduction, and I'll start the slides and then presentation. Oh, I should also say Diane Goya from our early learning is also here. If there are other questions from—for her—then she can help.

Okay, there we go. Aloha. And thank you for this opportunity to provide some information on our Public Charter School Commission and schools. Basically, the goals of the Commission are to authorize, assess, and acclaim a portfolio of high quality charter schools offering diversity, innovation and excellence for students and families throughout Hawaii.

As you can see in our logo, depicting the uniqueness of Hawaii and the essential educational landscape that we offer our children. A foundational...recognizes and values the knowledge from many sources. Also, on the bottom of our logo...Hoamana is a critical guide to keep our students at the forefront—forefront of all of our efforts.

Next slide, please. We currently have 40 public charter schools serving over 13,000 pre-K to 12 students on five of our islands. As seen on the map, the majority of our charter schools are on Hawaii island as well as here on Oahu, five on Kauai and on Maui and Molokai, each having just one charter school at this point.

Six of our schools are Kulaka Puni, Hawaii, offering Hawaiian medium education on all of our islands, and I wanted just to bring your attention that on Molokai and Kauai, those are the only Kaiapuni schools that are currently operating on those two islands.

Each charter school has a governing board and their contract with the commission, usually for five year terms to operate the schools. We anticipate 13 of our schools are up for renewal and will be applying for renewal this coming month. In fact, January.

Also, as depicted here, is that in addition to the mandated Strive High academic performance data, we have also required what we call the Mission Aligned Initiative as a feature to expand what schools and how schools are guiding and developing their instruction and assessment.

Fourteen of our schools have early learning programs with 20 pre-K classrooms in operation and 35% of those are in Olalo, Hawaii. And those of course, as you know and you hear more about it in our presentation, offer access to early learning for Alice families. Okay, the next slide please.

Just recently, we did a survey of our schools and asking schools how they identify their primary focus of pedagogy, both instruction and assessment. And so, this graph gives you an idea of the range of what's being offered in our 40 different schools—the intentional diversity within our portfolio.

Some of the defining characteristics that emerge from this survey is that education primarily is designed with and for students—student learning. Student-centered pedagogy is foundational. 75% of our schools employing project-based learning and over half using experiential and inquiry driven approaches. Students are being prepared holistically beyond the academics as well, with many of our schools having focused on social emotional learning emphasizing leadership, and identity development.

Our schools are developing confident, self aware individuals ready to contribute to our communities. There's a distinctly Hawaiian based commitment and cultural grounding on practices within almost 70% of our schools.

Many are...based, so connecting learning with our place of being with our ancestral practices. 55% also identify as being Hawaii focused and another 50% as Hawaiian culture centered. Okay, next slide. Looks at enrollment growth and we've seen, as you can see on the left, just this past five years, over 7% enrollment growth.

More specifically from school years 2021, 2021 and through 2024-'25, our school portfolio has approximately grown from 12,000 to over 13,700. So, the numbers on the top of that graph show the actual additional student gains.

And so, you can see the most recent one went far right where over 640 students have been enrolled in charter schools, indicating over a 5% growth. And that represents really our strongest single year growth in recent history.

So, our educational continuum being pre-K to 12, where 30% of our schools are now offering pre-K programs and giving families access to high quality early learning grounded in these same types of innovative practices.

At the other end of the continuum, over half of our schools are offering college prep and including early college opportunities to ensure our students are graduating and prepared for higher education if that's their pathway forward.

As indicated in the graph, many of our schools are maybe represented a number of times in different approaches, both in instruction and assessment. And so, overall, I know this is—I'll be passing it on to Ed to look at some of the specific data.

But our schools are offering unique and innovative distinctive practices and not just being alternatives to traditional public education, but really pioneering unique approaches that are community based and community driven. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And Dr. Allencaster is no stranger to charter movement. She was actually a founder of...one of one of the six Hawaiian language schools that she had mentioned. In fact, our commissioners that serve on the board, we have nine—over half do have charter school leadership experience and are now in different capacities of higher education to...so we have very good leadership helping us along the way.

So, as Dr. Allencaster mentioned, the enrollment growth, this is just more of a breakdown of, of the major ethnicities that are where our students identify as and as well as the student population. So, very similar to the department schools, other than English learners.

And then, on the left side, regarding major ethnicities, again, a higher population of Native Hawaiian students. So, accessing all of the culture and language opportunities. So, that is kind of a breakdown of what are students—breakdown throughout the state.

In terms of the academic performance framework, there are three that our schools perform on and under the active performance framework, this is considered indicator two and it is around Smarter Balance or...data that we—that schools also participate in.

The dark blue show where schools were meeting the state averages, the light blue would be approaching, and the orange would be where they are also approaching. So, as you can see, there's quite a spread.

We, we also want to know, we do have some schools that because of their size that data is suppressed and/or they did not participate in the state testing. So, we'll go into more of that when we get to some of the breakout data.

But one of the things we want to really point out is this is one point in time and we're more interested in their growth and where our students have been showing their proficiency. And so, this is where we look at school growth. This is school level outcomes.

And what we are excited to share is that 29 out of the 31 schools in language arts met or exceeded that benchmark for growth.

And these are a really important indicator for the schools, because you know, we, like all public schools, all schools in general, we receive students where they are and we want to, year by year, add to their growth. And so, we saw very steady growth from last year to moving into this year.

I mentioned language arts. In math, 87% of those schools were meeting or exceeding that growth benchmark. I do point out that we do—did not count the Kaio schools. That data was not available. So, that's why it's out of 31 charter schools, just for you to know. But when we—that's the school level outcomes.

When we look at student level outcomes, we also see a story where we have charter schools lagging slightly behind Department schools statewide, but meeting those outcomes that we would expect for any student when they're enrolled in one of the charter schools.

So, we see that gap is pretty consistent between language arts and math, between 2 and 3 percentage points behind their neighboring department schools. So, again, we look at, as a school, the schools are meeting the benchmarks as a whole, but only drill down to individual student growth, then that's why there is a slight difference in those percentages.

The other measurement that we're really excited about is looking at Gap. So, similar to the other graph that we shared, so, the dark blue is showing that each one of those is aligned to a school and that is saying that the schools have met that gap for non—high needs versus non-high needs students.

So, of course, as a reminder that the high needs students would be our special needs students, our English learners, our socioeconomic economically disadvantaged students.

So, as we look at those gaps that could be there for the achievement, we are again really pleased to see that our charter schools are, are really addressing the gap between again their non-high need peers.

And so, we see that in math, they're actually closing that gap even at a higher rate. In terms of Strive HI, the post-secondary readiness, so, we look at these three indicators for elementary, third grade literacy, eighth grade for the middle school, and then ninth grade promotion. So, we have 67% of our third graders on track.

And this is actually an increase from last year where we were at 43% third grade literacy proficiency. And then, again, when we do a comparison to their counterparts in Department, third grade literacy rates were around 50%. And so, it's just, again, a benchmark because, you know, we're a smaller group.

We also always want to make sure that we are communicating to our families that our charter schools are meeting the needs of their students as well.

We did see a little bit of a drop in the 8th grade literacy, slightly, less than about 8% from last year, but steady, steady, I would say performance there and then, also, slight decrease in 9th grade promotion. Last year, we were at 96%, so there was a drop in the 9th grade promotion.

And these are the three major indicators on Strive HI for post secondary readiness. When we get to the financial performance—so, we have the three. I mentioned the academic, which is important, but the financial performance is just as important.

So, we do have an audit that every charter school will do annually and this is by a third-party vendor. So, we want subjectivity, we want to make sure that we are really being responsible with our funds and making sure that they are—there's, there's a low risk assessment and I don't know if Danny wants to chime in a little bit about the framework at all, but he'll correct me if I, if I get off course here.

But basically, maybe Danny, you can explain a little bit about the low acceptable to moderate range.

Sure. As Executive Director Noh stated, our financial performance framework is actually based on our charter industry financial indicators. So, this is based off of the National Association Charter School Authorizers, NACSA. We utilize sort of their model framework to develop our, not only our charter contract, but also look at the frameworks.

Where we do differ slightly is that their framework is sort of on a meets does not meet basis. When we're looking at finances, we actually determine, the commission determined, that risk is a more appropriate measurement for finances and for fiscal matters. So, we did adapt our financial performance framework to a risk assessment model.

So, these are the results that you see in this slide right now where it is the majority of our schools are in the low to acceptable area, meaning there are other, the lower end of financial risk with one school as a moderate.

You know, we tell our schools moderate is not bad, but it's when you have to really start watching, you know, making sure you're keeping an eye on things and making sure you don't slip one way or another. The one school that did receive a high mark is one of our newer schools.

So, in this case, they don't have trend data or, and a certain case, they don't have the reserve days cash on hand that schools that have been in operation for a longer period have. That school is going to have to build up toward that.

So, that's one of the reasons why we see them in the high category right now with the hope that as they continue, they'll start to move lower down the risk factor. One thing I do want to add is that again, these are looking at specifically charter school indicators and not a question of adequacy of funding.

So, once again, I'll turn it back over to Director.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Daniel. And we also have a lot of ways of monitoring this. But what we're really proud of our schools is they are engaging in and embracing the audit process. One, it's statute, but on the other hand is they're really embracing the—what they can learn and do some for some future planning.

So, again, very proud of the portfolio being in the low acceptable range. And again, not just our opinion, but these are generally accepted accounting principles that guide that work. The other way that really excited to show is our new interactive performance framework dashboard. And it's going to go live to the public. This is all public data.

We have a new data analyst who has helped us to look at data visually. So, the other graphs were all created by our new data analyst. And basically, it is an interactive dashboard that we can drill down at any time, by island, by year, by school enrollment size, so that we can do a true comparison.

These are the tools that our commissioners will use during renewal or annual performance. And it's something that can really highlight how the schools are performing at any given time, as I mentioned. We have one for each of the frameworks. So, that's academic. This is the financial framework.

And the different colored dots indicate the levels of risk, for example, and we can kind of see the overall performance. So, we should never get to a point where we're surprised by a school at the end. We should be able to have a pulse on what's happening for each of the schools.

And the last framework is the organizational framework. So, this is a snapshot here. So, at the end of this past year, we had nearly 97% of our schools with overall compliance. I just want to point out that the tall bar there with the 56 items.

So, imagine there, each school has at one point in time, you know, over 100 different tasks. And this could be anything from posting agenda minutes to posting agenda announcements. And if they're late, it might count against them.

So, I just wanted to say, even though that's our highs, it's really only 6% of all the compliance that is required. And on the right side, you can see that we have many, many schools, 100% compliance of their monthly—their monthly duties.

So, with this, we wanted to highlight also two exciting programs that we have within our office. And I already introduced Diane Goya, our Director for Early Learning. And as well as federal programs, we have two leads, Michael Clark and Cleo Osaki.

And this is just one way that we are really partnering together with the Ready Keiki initiative to address the early learning need throughout our state. And so, we're really proud that we can be part of that 2032 goal to ensure that 100% of our students will be served or have opportunities to attend.

And one way of doing that is starting the first pre-K-only charter schools. So, the first one kicked off at Parkway Village and the second one at Waiki teaches this school year. So, it's been really exciting.

So, you can see we have 173 students and over 100 families now that have been able to access free public education for early learning and that's really going to set them up for future success. So, really proud of the work they're doing there.

And for our federal programs, we just wanted to highlight the fact that the money is through a memorandum of understanding through the Department of Education. So, really thank you to Superintendent Hayashi and his team for working with our program leads as they interface with the schools.

And that's just kind of a breakdown of the different title buckets there, as well as identified schools that receive those funds. We're really also proud of the fact that we do have some schools moving out of the comprehensive support improvement category.

And so, again, it's all because of the focus and attention to continuous improvement and partnerships with the Department. And then lastly, we're going to touch on our successes and challenges and then be ready for some questions that you may have for us.

So, for success, Kulia Academy did open its doors last year and they started off one grade, and they were the top performing school statewide in both English language arts and math. They did not take the science one yet, but on, based on their trajectory, we are expecting great performance from them again.

So, really, congratulations to Kulia Academy and their team. We also did—charter schools, I mentioned the pre-Ks, but the top one there over in Kilauea, Hawaii is Namahana, and they opened with 6th and 7th grade and both Kilauea and Namahana will be expanding to 12th grade as a slow growth model.

The other success that we had was a new strategic plan where we did revisit our vision, mission, values, and goals. And this is just kind of like a place map to kind of see it all in one spot. But one thing we're really excited about is that shape in the middle, called systems.

Because we wanted to design systems for continuous improvement knowing that each of them touches those really important foundational goals that every educational institution and system requires. So, we want to be supportive and we need to be responsive because, again, we are—we are working with our most precious and with our students.

So, that is our commitment as a Commission and ultimately, as Dr. Allencaster mentioned, it's so that we can authorize and assess and acclaim high quality charter schools throughout state. This is just a model—more, it's kind of a reminder for ourselves of just how the monies generate for per pupil.

This is just the formula and how the different EDM buckets that we derive our per pupil funding. So, it is intricately tied to the department's budget. And so, again, it's a lot of partnership, a lot of work with so superintendent and his team. So, we're very grateful for that, again. Challenges.

Well, we do have some challenges around this. We did a non renewal of a charter school just this past year as well. So, Kamalani Academy, the Wahiawa did close its doors.

Unfortunately, we—it's kind of a challenge and a success because we were able to make sure every one of those students they get placed in a school that in their neighboring areas. So, Deputy Director Poore really led that effort in the closure protocol and interface with all the neighboring schools and made sure that that chapter closed cleanly.

So, it was sad, but definitely something that we never wanted to have to do but we know that we must do when the time becomes necessary. The other challenges around funding issues, I mentioned the federal program.

Again, I think we're all kind of wondering what's going to be happening with the federal dollars and the impact it will have thus, so, that becomes something of a challenge. And then, we just have to always mention that the per people does not include facilities funding.

And so, even though per people has been going up year by year, it does not adequately address our facilities issues. And so, I just wanted to—of course I don't even have to tell you about this, but I just wanted to make sure it's always something we think about in the office.

And then, the last one that's proving to be a challenge is around the collective bargaining, and this is more just because of the funding mechanism between EDM 600, EDM 612, and this is something that we did bring up at last year's briefing. And lastly, again, mahalo to our commissioners.

Like our board of education, they are volunteer positions and, but we have such great capacity and so we have nine commissioners strong, and we are, again, very grateful for their service and their leadership and guidance and that, thank you. Questions?

Thank you, Dr. Noh. We're going to continue and then we're going to take questions at the end. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right. Next, we have the Executive Office of Early Learning.

I'm Yuuko Arikawa-Cross, Director of the Executive Office on Early Learning. I'm here today with my teammates, Jennifer Chow, our Government Affairs Specialist, and Kelly Benoy, our Business Management Officer.

So the Executive Office on Early Learning. Our vision is that every child in Hawaii has access to high quality early childhood development and learning experiences which lay the foundation for lifelong well being.

Our mission includes our strategy as well, which means through collaboration and partnerships, we work to establish a system that ensures a solid foundation of early childhood development and learning for Hawaii's young children, children prenatal to five, meaningful engagement and supports for their families and a stable, competent and supportive early childhood workforce.

Our office has two primary functions to coordinate and improve the early childhood system. We also host the Head Start State Collaboration Office Director and we also work in partnership with the Hawaii Department of Education to administer one of the Public Pre K one Public Pre K option which is the EOEL Public Pre K option.

I wanted to share a highlight at the start. I wanted to introduce you to first five Hawaii. The Hawaii P20 partnerships for education and Executive Office on Early Learning applied for and were accepted to a Preschool Development grant back in 2022.

And through this grant, Hawaii Children's Action Network, or HCAN, worked to develop this common eligibility portal so families in our communities can now go to first five Hawaii and enter their basic information and it will screen them across 18 different programs in Hawaii that cross early learning, health and safety, food and nutrition, special needs and early intervention, parenting, family support and even housing.

And we're really excited about this. It's live now and if you'd like any toolkit materials, we can always give that to you. The other exciting piece that we have been working on that will be released shortly is the Children and Youth Fiscal Map.

So Hawaii Early Childhood Action Strategy and Executive Office on Early Learning partnered with the Children's Funding Project and we created together this Youth Fiscal Map with a lot of support from the budget holders of the state, different departments in the state in Hawaii.

And so this tracks public investments for children from 0 to 24, from 2019 to 2023, and it looks across the whole funding landscape from state, federal and federal relief funds and it looks at how Hawaii is attempting to address outcomes services, different age groups and populations across Hawaii.

So as soon as we get the release from the Children's Funding Project, we'll definitely make it available to everyone here. So again, as I mentioned previously, we did have the Preschool Development Grant. It was a renewal grant. It was just shy of $20 million that we had been working on over the last three years.

We have a nice booklet here that we can always give to each and every one of you and it highlights all of the work that's been done across the early learning system.

Looking at our comprehensive needs assessment, looking at a strategic plan, looking at family engagement, supporting the workforce, looking at program quality improvement and looking at quality and expanding access to programs.

A part that came out of the Preschool Development Grant is the newly revised Hawaii Early Childhood State Plan that is from 2025 to 2030 we just completed at the very end of December. So we're looking to do a nice launch sometime soon.

And so what was really exciting about this is that we found community partners from across the whole landscape to think about what do we hope for our children and our families in Hawaii that can cross Ohana health, safety and well being, Ohana partnerships and engagement, development and learning, workforce access.

And also looking at our systems, which includes data management and data sharing agreements. Through the Preschool Development Grants, but also in conjunction with other initiatives, we have conducted a lot of community engagement and outreach for the state plan. We did have 296 responses that came across every single island. And so we're really excited about that.

And when we go out to do community engagement and outreach, we like to share a lot about all of the things that are available to families, including public Pre K but also charter pre K Head Start subsidies.

And depending on which community we're going to and what the needs are of the community, we'll bring different resources and materials with us as a part of our Preschool Development Grant.

And also looking forward, the only request that we're looking at this year is to sustain this momentum, is turning the FTEs for our positions to continue this community outreach and engagement and also to take a look at the work that's actually now in the state plan that we're looking to implement and also to continue to support the evaluation of the whole early learning system and the different programs within to see how we can fine tune and improve the work that's happening across the early learning field.

So thanks to the support of the Legislature, the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor and our Ready KP partners, the number of EOEL Pre K classrooms have more than tripled since 2022. So you can see this chart of the expansion that we have been a part.

So we now sit with 89 sites, 117 classrooms, we have 2,275 seats and as of January, earlier this week we had a total of 4,979 applications to our EOYA Papa Trique with 3,491 unique applications because we had 42 pairs of twins.

And we are also happy to report that EOL met 10 out of 10 benchmarks and the latest near public pre K report, our charter school partners also did as well.

And when we look at quality and public Pre K, we are looking at these elements here that have been defined through near's research, which includes taking a look at our curriculum. Our curriculum supports teacher credentials, looking at professional development, class sizes, ratios, screenings and our continuous quality improvement.

We know that the most important people are the people who are typically in front of the children and everybody else supports the children. And so we are really thrilled with our early childhood educator stipend program. To date we've had 162 recipients.

There's actually there's 163 because one person has gone through two times, which means they have taken one degree credential and gone on to their next one. And we've had 61 completers that have come out of our psyching program and are now across the early childhood field.

So not only do some of them come into EOL Public Pre K, but they also do enter Head Start in other charter schools and other community based programs. Everybody is on this, on this effort of Act 46 to increase access to three and four year olds.

So our benchmark right now is that 50% of the unserved children and we are marking it from 2020 when Act 46 passed. But 350% of the currently unserved children will have a seat by 2027 and 100% of all children who are 3 and 4 will have a seat by 2032.

So in this data set, what you can see on the bottom line are the supply and then the line that is starting at the top, about 36,000 and on a downward trajectory is actually the three and four year old population in Hawaii.

And so with the increase of seats that we are on right now, it looks like we are on target to hit that first benchmark of having 50% of the currently unserved children having a seat in 2027.

And then we can only project out to 2032 if the population were to start to even out and go flat, if the seats stayed flat, or whether the population declined. And it would also look differently if our seats continue to increase. And all of these are factors in hitting that target by 2032.

And then now looking out to the future, one thing that we're really excited about is that EOL for the first time set up our EIN with the support of the Department of Education and we applied for a new PDGB 51 year grant.

The structure of it is different now because it used to be a three year grant and now it's a one year grant. So we're really excited that we were one of 23 states that were selected. There were 34, I believe, states that might have applied and we were selected. So we're really excited about this.

And so this is something that we will be working on moving forward in addition to the new 25 classrooms that will be opening in 2026. And so the Legislature authorized our classroom seats for next school year.

And so we will be working on supporting our teachers, administrators and staff of our existing schools as well as the new schools that will be joining EL for next school year.

Okay, thank you so much. I greatly appreciate it. We're going to hold questions until the end. And then last and not least for today, we have the Hawaii Department Superintendent Hayashi.

Chair Woodson, Vice Chair La Chica. Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. Thank you. Happy New Year. Thank you. I'm joined by Deputy Superintendents for academics, Heidi Armstrong, as well as Operations Jesse Suki and strategy and Administration, Dr. Tammy Ottomara Chun. I will share updates across the areas that you've asked for.

Our focus today is to give you a clear picture of where things stand, what progress we're seeing and what challenges remain. The Department of Education's Culeana is straightforward, preparing us young people for their future and for the future of our state. At the end of the day, our core mission is to educate.

We recognize that during the legislative session there are many questions about operations. Those discussions matter. We take our responsibility seriously as the state's second largest employer and as a significant part of the state's budget at the time. It's important to remember that our operations and our workforce exist to support students, their learning, their growth and their success.

As requested by this Committee today, we'll provide updates on the specific topics you asked for along with an overview of the Department supplemental budget request. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, shows that Hawaii has made real gains in academic achievement both in our test scores and in how we compare nationally.

NAEP is the only true apples to apples comparison across states. What this slide shows is fourth grade reading performance. Over the last two decades, Hawaii has moved from the bottom 10 states to the top 15 nationwide. Fourth grade reading is currently our strongest academic area and this long term improvement reflects sustained focus on and effort over time.

We're also showing. We're also showing neat results for 8th grade math which is our most most challenged academic subject area. Even so, when you look over the past two decades, Hawaii has made meaningful progress. We've moved from the bottom 10 states to statistically at the national average for 8th grade math.

While math remains an area where we need continued improvement, this long term trend shows forward movement and gives us a solid foundation to build on. Shifting from the long term view to more recent performance, our schools have shown real resilience in recovery from pandemic Learning loss after Covid. This slide looks at changes between 2019 and 2018.

24 Nationally, fourth grade reading is still down about 5 points below pre pandemic levels and many states remain below where they were in 2019. Hawaii, however, shown in Orange, is amongst a smaller group of states that are nearing or have returned to pre pandemic achievement levels in fourth grade reading.

That said, academic recovery is not our end goal. Our goal is that every student should for every student to make progress every year regardless of where they start. But recovery from the pandemic is an important milestone and Hawaii is on track to reach it.

Math was more significantly impacted by the pandemic than reading and 8th grade math shows just how challenging academic recovery has been. Nationwide, nearly every state saw steep declines and many are still working to regain lost ground.

Even in this context, Hawaii continues to be amongst the leading states in returning to pre pandemic levels of achievement in 8th grade math as measured by Nate. This reinforces while math remains a most challenging area, our recovery efforts are moving in the right direction.

The progress we're seeing in NAEP is also reflected in our own state assessment results. Hawaii, along with about a dozen other states, administers the Smarter Balance assessment. These results show that Hawaii is nearing academic recovery. Amongst current proficiency levels are essentially the same as pre pandemic levels.

We're fractions of a point away and the bars appear equal because of rounding. What's important to note is that many other states are still struggling to return to pre pandemic proficiency, including some that historically performed higher than Hawaii. In addition, when we compare ourselves to other states using the same assessment, Hawaii performs very well.

We have the highest proficiency levels in language arts and the third highest in mathematics.

These test scores are only one of several measurements we use to monitor progress and guide our work, but they also provide important information for us as a system for the state and for our families about whether students are on track for college and career readiness.

The gains reflected on the last few slides are the results of consistent effort by our teachers, principals and school teams who keep student learning under keep students learning under very challenging conditions. I'm proud of the work of our schools.

The recovery and the gains that we've made reflect the hard work, care and professionalism that I see when I visit schools. I also want to thank the Legislature and the Board of Education for your support over the long term. Your investments enable the student learning that is evident in these results.

I'd like to turn things over to Deputy Superintendent for Operations Jesse Suki to share the next set of slides.

Good afternoon Chair Woodson, Vice Chairman, GFA Members, thank you for the opportunity.

Next Slide before getting into menu changes, it's important to understand the scale of our student meals operation. Hawaii Public Schools serve more than 100,000 student meals daily, making us one of the largest institutional food purchasers in the state.

We continue to collaborate with local vendors statewide to establish the use of fresh merch local produce in school cafeterias on a regular basis. We are redesigning the menu to focus on scratch cooking, local foods and student choice, which we expect will increase participation.

Increased participation matters because it directly increases federal meal reimbursements, improving the financial stability of the program. Beginning school year 26-27, all students will be offered two entree options daily. In school year 27-28, schools served by the new Regional Kitchen in central Oahu will offer two entree options plus a daily salad bar.

The Department's role is to purchase more local commodities at scale consistent with federal procurement rules. That requires multi agency coordination, working with agriculture, economic development and higher education partners to map supply volumes and seasonality so DOE can reliably purchase local products.

On the next slide, Student Meals to support the new menu, we're investing in system wide staff training. A School Food Service Branch Training Coordinator now oversees onboarding, staff, skill building and annual training for all food service staff including regional kitchens. District supervisors continue to monitor implementation and provide on site operational support.

We are partnering with the Culinary Institute of America for intensive training. 24 participants per cohort 5 cohorts total, each completing a 5 day training. A dedicated sous chef position will sit under the Regional Kitchen Manager to support consistency, quality control and mentor. The Wahiawa Regional Kitchen is a cornerstone of our long term food service strategy.

A groundbreaking event is scheduled for January 292026. Renovations for the initial four finished kitchens are included in the board approved and Governor's budget. Phase two design is still being refined. Construction is funded with a Projected opening in June 2029. Phase one operations include 26 full time equivalent staff, all included in the Board and Governor's budgets.

These positions cover analytics, program specialists, food service management, maintenance, labor and custodial support to ensure safe and reliable operations. Phase 2 is projected to require approximately 20 additional FTEs as capacities expand.

On the next slide Regarding subsidized school meals, I want to start by thanking the Legislature for your support in expanding access to food Free school meals for students who need it. In the current school year 25-26 students who qualify for reduced price meals are now able to eat for free.

That change was supported by a $565,000 appropriation based on participation patterns for breakfast and lunch. In the upcoming school year 26-27, eligibility will expand further to include students from Alice households. That's up to 300% of the federal poverty level. That expansion is supported by a $2.8 million appropriation and is expected to serve about 12,000 additional students.

We're already seeing the impact as of December 30th, just over 10,400 students qualify for reduced price meals, which is a 1.5% increase from last year compared to the same time last year, we've served more than 21,000 additional breakfasts and more than 21,000 additional lunches.

Based on participation patterns, this tells us two important more eligible students are applying and students who previously qualified but did not participate are now eating school meals. That's exactly the outcome this effort was designed to achieve. On the next slide Student Transportation I'll shift now to Student transportation.

This section provides an update on our transportation operations, current workforce conditions, and the alternative options we're using to maintain access for students. Statewide transportation remains one of our most operationally sensitive services, particularly because of ongoing workforce shortages and the geographic realities of serving schools across the islands.

On this slide Student Transportation Update School Buses I want to start with the overall picture. All bus routes that were in service at the end of last year are being served this school year. I want to thank Representative Lachica for legislation that extended flexibility through the Emergency Proclamation.

That flexibility has been critical in allowing the Department and our contractors to continue adapting to ongoing workforce shortages. In practice, since the start of the school year, about 14 routes that were scheduled to open or were initially operating have been merged with existing routes were temporarily suspended.

These decisions were driven by driver availability and low ridership, with the goal of maximizing bus utilization, not reducing student access. It is important to clarify that our bus contracts are based on drivers and vehicle assets, not on individual routes. Ideally, one bus serves one route, but but depending on geography, a single bus may complete multiple runs.

In rural areas, distance often limits service to a single run. We continue to see daily call outs and workforce instability across all contractors. When routes are combined, students are still transported, but pickup and drop off times may shift on the next slide.

Student Transportation Participation this slide shows student participation across all transportation options compared to total student enrollment. The baseline here is just under 152,000 students, including both regular and special education.

What you see is how students are distributed across Department provided transportation including regular education, bus service, special education, curb to curb service and the Express county bus Pass program, as well as carpool options and students who do not use Department transportation at all. The key takeaways is that most students do not rely on the school bus service.

That reality underscores why alternative transportation options are a critical part of our overall strategy to maintain access for students statewide. The next slide Workforce shortages Affect availability of Routes this slide compares the number of drivers required under contract with the number of drivers actually available. What it shows is a steady decline in available drivers since 2018.

This reflects a national shortage of commercial driver's license holders which is affecting school districts across the country. Our current bus contracts come from RFPD 220005 is a seven year contract which was the department's first statewide procurement for student transportation services.

These contracts are service based and aligned to school complex areas rather than contracted route by route to allow for flexibility. Statewide, there are 18 active school bus contracts, two on Kaua', I, five on Maui, eight on Oahu, three on Hawaii island and two on Molokai. Molokai contracts were handled separately due to its unique geography and resource constraints.

We are now in the second year of these contracts. Because there were no major service area changes this year, contractors have had greater stability to recruit drivers who are familiar with the communities they serve in terms of service delivery. Special Education transportation is always prioritized when special education drivers are unavailable.

Regular education CDL drivers are reassigned to cover those routes because these services are required under federal and state law. On the next slide Express Program and Go Kid Carpool Pilot to supplement school bus service. The Department continues to expand alternative transportation options to students. These options are especially important given ongoing workforce constraints.

One of those options is the Express program which provides no cost county bus rides for students. Statewide participation now exceeds 6,900 students with the largest concentration on Oahu. Participation on Kauai currently includes 122 students. Participation on Maui and Hawaii island is not reflected here because those county systems are fare free.

88% of the Express participants are high school students and the program was expanded to middle school students this year. Leeward Oahu students continue to show the highest participation. We're also piling a free carpool option for families to the Go Kid program. All complex area superintendents and principals were surveyed about interest in participating.

We launched this program this school year in Central Oahu and Upcountry Maui. Overall participation currently averages just over 3% in both central Oahu and upcountry Maui with 303 families registered to date.

Based on early results, Student Transportation Services Branch is preparing a request for proposals to extend the carpool program into the next school year with an anticipated publication in February. Parent involvement through the PTSAS and on Island Go Kid support have been key to building trust and awareness.

Sorry, I have more on this next slide Addressing Bus Driver Shortages Addressing the driver shortage requires a long term workforce strategy. This is not something that can be solved overnight. On the workforce side, Leeward Community College offers a CDL program that includes the S endorsement required for school bus drivers.

Oahu residents may qualify for tuition assistance through the Good Jobs Hawaii Initiative, which helps lower barriers to entry. We're also working with Hawaii Community College to expand CDL pathways of the Big island and partnering with the Chamber of Commerce's transportation sector to support recruitment statewide. I also want to touch on Act 140 again.

This was introduced by Representative Pacheca. Act 140 provides flexibility in the types of vehicles that can be used for student transportation, including motor coaches, and it also affects driver qualification requirements. In response, our contractor GTI is subcontracting with Polynesian Adventures to provide regular education service for Aliamanu Middle School and Moanalua High School using motor coaches.

All drivers serving DOE students have been cleared through the Department's Employee Background Check Office. In addition, both GTI and Roberts Hawaii have hired drivers with CDLP endorsements and are covering the cost of those drivers to complete training to obtain their CDLS endorsement.

From a procurement standpoint, we are not amending existing contracts to broadly add motor coaches at this point. Doing so would raise scope and procurement concerns and only one contractor has access to non school bus vehicles, which also raises equity concerns across the contracts.

Concepts from Act 140 are explored in future solicitations and we are looking into that for retrofitting into current contract rather than into current contracts. Looking ahead, our focus is on using data to ensure consistent seat utilization, supporting contractor recruitment, and reinstating or adding routes in underserved areas as new drivers are onboarded.

Route decisions are made collaboratively with students once drivers complete training. Transportation remains a daily operational challenge, but our approach is to maintain service prioritize students with the greatest need and expand flexible options while we rebuild workforce capacity. On the next slide, we move into the Capital Improvement Program.

This section provides an update on how previously appropriated school construction funds are being used across the state. The slides that follow summarize current expenditures, contract status, and remaining balances for active capital projects through fiscal year 2026.

Our focus is on moving projects forward responsibly, aligning funding with project readiness and maintaining transparency in how these public funds are expended. On the next slide. Projects with Available Funds through fiscal year 2026. These are funds from Act 164 and Act 230.

This table shows how the Department is using previously appropriated school construction funds under these acts combined as of January 8th. Report to the Board of Education. We have the link up there so the charts show all the projects that we're working on. About 5% of the total reflects lapses.

That includes prior lapses that have already occurred under Act 2502025. Only about 1% is currently proposed to lapse. The remaining approximately 95% of the appropriation is either expended under contract or preserved to complete active projects.

In other words, nearly all of these funds are being used or retained to move projects forward and see them through completion to give a sense of progress. Between July 1 and December 19 of this fiscal year, the Department completed 23 construction projects totaling approximately 235 million.

A more detailed breakdown of the project categories is included in that attachment to the link there for the board Member on the next slide. Project Status Contracting Schedules this table shows how projects funded under Acts 164 and 230 are distributed across different stages of work.

Projects contracted for design, contracted for construction that are planned to be contracted within the allowable time frame as shown in the chart. Taken together, this confirms that the Department has an active environment balanced pipeline of capital projects with funding aligned to the appropriate phase of work.

Projects identified as to be contracted represents funds that are being preserved for upcoming procurements rather than uncommitted or idle funds. These are projects moving through the planning and readiness steps in advance of contracting. On the next slide. Status of projects with balances greater than a million dollars appropriated from 2005 to 2022.

These projects are in different stages shown in the chart, including active construction design, final closeout and land acquisition, and then a small number of cases legal delay. The majority of the remaining balances are tied to projects that are actively under construction were viewed together with the previous slides.

This confirms that capital Improvement program funds are being actively managed and are largely committed to existing projects rather than sitting unused.

I'll now turn over the next slide set about the Lahaina employee workforce housing to Deputy Superintendent Tammy Oyadomari-Chun.

We're excited to share with you the progress on DOE's Workforce Housing Project in Lahaina. That project is moving along very well.

This is a 20 million dollar project that's funded both by CIP and major disaster funds allocated by the Governor. This is a 47 unit project on our Line of Schools campus. The project is managed by our Office of Facilities and Operations and Dowling company is our project partner.

Dowling did the design and construction and they will manage the property in the short term. The rents are affordable and lower rents are available for employees whose household incomes are up to 100 up to 65% EMI. The project started in May of 2025 and move in is scheduled for March 16.

The project is a response to wildfire recovery for both those who are to support our employees who are rebuilding their homes after the wildfire and also to address housing shortages in the Lahaina area that were exacerbated because of the loss of housing in the area.

And the March opening is just in time as our employees are now learning that FEMA housing support is ending soon. Transition here now to talking about the supplemental budget request.

But first I'm going to talk to you about what's happening with the fiscal 2016 budget that was appropriated in the biennium as with other state departments, because we saw restrictions on the budget because of uncertainty regarding the federal budget situation and the council and revenues projection.

In addition, in October the Department was notified of some additional restrictions and you can see them listed here. Since then, some of them have been released, but we're continuing to work with the Governor's office to explain the urgency of the funding. And these are appropriated funds for priority areas that are currently in discussion with the Governor. Okay.

Moving to the supplemental budget request for 27, the Department of Education is presenting a lean and focused budget. What you see here is a summary of what was presented to the Board of Education. We in total It's a request for 24 $5.8 million.

It is a much more modest request than you usually see from the Department of Education. As you know, we have many needs vote support our school. But in recognition of the budget situation and instructions from the Governor, we made this lean and focused request.

To give you an idea in comparison, the last time we came in for fiscal fiscal year that was supplemental. Our request was 198. But we are optimistic about the question. Some optimism because the customer council on revenues showed some improvements this week and you can see the various buckets that we presented here.

I'm happy to describe the detail of what's in the various buckets of what the Board of Education has approved, but perhaps we can leave that for questions. We'll be doing a more detailed presentation next week to the House Finance and Seneca Waste pages. The summary of our changes here.

So we submitted what you saw was the Department of Education's request that was approved by the Board of Education.

We submitted that request to the Governor's office and what you see here is summarized comparing our Board of Education request in blue 25.8 million to what's in the Governor's budget on on the right we saw the governor's budget including regional kitchen items but then reducing the biennium budget appropriation to reduce 30 million of preventative maintenance funds.

So the net effect is the overall reduction compared to biennium of appropriation overall reduction of $20.4 million. And you can see in the next slide a little bit more detail of what the Governor's Executive budget approved. Starting on the left you see the reduction of 30 million in General funds for General operating funds regarding preventative maintenance.

And then following that to the right are the support for regional kitchens which was included in the budget. The next three item four items are. Really. Not funding per se. These are trade offs. We have been engaged and committed to looking at the DOE budget and reallocating existing funds to current priorities and those changes.

So as we look ahead for fiscal 27 and beyond, the priority is to sustain sustain the momentum that we have for for positive student outcomes. That said, we do have some challenges that we're we're seeing. The first is uncertainty the federal education role and funding. We are currently awaiting congressional action on the budget the education budget.

So our funding for school federal funds for next school year depend on action by Congress. We are also looking at inflation for non payroll costs as the cost of goods and services increases. We also continue to be challenged by recruitment and retention for our workforce.

We are looking at taking action to address changes in student enrollment receive this includes requests in the budget for new campuses where population is growing in certain parts of the state.

And then we are also looking at our schools and reviewing enrollment where population has shifted from and finally the condition of our school facilities continues to be a challenge.

And with that I'm going to pass it back to to talk about the CFP. Thank you so for the first bit where I spoke about CIP, that was the request by the Committee for sort of a snapshot of where the program is.

This is about the Supplemental Budget request so this slide Prioritizing Statewide Facilities Needs these priorities come from the Department's Supplemental Capital Improvement Projects budget request for fiscal year 26-27. The Department CIP request is significant because we manage over 21.5 million square feet of facilities across over 4,000 structures, approximately 266 sites statewide.

We appreciate the Legislature's continued support of the lump sum approach to CIP budgeting, which really has helped move projects. The Department has reevaluated and will continue to reassess CIP and deferred maintenance priorities. With an updated perspective, we are refining our priority. We continue to refine our prioritization process to better Distinguish necessities from wants.

Much of this request is organized into the 11 lump sum categories buckets, which provide an efficient and manageable way to group facility and infrastructure projects. We continue to work closely with complex area superintendents and principals as we implement the Department's CIP program and identify priorities.

We also engage with legislative leadership and other partners to help provide clarity on the status of CIP projects. I think either today or maybe on Monday, we'll be sending around a periodic letter to all legislators letting you know what project status are as in your district.

Overall, this request reflects a continued step forward toward a more fiscally responsible, targeted and sustainable approach to addressing the basic infrastructure needs of a changing public education system.

On the next slide Supplemental CIP budget request for 2020 this slide compares the Board of Education approved supplemental CIP request, which is in dark blue, with the Governor's Executive budget request, which is in light blue. The board approved 784.4 million and when combined with Act 250, which is passed in 2025, the total is 95050.9 million.

The Executive budget request includes 475.5 million. The table shows how the Executive request differs from the board approved request across the lump sum categories. These differences reflect reductions across multiple categories including deferred maintenance, health and safety compliance capacity, structural facilities support facilities, project completion, telecommunications, temporary facilities planning design, and land acquisition.

This slide provides transparency into how the overall request was adjusted and how funding levels have varied by category.

In the next slide Board Approved Supplemental CIP Request this slide highlights the Department's funding request, including construction of the replacement school for King Kamehameha 3 elementary School in Lahaina and the new construction of the East Kapolei Elementary School in West Oahu, which is sort of needed.

It also includes funding to begin planning and design for the Coral Ridge Elementary School. These requests reflect the department's focus on addressing critical facility needs and future capacity through the CIP process. Together, these slides show how the Department is prioritizing statewide facility needs using structured, transparent, and a sustainable approach to capital planning.

On Tuesday, I was fortunate to attend Wakampu Elementary School, Marine Corps Base, Hawaii. And that was a new build Office of Facilities and operations on the toe. Funds were released in 202324 January 26th. Schools built. It is amazing. I invite all of the ED Committee Members.

If you would like to do a visit to the school, let us know. We'll take you there. When we talk about school that is designed and created to support student learning, to support innovative and engaging activities for students. You gotta come in and visit Mokapu. It is. It is truly wonderful.

And I want to thank our facilities office for getting that done in, I think about three years once the funds are released. Yeah.

So thank you. All right. That invitation remains open, so please let me know if you'd like to do a visit. Okay. Next slide. At the core of the Department of Education's work is simple. It's a simple charge to educate Hawaii's children. This year, we are updating the state's vision of Hawaii public school graduate to the vision.

Prior vision actually served us well, but it's been nearly 20 years since it's been revisited and revised. Our revised vision builds on the foundation and recommits us to preparing graduates who are both globally competitive and locally committed. That emphasis on being locally committed truly matters.

The future of Hawaii depends on young people seeing a future for themselves here in Hawaii, in our communities, our workforce and our civic life. I want to thank you for your continued care and attention to our schools, to our employees, and most importantly, to our students.

The partnership between the Legislature and the Department in policy and resources and in shared responsibility is essential to student success. We approach this work in the spirit of NE Papa, working together in unison toward a common goal. We look forward to continuing that work together with you. Mahalo very much and thank you for.

The opportunity to share. Thank you.

Thank you, superintendent and team members. We're going to take.

A five minute break and then we'll bring back charter school commissions. Thank you.

Recommitting the Education Committee informational briefing. Today's date is 9th January. We are reconvening for questions. First up, we have charter school commission members. Questions for the charter school commission. Vice Chair.

Okay. Thank you so much for your presentation today. My question is on first. Thank you for sharing that the enrollment projection, I mean the current enrollment has, you know, increased incredibly over the last five years.

How does the commission determine or project, you know, the trend in growth and how do you plan for what type of public charter schools? Where do they need to be open? Like looking at the need versus current capacity.

Yeah, thanks for the question VIce Chair. So we do have for statute our annual application process. So we are currently in the middle of it right now.

And so we don't have what I will say a strategic authorizing, which is a term that is used in other parts of the nation where they will look at certain regions and they will say we are accepting applications for this type of school perhaps in this area right now. It is a statewide open application process.

That's how it currently is. The only time we did a very specific restriction is when we did a pre K only this last round. And they had to be currently operating preschools because they were the most ready to begin. They had a very quick turnaround. Other schools, they have a pre opening.

So it's once they get approved, one to two years to open and then the next part of the question is on the slow growth. So we do have some indicators around wait lists, interest. Each school will have, will keep their own internal list of what that wait list is.

We also know that they're every spring during the enrollment projections, that's when we'll get the first kind of glance of what, where our schools, how they're growing and what their requests are.

Thank you for sharing that. I mean I do see that in the mainland where there's opportunities for different types of educate, you know, educational opportunities. I mean you already have like certain niche, right? Like you have Hawaiian immersion, you have project based learning.

Is this something that the commission is looking towards like in terms of as you are growing and continue to grow, looking at approaching a community and saying maybe right now you need a, you know, a charter school is needed in.

This area, in a certain area. Yeah, we have talked about that. I know PJ has definitely talked about this. We've talked about this a lot. And he has a lot of exposure to the national network of authorizers. So he has a Little more context around strategic authorizing.

You want to say a little bit. It's certainly something we could look into as the authorizer, identifying areas that might be open to a charter school serving the needs of that community. We could target applications. That would be a discussion with commissioners with our annual application cycle.

And see, we can approach commissioners and see if that's something they would be interested in. It would require us doing a bit more research around different regions perhaps. But we also have a strong focus on community based authorizing. Right. Community based charter schools. So typically it's organically generated from the community that they're intended to serve.

But certainly that's something we could pursue with commissioners and ask around and see.

If that's an opportunity. Thank you. And then my second question is on the academic performance piece, are you, you showed the point in time for this year, but what is it in relation to how we were last year? Did we improve? And for what you shared with. Right. Math and language arts.

So out of the 20, is it 30 out of the 38 schools? Am I reading? Oh, no, it's here in the top. It says 21 schools fall below the state for language arts and then 23 for math. So based on how we've been doing in the past, can you highlight what. Yeah, any types of interventions?

I know it was mentioned some type of standardized curriculum. Is that what I heard? Or some type of approach to curriculum.

But what would you like to share about? Sure. Yeah. I don't have the trend data in front of me, but we'll definitely get that to you. We do with, I mentioned Calea Academy. So they were the top performing entire state. So that definitely is part of the. You know, factored into the trend data.

So we'll, we'll get to that one for sure. So you can see over time what we do have in place are, is the academic performance framework in the annual reporting. So we, we do an annual report every year and that for every charter school, we get a snapshot into their performance, their financial and their organizational pieces.

And that's all part of the large report that we do provide. So we do have those, those indicators in place with monitoring and in terms of curriculum, this is one of the conversations around charter schools, that charter schools do have the economy to develop the instructional modes and offer curriculum that needs. The needs of their students.

So it's really, I wouldn't say we have standardized one, but we also have a lot of schools that they do best practices. So you know, when you walk into charter school, it'll Feel like a school, you know, wherever you take.

I did have an opportunity to visit with Kulia Academy. So very impressed with having smaller enrollment, but they're doing our own AI especially. My last question is just you provided a slide on the post secondary readiness percentages, but do you have information on our, uh, or college enrollment rates?

We don't have that one yet. I did meet with the Executive Director, Stephen Schatz. We did talk about getting an update because they came out to our charter commission and did the presentation and we said that was really well received. And so we're getting him to come back and do another report out for us.

I do know at last year's presentation we did have that post secondary RHNAults data, and that's something I can also.

Follow up with you so you will be able to provide. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you.

Could I just add on to that the post secondary. Many of our charter schools have taken it upon themselves to offer early college. They got funded for that, but really feel that's important.

And so we have quite a few of our students, and I don't have the direct number, but they're graduating with their high school diploma as well as their AA or as I think if.

You can share which schools are doing that, I'm sure Higher Education Chair Representative Garrett would also be interested to see how that's being modeled in the charter school space.

Yes, happy to. Who's paying for their early college? Is that coming out of the charter schools per people? Yes, it is. And also families or sometimes they'll subsidize. But yeah, they're trying to give every student the opportunity. So a lot of creative ways of. Trying to meet that. Any other question for the charter school commission?

Ladies first.

Go ahead.

Okay. Kind of along the same lines of Vice Chair La Chica, what do you folks provide or how are you supporting maybe the smaller, more rural charter schools? I'm thinking of like the one in Milolii that has had gone through different iterations, had many struggles.

How are you supporting some of those schools as they struggle maybe with meeting the criteria that is necessary for the charter school to continue to keep being a charter school. Right. There's lots of issues that they have, whether it's geographic or just an extreme need in the area.

How are you folks supporting some of those more rural schools?

Well, I'll answer from our position or our role as authorizer. So we do a lot of technical support for the schools.

Again, if they have questions around finance, Danny and his team can help them through all of the administrative areas, as you just mentioned, the small schools just don't have that kind of critical mass and. Or the infrastructure. We have sometimes one person doing multiple, wearing multiple hats.

So knowing that we do as much as we can to support the schools when they reach out by statute, it is technical support.

What we do also is, however, because each charter school is governed by a governing board who has the authority of all the frameworks, finances, the evaluation of the school leader, that we also provide supports to those governing boards. So PJ has done a lot of different trainings with. With the governing board chairs, with the governing boards.

And that's kind of the one way that we can support is through the monitoring and looking at early warning signs. If there are any, then we can come in and just. Again, it's a delicate balance of pushing in when that's not our role because we're also the monitor and the authorizer. Okay.

I think along those same lines of like the smaller schools that maybe don't have critical mass or the full support. To. Make everything happen. How are we. I'm sorry, this is the first time. I've spoken with the new MIC system. It's so odd. But one of the things you mentioned on here is facilities.

Can you share a little bit about the history of facilities and how and why we continuously exclude charter schools from receiving facilities funding?

Because I think from my own research and from different conversations that have been had when charter schools were first created and the statute was created, there were only a couple of schools that were deemed charter schools, and they already had a facility itself different from some of these other schools that are newer that have come up.

Can you tell us a little bit.

More about that history? Well, I have a little bit of insight on this because at our last charter school annual conference, we did have two of the originators from that time, and they were able to share. So that was at that time Senator Ige.

So Governor Ige and Senator McCartney came together and when they were both chairing each of the Senate and the House, that was when the charter school Bill was first introduced. And they did give a lot of context and background during that time of passing the first charter school Bill.

And it, it, as you said, Representative Fella, it was those first schools were considered conversion schools. So Kwai and Kauai elementary. And so yes, there was again, maybe a thought that there was not any for facilities. So as they shared the. The journey of that coming into law, it was.

It was a path of least resistance of getting the charter law minus the facilities and so it's just been something that we've all recognized needs to be addressed. But 30 years into the movement, it's.

I appreciate you bringing that. Thank you. Thank you for answering. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair.

You know, I asked this, just kind of in this spirit of continuous improvement. And you know, I believe in the promise of charter schools, you know, the focus on equity innovation and hopefully trying to get higher academic outcomes.

So just kind of keeping that in mind, again, this is more about just kind of the strategy for the commission itself. But if this, by your own admission, the charter schools, the achievement levels are not the same as the DOE schools right now. So if that's the case, how do you define success at the commission level?

Are you just trying to get to parity with the DOE?

Are you trying to exceed that and how do you measure against that? Thank you for that question. It's something I think we're, as educators, we grapple with that all the time. What we really want to also push. A little bit is in the area around the innovation.

So we do use the stri phi data because again, that's, that's part of the deal we call the charter bargain. Right. You want these on them, but what are some alternative measures? So in our academic performance framework, we're really proud of the work that our team has been doing and the schools have been displaying around mission alignment.

And that mission alignment is really what defines a school's purpose. It drives their instruction. Dr. Alencaster had mentioned around the families, communities that they serve, especially around Hawaiian language, Hawaiian focus, Hawaiian culture. And so those are all the data points that we don't want to dismiss in this entire equation.

So our academic performance framework takes into consideration not just the data points which we've shared, but also the part on the mission alignment that offers that balance. But I do understand the question. Again, if you ask any charter leader, they will say this is definitely something that they also answer to their boards. And their families about.

And also to balance it out, we also have a lot of schools that are obviously performing at a high level.

So there is that balanced conversation. Sure, that's a follow up question. Chair. So does the commission take it upon itself? Okay, you mentioned Kalia Academy is a high performing charter school. Do you inform other charter schools about some of their successes and how they might want to incorporate that to their own curriculum and whatnot?

Yeah, and not just other charter schools, but all schools. I know they've been getting a little. Of national press as well, rounding the first AI school and then getting the results. So we do have an annual charter conference that I mentioned, and this. We've done two so far, and that has brought other charter schools to come.

They will do presentations to share best practices, share knowledge, share different ways of. Of how they've approached everything from academics to their funding to their organization. So, yeah, there's, there's. There's plenty more to. To do around that work as well. Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much.

Members, any other questions? Go ahead.

Not to beat this to death, but looking at the strip high, the achieving. Gaps, so there's a few schools that. Are falling below the state average. Eight on the language arts and four on the math. Just out of curiosity, I'm wondering if those four out of the math achievement.

Are also on the. Elliot, the language arts achievement volume below, and whether or not this is something. That the commission's taking a look at. In terms of how can we better support them and how can we bring. Them up to speed? It's just. Yeah. Just looking at the data at face.

Value because we don't have the schools listed. I was just curious.

I was like, okay, I wonder how many of these schools are falling below average in both. And then what we're doing to better support them, identifying the, you know, the. Barriers or the struggles that they're facing. To be able to get them up to, you know, clearly academy level. It.

Just, it kind of screams out to me a little bit, yeah. Do you guys have any information on that? I don't have the specific names of the schools on me right now. I do know that it's not always consistent. We have some schools that are actually stronger in math and maybe not as much as ula.

The story we wanted to really tell on that slide is to show that the gap is being addressed and impressive numbers. But what we can do is get you the information of those schools. But I also wanted to say all this is part of the performance report. So Chair mentioned that we have come up with a renewal.

We have 13 schools and we have four years worth of data. And all that data is then given to the schools and our commissioners. Actually, it's on our website now of all the 13 schools that are up for renewal. And we look at the performance over time.

So all of those data points are considered into the whole renewal of each of the charter school contracts. Thank you. But I'll follow up with the. Those schools, especially for those that list the schools there.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Members, any other questions, please go ahead. Thank you. Congratulations. And celebrating the pre K only charter schools that's such a success. I was wondering, we also have native Hawaiian bookish charter schools. Are there any pushes or steps towards. Like native Hawaiian focused pre K only learning?

There's a lot of success I think around pre K in some of our native Hawaiian focused charters. But I am wondering if there is a step that you folks are looking at or trying to take towards establishing a pre K only school for that type of focus.

Welcome. Actually many of our pre K classrooms are part of K12 campuses. So it's not just having that learning language opportunity pre K but to continue on. So that's critically important for many of our schools. So actually six or seven of our classrooms are classroom.

Oh, that's fantastic. So we do have quite a good representation. There actually will be more. It's a matter of facilities oftentimes for existing programs wanting to have a pre K classroom that, you know, how do you continue to grow down as well as get their enrollment?

Yeah. Together I think we've had the chance to visit a couple of them on Hawaii island and they are such a success and such beautiful programs. I hope to see that type of model expanded across the state.

So thank you for your work in that area.

Thank you Chair.

Thank you Rep. Vice Chair.

Representative Kapela reminded me I do have a question on pre K. So the Kapolei Parkway project is an exciting one to me because it speaks to our ability to engage in a public private partnership. Executive Director, if you can kind of share.

Well, what is the YTTQ one Also a similar model in which there's a private developer and the state is the operator.

And what do you see as equal successes for something that this for this type of model as we look at filling getting to U.S. Executive Office of Early Learning says like we have such this gap to get through and meet the capacity where the need versus where we are at current capacity.

Yeah. And you know, I definitely want to defer to our Director because Diane's been working closely with that. It was a great partnership, public private in that new development area in Kapolei. Deanne wants any more background on that, but it's something of a model that we can hopefully replicate for sure.

But the Waikiki one was an existing preschool and they did lack of a better term, they converted into a public preschool. From private to public. Yes. So Deanne, do you have anything else to add?

Well, during Covid as you heard over the news, many of our private community providers were shutting down. Right. So developing this pre K only charter school was an option for some of our community providers to sustain themselves using a mixed delivery state funding as well as private funding sources.

It would be great if we could introduce legislation for future development to encourage our private providers to consider building into and incorporating child care into their facilities. I think that's an important aspect that we need for our families in this community.

So thank you for asking that. Thank you.

Thank you Chair.

Thank you VIce Chair. Members any other questions? Okay, a couple of questions very quickly. It's already waiting for the increase Executive Director that you referenced early on in your presentation. Do you know, do you have any data as to where those bodies came from in terms of did they come from outside the state?

Did they come intervening in inside the state?

That would be for the enrollment question. But one is we did have new schools began. So I'm not sure exactly. I can say this very confidently though that it was born out of community needs.

North Shore of Kauai has been asking for school for decades and so I did get an opportunity to visit before they opened, got to meet the founders, the community Members. It was and I heard story after story after they'd just been waiting for generations.

And so I can, I'm pretty confident those students came from directly from that area serving that community. For our latest, the last opening school in Kali also they are located in Kalihi, but I also know that they have an on all island draw according to the school Director.

So other than if I'm understanding your correction, your question, it's exactly, are they coming from outside or are they within? I couldn't answer that.

Do we know if they came from schools like public schools or other private schools within the state or area?

From what I understand is yes, it's families that were looking for different opportunities, families that were intrigued with the AI approach and data science approach. And we have a great reciprocity between the traditional public schools and charters. But that's probably a school level question of where the students are actually coming from.

Thank you for that.

And you know the Committee has had an opportunity to to visit some of the charter schools over the course of the Interact and you know, clearly see instances in where there's you know, very strong project based learning, transpiring, student driven, student led instruction that's happening.

But then when you take a look at the stripe high scores as an example, there is sometimes a disconnect defined as the proficiency levels are under the state average. Do you know as to why there is that disconnect between this alignment between what we're seeing at the school level and that lack of proficiency in core subject matters.

I can provide a more anecdotal response. As a former charter school leader here in Hawaii, that was something we struggled with a lot because our mission was not necessarily to teach to the test. You know, we had other loftier and more mission driven goals.

And so it was more important around the values that we wanted to, to share. Whether it's through language medium, whether it's through culture, whether it's through service community. And again, it's not to say testing is not important.

I know that's not what you're asking as well, but I just wanted to say anecdotally it's, it's something that even when I was at the school level it's like something we have to do. It's. But this is really where we want to develop community minded leaders what go out and serve the communities which they came from.

And we see some great, we hear great stories of those students who want to do amazing works not only locally but abroad and come home. And we have how many generations of teachers that come back to our charter schools to actually be part of that school community. So we have again a lot of anecdotal data around that.

I think again if you ask any school leader, yes they do want to make sure they are answering that question around performance but they're also looking at all the post secondary readiness that they have that they already know are happening within their communities.

Thank you for that. I guess that is always a challenge because you do not want to teach to the test but at the same time you want to provide educational degree system that is both engaging students in their simultaneously building those proficiency levels over time.

But hats off to all the educators because I know that's a very. There's multiple measures of assessments that are in place. So yes, we look at strive high but not solely as we've mentioned previously, the mission aligned we have school based assessments as well that gives a broader picture of the success rates.

So going beyond in addition to numeracy and literacy scores, how the students are faring and I think that's really important education that we don't put all of our aids in a standardized assessment once a year. I think it does injustice to innovative and different types of pedagogy that are really effective in many of our underserved populations.

So just you know, to keep it, I think to keep it holistic as far as how do we measure success. As you asked previously.

I agree it's important to be very balanced in how we look at preparedness. For students. But you know, when you have opportunities to go to some of these very high performing systems, like outside of the country, you actually never hear them say, you know, we're looking at it holistically.

They do look at it holistically, but they use that standardized assessment as an important metrics to try to benchmark where they are. So I don't want us also not to say that that assessment is not important because in my mind it is very much so important.

Yeah, we value it and that's why we report it out as well. You know, the continuous improvement of helping some of these smaller schools and you know, with the challenges that they have with students who come to them, you know, with underperforming or, you know, needing more assistance as they go through their schooling.

Thank you, doctor. Can you ask Danny? There was a discussion about the amount of allocation that's given per student. When you compare charter schools to. I will just define them as traditional public schools. Do you know how much the per pupil allocation is at the true up for our charter schools currently?

This year for pupil among comes out to about $11,980 per student, which is the highest per pupil we've seen. So again, we are seeing an increase as our enrollment goes up. Even, you know, by the slightest margins, 1%, 2%.

The, as the overall enrollment goes up again. We've seen that slight increase in the per pupil. So we'll probably. The true up does factor into the overall public school system enrollment as well.

So it does look at both charter school enrollment as well as the enrollment of the Department.

Do you know how much the per people allocation is on average for traditional schools?

The total allocation or the average per people allocation. What is sort of I have here based by enrollment. Yeah. Is $22,670 approximately. That's the average. Of course it's a different funding structure, but I just reference that because that is a huge chasm. And so if you can confirm. So there's a.

There's a understanding of like how we are funding our charter schools compared to our traditional schools until receive a. A block amount of funding per student per the statutory formula.

Is there money provided for facilities?

Not specifically. There's no specific facilities appropriation. The per pupil allocation is a lump sum allocation. So once that lump sum allocation is made by the Legislature, we then utilize the enrollment numbers to distribute it per pupil to our different schools.

It may not a shall in the statute. Okay, what about student meals? Is there additional funding for student meals?

Not specific appropriate transportation differentials. Differentials. The Legislature did provide $2 million worth of funding, I want to say approximately 2022. So there was a specific appropriation made. Our budget request this year, which wasn't approved at the Executive level, was to essentially true up that funding.

We're actually, our charter schools are actually spending about $2.4 million to pay out the differentials. And these are specifically the cart to staff differential as well as the Hawaiian immersion differential. The special education differential is still handled. At the Department level. Okay, are you receiving the special education differential?

Our charter schools teachers do receive that, but again that's paid out by the. On the Department side. So the funding for the differentials is on the Department side.

Is that going through EDN 600 or EDN 612, or is it separately all together?

The differentials right now are in EDN 600, so. So it could be classified as part of the per pupil, but we have. Sort of separated it out to make.

Sure that the schools that are eligible for the differentials receive the specific funding that's needed.

So we've also had to work with Budget and Finance to kind of cover that fund.

So I guess mechanically that would be very challenging if it's going through 600 as opposed to 612, which is why it would be better if it went through 612.

Yeah, we found out with any, I want to say specific appropriations that deal with a certain area because as we as Chair has just shown, there are no specific appropriations for specific line items. On the charter school size. Everything is in the lump sum for people funding.

Okay, I'm reading the room, so it's getting kind of late. Any other final questions, Members?

Chair, I'm glad you asked those questions, but I mean, considering you're a big part of our public education system.

Just to reiterate what Chair had asked, you received no additional funding for student meals, student transportation, and we don't pay our public charter school teachers any additional for those hard to fill areas or native Hawaiian programs outside of I mean, as you, you currently operate based on the current budget that you have.

The last or one of the points to make as well is if you remember that slide that showed the charter school per people funding formula that included the specific areas of the department's budget. EDN 100, 200, 300, 400. As you saw from the department's presentation, their actual budget request was a negative amount.

And in this case for the charter schools as well, you'll see that the Executive budget request on the charter school site is a negative 1.8 million dollar adjustment to the per pupil. So in this case, it wasn't a budget request request that's coming from the commission or the charter schools.

It was an adjustment made by the by Budget and Finance based on the changes that were made to the departments of theirs. That direct correlation you can see between DOE budget as well as the charter school side.

So again, while we don't have specific cost item appropriations, you know, the different things that are covered by the EDN's, transportation and things like that, you know, you know, there is a sign that says it's in there because on the DOE side, they're getting specific appropriations for their charter schools.

The way the formula does work out, you know, charter schools get a portion of that based on the formula.

So that's one thing.

I'm sure we could work with the Committee as well as the Department who provide better clarification on that.

You can provide them. So as us, it wasn't part of your pocket. I think we'd appreciate seeing those.

And I just wanted to say thank you to both, Chair, Vice Chair, for recognizing the challenges, especially with the funding. I think that's something that we've been.

I've been talking about since I was at the school level and just for context, when I first went to Kahwaha School, the per people, this is 2011 per people was $5900. So you can imagine that was like less than half than what we're getting now.

So while there's improvement, it still does not include facilities. And of course, as.

Escalation of cost. Everything's gone up. So thank you for recognizing that. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Aloha.

Good afternoon. We are reconvening the Committee on Education's informational briefing. It is 4:10 and we are continuing on with questions for the Executive Office on early night. Members questions.

I have a question. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. I'm not sure if this is under you folks or if this is a DHS question but it is definitely related to early learning. However it doesn't. It's not necessarily. In your presentation you talk a lot about the three and four-year-olds.

This is relating to the expansion with the bill that we passed last year including two-year-olds to receive funding. Right. For preschool. I just found out that there's an issue with the administrative rules and that they were never actually signed.

So technically we're not in state compliance because that bill was supposed to go into effect or the law went into effect on January 1st. I tried to enroll my two-year-old. So as someone with personal experience I now know exactly what went wrong.

I was told that I can't, that if I turn in an application even though there are advertisements so our state spending money on these advertisements encouraging families to apply. If you apply your application will be denied because the admin rules have not gone into effect.

Help me understand what's going on and what the timeline is to resolve this.

So you're correct, this does fall under the Department of Human Services. So what we have heard is the same thing that you just mentioned right now that previously beginning January they were going to be accepting two year olds for the prescope indoor subsidy. But that is on hold right now.

All of the other reasons, I'm not quite sure why but you are correct. We have heard that if people submit applications it would be denied because two year olds are currently not eligible at this time. So we have the same information as you. But you are correct it is with different measurement services. Okay, thank you.

Members, any other questions?

I have a question on the Act 486 progress. The chart that you had shared, there's the, the projection. I'm trying to look at 2025. I'm just estimating 2025. I guess it's like 31,000. Right. Is the current need and then the lower line is we're right about 25,000 and that's the supply. Right.

I think that's how you would explain it. Among the 25,000 current supply, how many of those seats are paid for by public dollars? Are like really Public Pre-K?

Yeah.

So public dollars are invested into early learning in two different ways. Well, many different ways. So there's public dollars that are serving this number through the Department of Education. And if they're utilizing anything for migrant, and if they do, some of those are federal dollars though.

But if there's anything that might be connected to that, that might be some EOEL Public Pre-K, charter school Pre-K and in an indirect way, the preschool indoor subsidy, it is state money that is being provided for this.

So we know the number of seats that that charter schools and EOEL Public Pre-K have set, that's part of this. But in terms of the seats that are being paid for through preschool and or subsidy, we don't exactly have those numbers. So of the number that's being served, EOEL public pre.

Can charters have 11% of these seats right now? So EOEL's total seed count is 22,075. And charters are at 2200. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Charters. Yeah, charters at 600.

Is this data though, that for the as the Executive Office of Early Learning, as big picture, like something that you would be able to collect kind of a moment current need and if we're really, truly trying to get to public Pre-K, kind of give us an idea of what's public versus private in terms of current capacity.

So you're asking whether or not we would be able to know how much dollars are being spent on these 25 or just among the current seats, which percent is covered by public dollars and which percent?

So collecting the data from the other agencies. Yes, we can ask. Okay, thank you so much.

My current question.

Chair.

Thank you. Vice Chair. Members of the other questions. A couple questions. Director, Per your budget request, you're saying that the current dollar amount is sufficiently financed because. Because we're working in a biennial year. How the budget passed last year is, is what you're hoping will, will remain for this year.

But you are asking for three FTEs in addition.

Yes.

Can you expand a little bit as to what the importance of those three FTEs are for?

Perfect. Yeah. So the two current program specialists positions were created under the Preschool Development Grant, Birth to Five grant that just ended at the end of December. And so out of the Preschool Development Grant came a lot of community work and also the creation of the new Early Childhood State Plan.

And so now that the plan has been created, we need to really continue working towards implementation of it. And so that is primarily where these two Positions will continue their work moving forward. In addition to, we also just got the next new preschool development grant that just started at the very beginning of January.

And so they're also going to be working on the implementation of the new preschool development grants. The new grants are now one year cycles, so it does not make sense to try to create a position for only those one year cycles.

So we like to utilize the positions that were created from the prior preschool development grant to continue that work moving forward. The evaluation specialist position we think is very helpful and needed in the entire early childhood ecosystem. There's not a lot of date. The data gaps are pretty large in the early childhood system.

And we really need somebody to pay attention and really study and have that skill set to be able to analyze things that are coming out of our fiscal map. The things that are going to be coming out of examples like this question, how many dollars are being public dollars are being spent per seat?

The questions about our workforce and trying to pull it all together from the different agencies that hold different pockets of information is really important. But we really need somebody who can be dedicated to that work.

Understanding that cost of care is truly important when in transition. You referenced NEAR in your presentation. It's a national organization that's very respected and looks at things like quality education system as it relates to early education. But even with those metrics we're very strong.

But internally with our state metrics we still are showing very strong result, strong results. And in my mind it's because that that that level of preparedness is infused into our statute. And so you have that prescribed in a way that I think is producing, producing those valuable results.

As an example, it's a requirement that all of the teachers in your Pre-K classrooms, they have ECE emphasis. That's correct, yes. Okay. So that credential credentialing is very much important.

Also during when there is a new educator, a novice educator that goes into your Pre-K classrooms, you have what's called like master teachers or resource teachers that do regular observations to make sure that pedagogical practices that are happening in the classroom level are effective in terms of making sure that they're getting the kids what they need.

Absolutely. And that goes continuously until that is not needed, is that correct?

For as long as they're in the program. So you are correct. So our teachers must have an early childhood educator license and complete a state approved teacher education program. And so our teachers are Department of education teachers. So the requirements of the Department of Education are ours and we have that license Pull out.

In addition to that, our education assistants must have at least a specific coursework in early childhood education which is just they must meet the minimum requirements of a typical education assistant in the Department of Education and also have these early childhood coursework or hours achieved or working towards them. And then you are correct.

We do have early learning state office teachers that are held within our office. Each are assigned to roughly about eight schools and they do provide ongoing professional growth and learning one on one coaching to the teacher and education assistant in the classroom.

They also do hold professional learning communities with teachers and then they also hold professional learning broader system, broader sessions with administrators, office staff, teachers and educational assistants. And that support also includes the helping of going through the GOLDS assessments for the students and also class observations for the teachers as a coaching and teaching tool.

But that support continues indefinitely for as long as they are part of the EOEL Public Pre-K program.

So per our internal standards, like 9 out of 10 of students that go through your program, we are exceeding social, emotional and cognitive expectations going into kind.

Learning, is that correct? Yes. So our goals results show that our students do very well. Another assess. Another point of data that we are now starting, starting to look at is the relationship between students who come out of EOEL Public Pre-K and the kindergarten entry assessment. And we've seen that our students have fared very well.

But the one group of students that we have found that EOEL Public Pre-K benefits exponentially are what we are categorizing as Pacific Islander with the native wine pullout. So all Pacific Islanders expect excluding native points. But that cohort of students benefits exponentially from EOEL Public Pre-K. In the, in the analysis that we've done so.

Far and also statutorily it's not, it's. The provision says that you give focus to those individuals with underserved or what is the term, at risk or underserved community set.

Is that correct? Yes. So our statute does say that we give so we have priority categories in our statute that prioritizes students who are considered at risk. So students who are placed through their individualized education program in a general education sector setting, students are English language learners, foster care, homeless whose family income is no more than 300%.

And sometimes there are other extenuating circumstances. So while all children and all families are able to apply to EOEL Public Pre-K, we do give priority enrollment to any family who may fall into this category.

So that's impressive. And then going back to the near, the near assessment, we meet all 10 of those quality Categories.

How many other states do that?

I think there's only five. Five states in total? Yes. Also per your responsibility is that you're coordinating the entirety of the, of the expansion efforts. And then on the preschool open door side, we did have a provision in statute that said that we wanted our, our recipients of preschool Ventura dollars to go through a national accreditation.

Now there is some pushback with, with that. I understand it is very challenging technically. Takes a lot of time and energy to, to maintain that accreditation as well. But what can we do to ensure that that side, that part of the equation is also going to make sure that we're spending those dollars wisely?

Can we look at like reinserting like the class certification or like the QRIs, that particular type of system? What are your thoughts about looking at how we can make sure that those dollars are also being spent?

Well, absolutely. So on the Public Pre-K side, we do look at the National Institute from NEAR's criteria, the 10 criteria that they have done research on that leads to what they consider high quality programs. And those elements in there are, there's structural pieces like class size, credentialing and those types of things.

Then there's also process parts which include observations, professional observations and which include teacher interactions. And then there's always ongoing professional growth and learning which comes through the professional, the PE session. So the one thing I think about when we're looking at accreditation or class and you're trying to look at improving quality are all elements that improve quality.

But like at different levels, whether it's a system level, a leadership level, a teacher level, teacher interaction with child level, all of those elements are important to looking at building and developing a quality environment and continuous quality improvement.

And so I think that maybe, maybe there could be an opportunity to look at these different elements to try to ensure quality across the entire early learning system. Is DHS open to that? I mentioned DHS because they are the administrative body of this open doors. Yes. Yes.

So we know that the Department of Human Services is close to child care advisory and they are looking at continuous quality improvement. There is also required training hours now for people who are in their workforce registry and further details beyond that. I'm not 100% sure, but we can seek some clarification for you.

Thank you. Members, any other questions?

Okay. Thank you so much.

Recess. Thank you.

And last but not least, we have the Department of Education. We greatly appreciate your perseverance and staying with us today. Members, do we have any questions for the Department of Education? I have some questions.

Okay. My first set of questions is on the academic, on academic proficiency. Earlier, the commission showed us a screenshot of what would be their dashboard. I think is there something similar with your strivehigh so that when we look at the data we can see and filter based on geography, based on certain populations or enrollment.

Is that something that's currently already online or being developed by the?

We have different reports that are online about our schools that are.

I mean, from a policy perspective, for us to be able to make decisions, I guess it's how can we filter and analyze, you know, certain types of data versus having to download specific schools or even I think in that spreadsheet that's linked online. It's currently not recorded by Island. It's all the list.

All the schools are like listed that big. Like I think the master for Strive High. But there's no way for us to filter by island or by complex area.

For example, there's different reports that are reported at different levels, but.

Hi [unintelligible], please. Hi. So on our Arch website we have the Accountability Data center and it's an interactive dashboard that has all of our Strive High data for the past years. And it allows you to look at the subgroup level, go by complex area, state and at the school level.

And then it also has a comparative dashboard so you can select multiple metrics or multiple schools in order to compare across.

Is that Arch Dashboard linked on the current Strive High page on all of our Strive High reports.

But that's something that we can also. Send to you for you to probably.

Lowy I wasn't able to find. Thank you. And then second question to that is just on the how do we define schools or even areas that are like high performing versus needs? You know, because you provide the statewide snapshot. But we know that there are schools that are, you know, need more support than others.

So how do we define schools?

Through title one, we're required to identify those lowest 10%, 5%, 10% lowest performing schools. And so every three years we have a cohort of schools who are identified as continuous continuously underperforming schools. And we provide additional funding, supports and requirements for those schools.

So last year marked the end of our first cohort following this guidance and all but two of the schools exited their status so they were no longer in that category. So the system works to support everyone's performing and the two schools that did remain in status had 23 or 44 principals during that three year cohort.

So it shows that stable leadership is a key factor. So we've identified a new cohort of schools this year. So they'll stay in the program for the next three years. But we're confident that with the supports that are provided, they will exit out of that status.

And those teachers at those schools and administrators, they work extremely hard. And Heidi and her team go and do the visits and they meet regularly with those individual schools. And I think through that collaborative process you're able to get our students.

If there are schools, right. If you look at it for total students and they're at 30% proficiency, but then you pull out, you know, low income or other subcategories. If even those even, you know, goes down even more.

Deputy, like, are there schools that are not title one that are still considered low performing and how are we collecting the data on those schools not fall.

At this time, not following falling in that lowest performing category. So the schools in that bottom percentage are Title 1 schools.

So all the low performing schools are title I schools.

The lowest performing schools are. I would have to go up the rankings to see where our first non title I school falls, but I don't have that.

I guess. I mean if the Department has established a baseline for how you would define success in terms of like, where do you want to see those achievement gaps, like decreased?

If you can provide a Committee with I guess your base, your either your baseline or this is the, you know, the sub, the, the definition of low performing for us. And then these are the schools that are, might, might be captured underneath that. I can review that. Okay, thank you so much.

I think by definition we can provide that too. But I think also all of our schools, we want to be sure that all of our students are moving growth and proficiency.

I think maybe to add to that too, when we look at on the higher performance, I know previously it was shared that there was a school that was sixth grade highest performing in the state, but actually when we look at proficiency at just at sixth grade level, that's actually Mobilant elementary, that is language arts 93%, math 90% in terms of proficiency.

And on the flip side, they're 49.5%. Title one is in my district, Kipapa Elementary School. But last year they received the highest scores in English and math. So on the flip side too, we have Title 1 schools that are our bright spots, right?

And we do see in our lowest, lowest performing schools oftentimes community issues play a large factor because the kids often are not coming to school based on things that are happening outside of the school. Happy and ready. That concludes my academic.

Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you, Chair. We know there's an effort in Washington D.C. to dismantle the federal Department of Education. Their workforce has been hollowed out significantly. I think they're doing the 50% if not more. So I just have a few questions regarding the impact of that and how the Department is preparing for it.

Well, I guess just in terms of fiscal impact because there have been quite a few federal dollars already restricted or reduced for the Hawaiian Department of Education.

Deputy Oyamari Chan has been in touch with our congressional partners and so she's been really monitoring with our Fed watch groups.

So in terms of so the Department of Education K12 receives more of its federal funds as formula funds being based on population that we have received them as opposed to competitive where you have to apply and compete, whereas higher ed a lot of competitive funds.

So in terms of the formula funds, we haven't seen a lot of changes yet. Last year, last spring Congress approved a continuing resolution that carried forward the previous year's budget. So we see similar levels of funding for our major programs currently for next school year. We're waiting for the federal budget to be passed.

So that's a, that's key for us to know the funding for next year. But so we've seen some small impacts in terms of grids that were stopped or such, but not a lot of things pulled back yet.

However, there's a lot of uncertainty and one of the issues is that the US Department of Education staff is at less than 50% than it was compared to this time last year. And a lot of the major programs for DOE are being moved to being managed by the Department of Labor.

So we have a lot of concerns about what that means, but we haven't yet. It hasn't yet happened. So we'll continue to monitor. And those impacts are we did put placeholders in the budget for the major federal programs that we believe are at risk.

And those are largely the ones that the House in the past position has been to zero out or reduce the programs or the programs that were restricted did this past summer when US Ed chose not to release the funds before school started.

It's like DEI type initiatives.

Title 3. Title 3 for English Learners is a big one. Title 1C is Migrant Education. So yes, so those are funding impacts.

There's also some administrative actions and Executive orders that have come forward related to EI that are we're continuing to watch and are concerned our state has strong laws about non discrimination and continuing to follow the law.

This is kind of a hypothetical question because I think it requires an act of Congress for US DOE to be dismantled. But have you prepared, is there any contingency planning in the event that a lot of these administrative or responsive compliance type of responsibilities might shift to each state?

The DOE, in the event the federal DOE goes away.

So there's two parts. The first part is it would take an act of Congress to undo the US Department of Education.

And the second part is it would take an act of Congress to end the federal programs such as the idea, the Individuals with Disabilities Education act or the elementary School and Secondary Education act, which Title I for example, comes from. Those requirements are still in law. They're all in statutes.

ESEA existed before the existence of the U.S. Department of Education, for example. So we need multiple federal actions to see those changes. In terms of contingency planning. I think we've just been really focused on what is important to us, what are we about, so how to respond when there are federal changes.

Okay, thank you sir. Thank you so much. Members, any other questions? I have a couple, I have a couple of questions. And so during the beginning of your presentation you did show us some graphics as to improvements that our state has made with regards to NAEP scores. Grateful for that hard work for this Administration.

And prior to also what's impressive is the pre pandemic recovery levels. You know, our state has held very strong in that regard compared to some of our counterparts across the country. An area in which a lot of states actually struggle with, broadly speaking, is with regards to math proficiency.

The Department of Education has plans to tackle that issue. Can you go into a little bit. Of detail as it relates to what your plan is regarding increasing math profitability through your budget request?

We do recognize we have significant improvement to do in math and this we have what we're calling our math levers which are Department wide focuses to enhance what we're doing, implement practices we may not be doing.

And these levers include impactful Tier 1 instructional practices which are your everyday instruction in math and providing not only the professional development. And I know this Committee has said we always do professional development, but it's professional development with follow up and accountability for implementation.

We've also done a lot of research on what is a fundamental understanding that is imperative for all children to have in order to be successful along that math continuum.

And that is fluency for number sense and so that we have an intensive effort to one, create an understanding of what that is, what that means in every grade level. And then how do we monitor that children are being successful across our grade levels?

In this one area we have for both ELA and math, our universal screening in which we monitor the students three to assess the student or three times a year so we can continue to identify those who are at the level they should be at that point of the year, those that are below, and then monitoring that the interventions that are needed to help them get where they need to be are implemented.

A new addition that, that we requested funding for but we didn't get. So it's not going to be in every complex area. Immediately is the practice of math coaching where every math, every complex area has a coach because we know that teachers work very hard and teachers deserve a lot of support.

And the best way through all of the research to support these teachers is to provide coaching which is non judgmental, not evaluative, but really having somebody to help them and be a thought partner with them as they're asked to do all of these tasks.

So the rollout for coaching, the idea would be every complex area has a dedicated math coach and then every school has a dedicated math coach or coaches. Depending upon the enrollment of the school that does require funding. It will be slow as schools Fund their own if they're able or if a complex area does.

We were hopeful that we would get all of the positions and we're still working on that. The second, the caveat to that though is finding the personnel who are qualified to fill those positions. So it's not an easy road that we have ahead.

But we do have a vision and we do have a plan and our work is to do whatever we have to do to make sure that gets going.

You said that the math coaches per the complex areas were not approved in your budget.

They were not. So they're in the Department School request that the board approve, but it's not included in the governor's Executive budget.

How much was that approximately.

How many math coaches cost?

16 positions and 20. We can get that add on. We'll get a later time.

16 positions. 521,000.

529 for 16 positions.

Is that Ryan, is that 16 positions plus 529.

So you guys, you folks are pulling funds from existing resources then that math doesn't work for 16 positions.

$529,000. It's, it's budgeted for six months only because it anticipates us anticipates a delay.

Thank you for that.

We had opportunity to visit some of your, some of the public schools during the, during the break. Very encouraging to see. And let me just say that we appreciate the hard work that you're doing because it is not easy. It's multifaceted, it's complex and it's different for each particular school and even down to the classroom.

However, we did visit one school and we were just having impromptu conversation with one of the principals and we started to talk about teacher collaboration and PLCs. And this principal articulated that their preferred method for these PLCs were the experienced teachers, defined as 5 years and higher, would collaborate together.

And then the teachers with less than 5 years experience would also collaborate because they had shared experiences individually.

I asked the question if it made more sense in terms of making sure that effective practices happen at a faster rate across the board in every single classroom, if they should mesh those groups of teachers together because the experienced teachers can share what they have learned over the years per the novice teachers.

And then the novice teachers might have some kind of fresh perspectives that can also benefit the experienced teachers. They did not concur, which is fine. I would be curious to know like what your, what your thoughts are on that and if that is the case where there is a best practice potentially that is not being followed.

And I'm not saying that's bad or good. I'm just saying what is the department's role in interfacing or engaging that school to try to see if you can convince them to move in a different direction?

You can start with that. So I think it can be both. And we do have an induction, a very strong induction in mentoring program where new teachers, first year and second year guaranteed, assigned a mentor to help them with their new teacher issues.

And so I think having a concerted focus on issues that come with just being a new teacher is very valuable. And the data that we have from our induction and mentoring programs is extremely good. It is a very powerful practice.

I also do recognize and acknowledge your point where novice teachers have a lot to learn from veteran teachers. Veteran teachers have a lot to share. So I do agree that is a very powerful practice and it is one that we do encourage within the Department. And so we'll.

I'll take what you shared that it might not be happening everywhere and ensure that we continue to iterate the message that there is value in mixing novice and experienced teachers. Because you're correct, they do have a lot of historical information to share.

Well, I don't know what I don't know. But I would just, I was curious to know what your thoughts are as to whether or not the Department at the central level interfaces with those schools when there seems to be perhaps best practices that that's not being followed. But again, I appreciate that.

And per the induction program, is that what, 30 hours that they get?

Gosh, it's I don't know. I don't know the number of hours they get, but it is a robust two year guarantee. We're assigned a mentor for our first. Our beginning teachers have a first year mentor and a second year in the profession mentor.

You know, we can get.

You don't know.

Moving on to CIP process. You know, I appreciate your sharing the Lahaina example. I was going to bring it up anyway. It's a tremendous example of how we can build quickly in a way that's efficient and very effective.

What processes processes were different in that process process compared to traditionally how both have done CIP environment in the past.

So. Zero. Politics administrator, she's been central in helping people, also in helping to shift the strategy that the Legislature has been very supportive in terms of providing funding to our lump sum market request.

So yeah. Good afternoon. J.D.

nurasaki, Public Works Administrator, Facilities Development Branch so again, I guess with respect, I guess specifically to the Lahaina housing project and the fact that yes definitely it had moved quicker than normal projects once the funding was recognized and the need was definitely recognized, we definitely moved forward using a lot of the emergency proclamation that was available to us under the wildfire and housing provisions, both from the governor's side as well as the county side.

That being said, the idea for the housing is not one where it's temporary, which is what is happening with all of the other FEMA housing units. The idea was that it was still going to be a permanent facility.

So we still went through a lot of the permitting processes, but able to still move forward regardless because of the emergency proclamation that was granted to us. So that really helped streamline us to get this movie forward. The contract was a design build contract, so that definitely helped us expedite that.

That design build contract was really a developer agreement that we were able to do under those provisions of V minus Super Q.

Thank you so much. So in fact, I mean, because that structure does look permanent is most certainly not temporary housing, but you're saying that it's very insightful, you're able to leverage the streamline processes in both the state and the county proclamations, which made building much easier.

That is correct. That's Very interesting. And the money was available right away.

The money was available, right? That's correct. Thank you you for that. And in closing, per the budget, you know, there were some items that were not approved by the Governor. Governor. And these people have to make hard decisions, but you know, it, it stands out. $30 million for preventative maintenance.

What happens if that money is to allocate it to folks in terms of health and safety?

Yeah. So preventative maintenance. 30 million was in the operating budget. That's what we requested. Preventative maintenance. Historically, that's where it goes. Because these are projects that you need cash for you to expand as part of a program project was moved to. CIP in the governor's budget.

And so what that does, it makes the ability to use it that's flexible because it's connected to BoM General Bond. So we're not able to deploy it. For preventative maintenance like we would like. So it definitely would be better to be in the operating budget and be there. It's always been a line item for operating budget.

You know, it was.

Line item vetoed out. You know why it was moved? I don't know why. I don't know why. So you still have it? It was just moved to CIP from operational. Yes. Interesting. Okay, thank you Members.

Any other questions? Go ahead. I have questions on school meals and school transportation. First, on meals. In the past, due to rising cost, there have been requests from the Department to raise the cost of school meals. I believe at the time there was the Board of Education, Board of Education hearing. The cost at the time was $9.

Do we know if the current cost has gone up or down and follow up to that is do if the.

Because the Governor didn't approve the school food services budget request and if the Legislature is not able to also appropriate that amount, will there be an intention from the Department to go back to the board to raise the cost of snow meals?

We can do that. But broadly speaking, there is a law, a law that requires that we charge 50% of the cost. And so there was a Bill last year to change that. So we, because we're. We're not meeting that requirement right now. That didn't. Last year's Bill didn't pass. So we are.

We've requested a Bill in the governor's package to change that. So we don't. We're not compelled to charge 50% of the cost. So that's just to start. So that's one of the components of the policy framework around the cost of the meals.

But I Think that's another part to your question.

That's EDN4 bring the document.

But yeah, you want to call up Sean, I'm sorry.

If the current request to for school food services, the budget request is not appropriated, will there be an intention to go back to the board of Education to propose again to raise the cost of school meals? And in my own opinion, I do think that's not equity centered.

The that we have something in the books that say we have to charge 50% of the cost because we have no current cap on spending. Right. And so if there's nothing that's preventing us if the cost is $20, are we going to say we have to charge $10? And I do feel that there has.

It's not something that's very easy to work on because the cost of things are always going up but from an equity standpoint for those that cannot afford the the meal.

So under the law you depict share we are required to charge 50% and still the ask for us in the bonus package to 21%.

So the.

The. Question about whether the board will raise that or not is something I think that we need to go back. And you. That's something that would be on the discussion. We fully understand that our families are struggling and we want to be sure that that's always taken into consideration. But also balancing that with the requirement.