House Standing Committee on Education

Good afternoon. This is your Committee on Education. Today's date is the 15th of January, and we are in Conference Room 329. Today we have the remaining agencies under the purview of the Education Committee. Without further ado, we have today Hawaii Teacher Standards Board, Public Library System, and also SFA, School Facilities Authority. So first we have Standards Board, please. Thank you for being here.

All right. Good afternoon, Chair Woodson, Vice Chair La Chica, Members of the Committee. My name is Felicia Villalobos. I'm the Executive Director of the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board. To my left I have Tracey Idica. She is a nationally board certified teacher, and she actually maintained even outside of being a classroom teacher currently.

We have Dr. Mitzie Higa here as well. She's one of our licensing special and was also a classroom teacher. And in the audience we have Kris Murakami Esq, who works with our professional fitness or suitability, and Dr. Jennifer Padua, who is our educator preparation program liaison for our agency.

I'm here on behalf of the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board. Unfortunately, our board members couldn't be here today. They're actually, most of them are practicing teachers or administrators. Our chairperson is actually at Camp Erdman with her students right now, so she was unable to make it. Next slide. Thank you. So I'd like to ground us on HTSB's mission and vision. We always like to start with this.

Again, HTSB always envisions rigorous professional teacher standards that foster student success, set high teacher licensing credentialing standards. And the most important part of this is to provide every child in Hawaii with qualified teachers, even in a teacher shortage. And not just one, but for their entire educational career as a public school student in DOE or charter school.

So always like to ground us in that mission and vision that we're always striving for. We do have a 17 member board, and I believe Vice Chair La Chica brought this up last year. How do you achieve quorum? It's difficult. It's difficult with 17 members, 16 are voting, one is a non voting member.

Our board members have full time jobs, and so this is additional going through and becoming a board member as well as all of the board meetings we have. It is hard. But I'm proud to say many of these folks are practitioners, and it's great to have practitioners who are actually in service serving on this board and making decisions. I'd like to thank the Legislature.

When I first started as Executive Director, we had an eight member staff, and it was hard to get a lot of work done or do additional initiatives. Now we have 14 staff members. One I'm excited about that we're in the process of hiring is an institutional analyst.

We have a lot of data, but we need someone to clean the data, get the data out to stakeholders. And we're hoping within this next year and maybe even next year, our next presentation or briefing, we'll have more fixed data for you folks.

And I can talk about what we do or how we gather data in one of the future slides. I do want to stay here. And on the right hand side of this PowerPoint, we service about 20,000 teachers. And you might think, well, there's only 13,500. We have a lot of teachers who maintain their license who no longer teach in our state or they teach at a private school, so they're no longer in a HIDOE or charter school. We have even teachers that are international.

So even when they have an active license with the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board, it is the job... It's the job of us to make sure that their license is valid and we help them out with an active license. One great thing we've moved to, and this is actually prior to Covid, is an online licensing system.

And that's where the bulk of the money is spent is ensuring that teachers, because we know teachers are busy. They only have usually recess or lunch to call up a state agency. Well, we have an online system where 76,000 online logins, and they can go into their profile at any time 24/7, ask the licensing specialist questions, and the specialists are monitoring that system to answer those questions.

So instead of calling a generic phone line and leaving messages, they actually have assigned specialist and they can go into their system, their account, type in a message, and it goes directly and the specialist will check it out. And that's what they monitor all day long and actually keeps a thread of information.

So if we have staff turnover or an additional staff member that splits the alphabet, they can see the previous conversations. And that's been in place since 2017. And like anything technology, we're always trying to update it and better the system.

And you'll see other stats there about online messaging, new applications submitted, the license and permits that have been issued for the 24-25 year. And I do want to highlight one other thing. Since Covid is over, we've actually been doing a lot more licensing presentations.

The licensing regulations change and sometimes it confuses people or they're under the impression of old licensing laws. So we have an open door policy if you would like an online licensing presentation, we can do that. We can also do in person now as well. And they just have to email us and we go out.

And it's not only teachers, it could be stakeholders who want to know who are supporting teachers, who want to know more about licensing and how to support the teachers. So we're hoping to up that too. Again, we put it out there, and it could range from a small group of three stakeholders to hundreds of teacher candidates.

So these presentations are vital to get information out into the public. I also talked about the online system 24/7. We do have the opportunity to have virtual Zoom appointments if someone can't make it into our office. And we also have phone appointments.

And of course, if they happen to be on island, they can do a walk in as well and the licensing specialist will help them. Sometimes they have computer issues and then they come in and we use our computers to help them with the application process. Overall, we do have a quality survey for our services.

And for 24-25 we had a 95% positive rate on our service quality. Next slide. So we don't have a large budget, as you may see in other departments. We have a small budget, but we try to utilize it to the best of our ability.

And you'll see the three big things that we usually spend our budget on. The online licensing system, because again, upgrades and updates and modifications takes a lot of money. There are also a couple of initiatives. The board is working on pre-apprenticeship, which we'll talk about, and establishing a registered apprenticeship program.

One of the other things is nationally board certification, which is really important, as well as our board are not experts and licensed in every field. So what they do is they put work groups together who are experts in that field. So we have experts come in for like the Hawaiian work group, the CTE work group, the early learning work group, an online work group, mentoring work group.

Now, some of these work groups are ongoing, and some of them after three or four sessions, they discuss what they need to discuss and they make a recommendation to our full board for approval. And again, we spend money on licensing presentations. So this next slide is our licensing data. Now, this is just a snapshot.

I believe our agency provided you with our annual report that has more licensing information, but happy to answer any questions about the types of licenses and permits. And you'll see this trending over five years. I do want you to take a look at, there's two large numbers.

For 24-25, the standard license has gone up and the requirements for a standard license is years of experience. So if someone has three of the last five years of experience, they can apply for a standard license. The other number that went up, unfortunately, is emergency hires.

Emergency hires, what they would need to have is a bachelor's degree and then they could teach in our schools until they're... And again, we're hoping that they're going through an educator preparation program within the three years to become a licensed teacher. So unfortunately, that number has grown as well.

But we're hoping that all the stakeholders are coming together to support these emergency hires to get through an educator preparation program to be a licensed teacher. The board has regulatory authority over the educator preparation programs. And sometimes they're called SATEP, State Approved Teacher Education Programs. And this is a trending chart.

Well, not chart, but a table of from 2019-2020 to 24-25. And that is what the teacher preparation program. This is what they're graduating and recommending for licensure. A part of our application process, and not just for folks that are graduating from their teacher candidate program, but for all applications. And I introduced this last year.

You'll see questions on the right hand side. All of these surveys, they're actually kind of mandatory in order to submit application. So we're trying to gather information of what high school did you graduate from? What is your current role as an educator? Because sometimes they're admin, sometimes they're superintendents, sometimes they're no longer in the field.

How many years of full time teaching experience. So there is 10 to 11 questions we ask on each application because we're trying to track where everyone is at. We found that the educator preparation programs, once they graduate from their program as a licensed teacher, they have a hard time tracking them over their career.

We also have with DOE and charter schools, they would have a hard time tracking their employers or employees once they leave the profession. So we have the opportunity as a licensing agency. And again our license and applications are free. Usually people want to maintain it if it's free and meet the requirements.

We have a better idea of how to track them and see where they're at because some could be out of state, international, like I said, in private schools. So we're trying to figure out where everyone is going. And again, the high school component of this is very important, and that's what will take me to the next slide.

Pre-apprenticeship. Building the future of education, growing the next generation of educators. And I presented this slide last year at this briefing, and the board in their wisdom is looking at how can we support our stakeholders with building pipelines. One pipeline is from the high school into the field of employment as a teacher.

You'll see some check marks on the right hand side. The board has invested in an agency, well not agency. A department called Educators Rising. And they actually used to be called Future Teachers of America. They used to be called Future Educators Association, and now they're called Educators Rising. And they've been around since 1937.

And what they do is they support high school students who want to become teachers. And actually not only teachers, educators. So school counselors, school librarians. And as we know, there's many different jobs within a school. And so if you want to be a school counselor, they try to work with that.

They try to get you interested in becoming someone who works in a public school school. And so this is, we did a little checklist. The board has supplied the schools who wanted, we did a pilot program. And I want to say thanks to Department of Education.

They allowed our board to help pay for a pilot program for some of the schools who are interested. And so with that we actually brought teachers in to train them on Educators Rising. We're paying for membership, and that's going to be seen on the next slide. And so that is checked off.

Do we want to grow it to all teaching as a profession pathways? We do. That's going to take more funding. But again, the pilot program is proving successful. One of the other components of Educators Rising is the organization of competitions. And I think I mentioned this last year, there are state competitions and there are national competitions.

And for state competitions they do things like lesson planning, making a book. And they compete with other Educator Rising teacher candidates or high school students around the country. And they win prizes, they win competitions. So we're having an in person one. It says on their February 6, 2026.

And I do want to shout out to Dr. Janet Kim from UH Manoa, who's been working with the teaching as a profession teachers to organize this huge event. Last year she did it online. And you would think getting teenagers online to do something that's school related is a little bit hard. No.

They were all into it, and I was one of the judges. I was excited. It was a great competition. I did model code of ethics for educators. So the high school students were given an ethic dilemma, and they had to come up as a team how to solve it and resolve it. And that's what they competed against.

It was amazing, and they asked really good questions. So we're excited that they're going to be doing it in person this year. And we're hoping those winners would go to the national convention. It's in Portland, Oregon, which is close by. Thank goodness. Last year was in Florida. 2026 this summer.

So again, we're hoping to get our teachers there and our students there. And a lot of stakeholders are going to be investing in this. So it's not just HTSB, it's growing out to different stakeholders who want to support this. I'll have my colleague here talk about pre-apprenticeship a little bit more.

Okay. So with pre-apprenticeship, we're actually working with Janet Kim, as she mentioned at UH Manoa, but also Nainoa Campbell from P-20. And we're hoping to expand this. HTSB has paid for Ed Rising and the membership, student membership, which is, believe it or not, it's like 60,000 a year, which is a lot of our budget.

But it was still worth it because the students were so excited to be there. It was nice to see how they're eager for the competition, the online competition. But now we're working with these schools. So these have teachers as a pathway, as a teachers as a profession, as a pathway.

So James Campbell High School, Maui High School, Waiākea High School, Farrington High School, Pearl City High School, Waipahu High School, Mililani High School, and Leilehua High School. And because of this, it not only includes the Ed Rising, like the curriculum, the curriculum is online and it has... It's just...

It blew my mind how much they have available. And the teachers were so thankful because they did have their own binders that were like years old and they had to put together their own curriculum and it wasn't all together. But now that they can draw on this Educators Rising curriculum, they're much more...

They feel a sense of relief because they're able to do that. And then Ed Rising actually helps them. Came for our training and help the teachers and whenever they have questions, they're really good about getting back to us. And Janet Kim from UH Manoa is wonderful of helping to get them all together.

So we're hoping that with this Ed Rising pre-apprenticeship program, we're hoping that they will go into apprenticeship later. That's our goal, and hopefully that happens.

So we want to get them excited about it while they're still in high school that you'll find out like, I was interested in 8th grade because I was a, I was brought into a first grade classroom. I came back to that later and I thought, wow, that was really a good experience. And that's what we want to do for these high school students. We want to give them that experience that they think, hey, I'm actually good at this and I can do this.

And hopefully by paying for their tuition through registered apprenticeship, that they would be willing to pursue it and their parents would be encouraging them because they don't have the tuition or the college loan to pay back after they graduate. So that's our goal, is to get more teachers into the pipeline that are more than day one ready.

And so pre-apprenticeship, then registered apprenticeship is what's going to do that. And what they found across the nation now that registered teacher apprenticeship is a thing across the nation that it's allowed by the federal Department of Labor that they have a 91% retention rate.

That is amazing because I remember trying to keep teachers there, and it can be hard. But if they're ready, if they're mentored really well through this pre-apprenticeship and then registered apprenticeship, that's going to help them retain our quality teachers. Not just get them, but retain them.

And the data that we see on this one slide here came just recently, which actually are partners with National Center for Grow Your Own, and they monitor all the different states. And so the 5,000 number you see there, I think it was like 2,000 the year prior.

So it's growing by districts and by states because it's so important. I also want to add that Nainoa Campbell from P-20, they're actually doing club pathways for Ed Rising. I believe there's seven schools that they are working with, and I know they're beginning that whole process.

But it's great to see other stakeholders coming together to help build out a pre apprenticeship pathway that, like Mitzie said, would lead to an apprenticeship, a registered apprenticeship pathway. I'm going to turn it over to the next slide and give it to Tracey Idica to talk about National Board Certification.

I have the honor of announcing that we have 32 new national board certified teachers in Hawaii. Their scores came out last month, and it's always a really exciting time when the scores come out. We have 31 national board certified teachers who maintain their certification.

And basically what that means is that they've had to go back and revisit their standards, complete a new portfolio, videotape themselves. And even if you're out of the classroom, to me, it's a part of my identity. And so my Executive Director was kind enough to allow me to take the time to actually go into a classroom.

And I got to revisit why I do what I do. And the thing that made that particular time, extra special was the classroom that I went into was a 9th grade English class at Farrington High School. And the teacher was my student at ʻAiea High School. And she was in my Educators Rising chapter at ʻAiea High School, and she is now in her fifth year at Farrington. And so she allowed me to come in and videotape a lesson with her students.

And she was in my Educators Rising chapter at Aiea High School and she is now in her fifth year at Farrington. And so she allowed me to come in and videotape a lesson with her students.

And her kids were so cute, and they called themselves my grand students after Cindy had explained to them that I was her teacher coming back. So it was really grounding to go back. And so I'm always happy to see how many national board certified teachers continue to maintain their certification. It's not easy, but it's definitely worth it.

Now the celebration is something we look forward to every year. And I know that many of you have been to our celebrations in past years. And this year has been a little challenging because of the renovations at Washington Place. We kept hoping and hoping we could get some clearance to have an event in February or March.

They've got us on hold, but we won't know until like just before. And it's at the point where we need a date. We need to let the teachers know they're going to be celebrated. So just yesterday we got our date confirmed. It won't be at Washington Place.

It will be at the Honolulu Country Club, and It will be April 11th. And all of you on the Education Committee will be receiving invitations, and hopefully you'll be able to join us there. But more details coming soon. It gets a little bit confusing. We're calling it the 2026 recognition ceremony. But we're honoring the class of 2025. And that's because it comes so close to the end of the year. So if I call it the 2025 recognition ceremony, people think we're talking about last year's. So that's basically the latest update for National Board. Thank you.

You guys are the first to know. So first to be invited. One thing I do want to end with, I appreciate my staff that's in the office currently holding down the fort. I appreciate my board members who are super supportive and understand the importance of high quality and maintaining quality in a teaching shortage crisis.

But I think we all have to frame it as, as adults, we choose the doctors, we choose our own attorneys, we even choose our own hairdressers. But a five year old child in a public school does not choose a teacher that stands in front of them all day long.

That is our responsibility and that is probably all the responsibility in this room as educational stakeholders. So we still got to work together to maintain quality even in a crisis. So thank you. And I know questions will be at the very, very end. So I appreciate your folks' time.

Thank you for those closing remarks. Thank you so much. Yeah. Members, we'll hold questions to the end. Next up, we are going to hear from the State Library System.

Chair, Vice Chair, and esteemed Members of the Committee, thank you for giving us an opportunity to talk about libraries. I'm the Stacey Eldridge State Library and the Hawaii State Public Library System. And with me, I have Mallory Fujitani, my colleague and Special Assistant at the State Librarian.

Today, what we would do is share an overview of our strategies as we look at libraries every year, talk about some of the things we've accomplished in the past year, and then talk about the challenges and the budget that we're asking for this year, and answer any questions you might have.

So everything we do is driven by our service philosophy, our mission, and our vision. And we really do focus on creating opportunities for everyone to read, learn, and connect. It's very basic, but our libraries are these hubs in every community that create support and also create opportunity for everyone, no matter who you are.

The public library is available. Next slide. As we do a review of last year and you look at our services, we saw remarkable increases in the use of our resources. For example, Gale courses online, they're free courses that you can take. They are synchronous, so you have to take it.

You have to sign up and take the class, and then you do get certification at the end of those classes. We went from about 1800 people to 3000 people using it, which is a huge leap for this particular service. And Mango Languages continues to grow. There are 72 plus languages.

And I always joke about Pirate, but Pirate is one of the languages you can learn in Mango Languages, but it's a free opportunity to download an app and learn whatever language you're interested in. And we went from about 21,000 people participating to 26,000. So we're seeing these little leaps and bounds.

We had an increase of 7% of 1.5 million to 1.7 million downloads of ebooks, audiobooks, and E magazines. We increased our programming from about 3,800 to 4,900, which is a 23.8% increase. And we had an increase of 18% of program attendance. So we went from 98,000 people coming to all of our programs across the state to.

To about 117,000. And when we look at visits, we saw a little bit of a bump in our visits, too, about 10%. So 2.1 million visits. Some of that can be attributed to things like the Kahului Public Library finally opening.

So some of our libraries have been closed for renovations, and as we open them up, more people can come to the libraries. And so some of the statistic changes are that. But it's also because of the rebranding project that we just recently did. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. Next slide, please.

I always like to share this. These are the top titles that were read in 2025. In the adult area, it was Christian Hanna, the Women and Let Them Theory. The Let Them Theory for Adults. Another one of the Hunger Game books, I believe, from Suzanne Collins. And and then a book about internment camp. They called Us Enemies.

And then every year Wimpy Kid and Who would wde .,in. These are the most popular books. Kids really like to battle out between the reptiles and the reptiles and the robots. They tend to be very popular books. I don't know if any of you have read these books, but these are the ones that were most popular last year.

Just a little bit about how we think about. Next slide, please. How we think about our organization. We have two things. We have a framework, which is the strategic framework, which is our map for how we think about our organization and the work that we do. So we do people place collections and services and programs.

So everything we do, we have to think about how our resources fit into those different categories in order for us to provide services. Next slide, please. And then we have our areas of focus and these help us define where we put our energy to help support our communities.

We are in our third year of our strategic and we received community input that actually helped us create these. So literacy was very important to people. Digital equity and access was important. Having access to all kinds of programs and services for learning and then deepening our community relationships because we know we can't do it alone.

And libraries are the great place that we can gather information and people and services where people can find it in one place. So in looking at these areas of focus this past year. Next slide, please. For strengthening literacy, we always count our summer reading program. And it was so exciting that we had 20.

Our goal was 25,000, but we had 23,467 participants this year, which was up from about 16,000, which is a huge increase in the number of people participating. And we saw more adults participating, which is also very exciting because if adults are reading, then the kids are meeting.

And during that time we saw the visits, we saw 21,077 visits to the library. And they were coming to get the word of the week. So every time you got the word of the week and you entered it, you got an additional entry into the possibility to win for round trip tickets anywhere Alaska Airlines flew.

So that was enough for people to really come into the library. So they weren't just reading and joining online, but they were coming in and checking that out to find more books and to attend programs and to get that word of the week. So summer reading is always important. We'll be doing summer reading again this year.

We are going to focus on 25,000 participants and we'd love for you all to be a part of summer reading this year to get us all reading. Next slide please. Igniting digital futures. We're really excited.

Last year we fitting step our digital literacy classes across the state they were very popular and we began in October the Digital Navigators Program. So we have a digital navigator in every library twice a week for four hours.

And they are, you can make an appointment and you can make a half hour to 45 minute appointment to have just one on one access to somebody who can help you with whatever your technology issue is. And there's a lot of people who don't want to take a class.

They just want to know how to turn their phone off or how to set up email. And it can be that simple or it can be more complex. But these digital navigators are trained to help people with whatever issue or challenge that they have.

And we just got the latest statistics for December, October through December we had 526 appointments in just three months. And so this is the first year and that's a lot of appointments. So it's definitely a service that people really like and they can't wait to.

We had to actually change the appointments around as people were stacking up appointments. Very popular.

And another need when we look at digital literacy and the role the library can play, we look at being able to provide classes, looking at being able to provide one on one and then having online resources like North Star where you can take your own quiz to see how well you know things and to take classes.

We also when you think about digital futures, this is a future. We are looking to put a book locker working with a company right now. We're grateful to the Friends of the Library of Hawaii. They're buying this locker for us to put outside the Hana Library on Maui so that we can extend hours of operation.

So when the library is not open, you could still pick up the holds that you placed. And so we're just, we're waiting for the locker. They're doing some, they're calling it, it's like an environmental package to make sure it doesn't rust and fall apart. So they're testing their environmental package right now.

But we're excited about this opportunity to make the library have an extended, extended hours, basically because you could pick up if you couldn't make it to the library when it was open. And then we also have people using our libraries for Internet. We had over 473,000 uses of Internet last year and over 161,000 uses of Wi fi.

So there are still large portions of our population who are coming to the library to use our computers and to use our WI fi and just to have broadband connectivity too, because we have really nice fast connections as well. And then for creating opportunities, this is just sort of a wild list of all the things.

It's not everything. It's just a sampling of the different kinds of activities we've had at our libraries this past year and the types of services we have. The one that's really interesting is the food dehydrator.

So our library in Pahoa found out that there are a lot of people have like fruits and veggie stuff that they need to do something with before it goes bad. And so they have a whole dehydrator kit that can be checked out and you can dehydrate your food. So very popular.

We have ukuleles in all of our libraries across the state. We have read to a therapy dog, so kids who are shy and still learning can read to a therapy dog. And we have a program called A Thousand Books Before Kindergarten where we encourage parents.

There's a whole list of the thousand books and they read through them before their kids start school. And this past year during summer reading, we had, because it was melee, it was music. We had a silent disco in two of our libraries. One in Kapolei and one in Manoa.

We had 200 people show up to Manoa to do silent disco. So that's wearing earphones. And there were three DJs and you could change the channel and listen to a different DJ and somebody might say videos of that. People loved it.

And there was a 91 year old guy who was all dressed up and boogieing and that was great. And then there were parents and, and you know, family members, father and a child hanging out together and dancing. It was beautiful to see people hanging out. And you could wear them throughout the library.

So some people just were wearing the headsets and reading or doing other things in the library. So libraries really are more than just books. It's about creating connections for people and creating these opportunities for awesome connections like the silent disco.

When we think about deepening relationships, that's where I want to thank you all for supporting Our funding to do rebranding. We knew in 2022, when we did our strategic planning, that the library, there were so many things people didn't know we had. Well, I didn't know you had ebooks. I didn't know you had the New York Times.

I didn't know you had streaming movies. So we knew it was time to try to create something that invited people back into the library because our libraries have changed.

And so we launched in May of 2025, and from the moment we launched every month, we were seeing an increase of about 2,000 people signing up from the normal month for library cards. And I think that's also attributing the increases in the use of our resources, because people are coming back.

They're using the library and they're using the resources. And we do have a newsletter that goes out. The newsletter is part of all of this, and that goes out every month. And we send out to almost 400,000 people. And we have a 47 to 50% read rate, which is really high.

And we get feedback from people who have seen things in our newsletter. So we hope you're getting our newsletter, which just gives you highlights about what's going on and the new programs and services that we have. So thank you so much for supporting it.

I think it really is helping to bring people back to the library and help them understand the resources that we have. I thought I would touch lightly on federal funding just to let you know where we're at.

So we get our funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the program that we receive money every year from is the Library Service and Technology Act Grants to States Program. I want to thank Hawaii, AGS and 20 other states that went to court to keep IMLs open.

Doge shut it down and then try to remove funding. But all the states went, including our awesome AGs, and they were able to win the court case to keep IMLs open and to keep the funding flowing. So we currently have our Federal fiscal year 25 million. The 1.5 million. I think we have about 400,000 left.

We have until September 30th to spend it. We don't know if we're getting an FY26 budget. It looks sort of good. And I'm talking with my colleagues at the national level. The House and the Senate, both committees that handle education and IMLs, have put in money for the agency at a very close rate.

So there wouldn't be a lot of having to do bartering because it's so close. It's like 291 million. But as it stands in D.C. we don't know what's going to happen if we lose those funds. We start to lose online resources.

So New York Times, Mango Languages, all the things that people are starting to use now and can use anywhere in the state start to become a challenge because we don't have any other funding for those types of resources. That's where we are with our federal funding and for general funding requests.

The Governor did not put anything in his budget for our one request that we have for General Fund, which is for 1.5 million to be added to the base budget for our security guard budget. Over the years, our security guard budget has increased. We had to change our security guards service again last year.

We were having issues with the service that we had. People weren't trained, they weren't providing the services in all of our libraries that we needed it. And so we used the state procurement's office list and talked with the last. There's only two security guard services on the list.

We talked to the second one and they've been amazingly better off than the other group. They're, they're very proactive, their staff are trained. Hopefully when you walk into a library, they do look up and they smile. The. So they're very aware and we're, we're pretty pleased with them.

So the money that we're using is for 35 of our 50 branches right now. So not all of our libraries need security guards, but the ones that do need it really do need security guard service.

If we don't receive the 1.5 million, we're looking at about 10 guards, which we, we might have to consider cutting back 10 guards or over 21,000 hours, somehow taking from all of the different libraries, which would be a challenge for us. And unfortunately today behaviors are not the same.

People are not as self composed and we deal with people who have mental health issues. And so having the security guards, especially in some of our locations, is vital because they really do help the librarians be able to focus on providing library service while they can create a safe environment too for the public.

And then we also have one request for CIP funds and I'll turn it over to my colleague Mallory.

Good afternoon. So we did put in a request for an additional 5 million in CIP funds so we could get started on planning and design for four additional libraries on Oahu.

The reason why we focused on Oahu is that for the last several years we've been focusing on our neighbor island branches and These also, these libraries were also selected based on the current state of the equipment that's in the building, the anticipated useful life, as well as other operational issues that we've identified that we would like to address.

And going forward in the future would be able to provide additional services to their communities.

Thank you.

And lastly, I'm always about a good library quote. A public library is where place and possibility meet.

And as we look ahead, we remain grounded in our mission and inspired by the belief that every person who walks through our doors or connects with us online deserves access to resources, support, and we have welcoming spaces for people to learn, dream and thrive. Thank you very much for your attention.

We're happy to answer any questions you may have. And thank you to the driver in the back for herself.

Thank you to our librarian being here. Thank you. We'll take a quick recess for our last presenter.

SFA Recession. Good afternoon.

Unfortunately, SFA drew the short straw and had to follow the libraries. Thank you, Chair Woodson, Vice Chair La Chica and Members of the Committee. I am Ricky Fujitani. I am work for the Hawaii School Facilities Authority. We are the authority trying to redefine what's possible within state government. So we have a different philosophy that we follow.

It's called build less, solve more. And what it is is to. It's a design and construction philosophy that emphasizes three key things and then I'll show you how it applies to all the programs. One is efficiency, which is basically build faster and build within a budget. That would be amazing as a state agency.

Second is minimal viable solutions, which is a better word to say. No more fancy schmancy. All we're going to do is build the basics. You address the minimum viable solution. And the third thing is core problems. Focus on what matters. It's like the 8020 rule, work on the 20% that gives you the 80% benefit.

The hard part is figuring what that is, where you're going to spend your time. So we're going to apply this philosophy to the programs we've been assigned to by the Legislature. The roles are the philosophy and the columns are the initiatives.

So I'll just go through the first one, which is pre K. So the philosophy is, first of all, why, Bill, what's the core problem? It's universal pre-k. Right. We've been talking about it for 30 years. Time to walk the talk. And it's being done through the Ready Keiki Program.

We're just a part of it, but our state is finally delivering on universal. Second part of that philosophy is what to build. Right. The minimal viable solution. And that's why we are focusing on renovations. Because that's the minimal viable viable.

You take an existing building, you can renovate it quickly at an incredibly great cheaper cost and you can get up and running as fast as possible. The next option is to join in shovel ready programs like the University of Hawaii's Manoa housing project. So we're a part of that.

The libraries as they're already in design, so we're a part of that. Department of Transportation is building. That's the next best way. And finally the most expensive is build new. So that's the third option which we're doing is building hubs. So that's the what to build, the how to build is the efficiency. Right?

Do it fast and do it in budget. And the best example is what happened with the renovations. We were able to do it in literally weeks. And we were able to do it the use of consistent design. So it's one design, one standard, right? Same porcelain tile, everything's consistent. Nothing we do is low bid.

We do it through pre qualified contractors. So you reward good behavior, they do good work, we give them more work so things get done fast. And then finally you want to look at options. Hawaii has the highest construction costs in the nation, typically six times the average. Three to four times even in New York City.

So you have to look at options that are agnostic to supply chains. If there's a tariff on steel, don't use steel. Concrete block, if that's not an option, go to mass timber. So that's what we're doing. So that's the pre-k's with Mike. The next swim lane is new school central Maui. And again same philosophy. Why build?

What's the core problem? It's overcrowding in central Maui. The line of fire has resulted in a huge movement of families to central Maui. The middle school is very overcrowded, so the needs there. More importantly, next to Liru Oahu, I think central Maui is the largest amount of planned units. 4800 new homes in the next decade.

So that's the why then what to build? What's the minimum viable solution? The world has changed. Schools are being built now as an open building, kind of like office buildings where you demise the space and then you let the tenant decide what they want to build.

And then 10 years from now, or maybe even five years from now, it's a different field. So the learning spaces now are very different than the learning spaces that I grew up in. They're called Da Vinci Studios. They're called student commons. They're called black box theories, they're called collaboration hubs. They're called learning stairs.

That's where the action is. It's not in a 30 by 30 foot classroom with the counselor's office or an admin. It's these learning spaces. But this kind of architecture lets you do that because you can build those, you can build in any size you want. And then when it changes, just build it again.

So that's what we're building. And then the third one, how to build efficiency. Again, it's all standardization. We recently launched a tool, we call it Akamai. And what it does is uses software, so it forces the standardization. Right? So the way we used to build before is all one off.

We get an architect, he does a really good design, you go to charettes, two years later you submit a permit. All of that now is done in software. So what took years is literally taking weeks or months. And you could design it for any school on the island. That's how you enforce standardization.

And then you procure it differently. The worst thing to do is low bid. So we recently awarded a progressive design build contract, the first in Hawaii, where you bring in the contractor even before you start schematic design. So you get construction estimates as you design from the cost of the project.

Not once you're at 40% design or once you're done with the bid set, which can be sometimes two years later. So you can adjust and change on the fly. And then finally, we have three construction topologies. We call it Project Caterpillar, which is mass timber.

The reason why is timber lets you kind of snake around like a caterpillar. We have one called Project CMU Block. That's pretty obvious. If it's good enough for Costco, it should be good enough for us. Every Costco's built CMU block. And the last one is what we call Project Flat Pack.

Cold form steel, lightest possible steel, perfect for three stories, can be built in a factory, assembled on site really quickly. Very, very durable, long life. So that's the topologies we want to do for for the new school. And finally, our last friend, Lane, workforce housing again. Why do it? What's the core problem?

It's teacher recruitment and teacher retention. Right? It's just too expensive to live in Hawaii. What's really interesting, and we didn't plan it this way, so it's not because of us. There was a survey in 2024 on the number one most desirable site that a teacher wanted to rent in Hawaii. And it was Mililani High School.

Luckily, that's our first rv. So. Really? Yeah, we didn't do it. It just ended up that way. Just kidding. 9,000 respondents. Unfortunately, we're only building 100 units because the site's not that big. But again, so what to build minimum vial solution, we can put 100 units given the size.

And more importantly, we want to hit the 60 to 110. AMI, which is the entry level teacher. So that's the hard part on the financing and then finally on the how to build. It's not the old way. It's called, it's called a public private partnership. It's called delivery method. It's called dbfom. Design, Build, Finance, Operate, maintain.

So all of that is done by the, by the developer from design to. They're now in design to get fine time process. But then they'll operate and maintain it for 65 years. So that's the model. So that philosophy should be applied statewide. And that's the last column, right? Same questions, same methodology, just different problems. So.

So that's what we're, that's what we're focused on trying to do is redefine how state government approaches this problem. You know, our point is, if not now, when? It's always later. We've kicked the can down the road too long. It's. And as you see what's happening in the world today, we move at lightning speed.

The current Administration, Right. We got to do it now. So let's do it now. SFA will do it for you. Thank you so much.

We're going to take a quick recess.

Okay. Reconvening for the Committee on Education informational briefing.

First up, we have this Libraries for Q and A Members. Any questions? Any questions?

Thank you so much for your presentation and I'm very pleased to see the increase and also all the additional activities that you're doing as a shared. It's beyond just books, right?

So one of the, you know, the highlights that I thought would also be good for the libraries to share is this new opportunity to look at libraries as a place to also provide access to early childhood education. Can you talk a little bit about what the libraries are doing in that space?

The conversation started a couple years ago with Lt. Governor Luke and also Senator Gadani. We were actually at the library down here, like, well, couldn't we have. Could we have some kind of early learning here? And we started talking about it.

Our challenge was that most of our spaces aren't really designed and you have to do a lot of work to redesign to meet the standards for kids. So we looked at two projects and looked at how we could build new classrooms for early learning. So Pearl City is our first design. We're expanding that.

We're redoing the library itself, but we're adding a large conference space for the community center. And then next to that are two classrooms that will be used for early learning. And then the second location is going to be like a lot. And that's a new library on the big island.

And so everything is being designed and we're very happy to work with the state on the funding for these classrooms. So they're helping us build these classrooms.

Do you know yet how many seats each of those spaces will provide? And can you talk a little bit about the funding, how it's currently funding.

So we received funding from SFA to partner in the construction of the. So the funds provided will build out two classrooms, approximately up to 20 students per classroom, plus approximately a 1500 square foot play area.

And then access to these seats is not limited to a specific community within that district, similar to how DOE is districted. It's open to the entire community.

Is that correct? Yeah, I think in that case, we haven't quite figured it out yet, but we anticipate we're going to be working with for the partnership to find the providers rather than HSPLs handling the hiring of child care early K.

Thank you, Vice Chair Members. Any other questions? Okay, please go ahead.

Thanks, Chair. I just want to thank the library system so, so much. We, I know we had the groundbreaking for our KL library, which was huge. So thank you for supporting our more rural communities. My daughter and I love to visit and go to the child's the readings that you folks do weekly all across the state.

And they make such a massive difference for our small communities and our rural communities and for Keiki in every community. So I just want to thank you folks for that. I think when we're talking about rural communities, one thing that I do also want to ask is how are. I noticed you have this.

You're doing your pilot for the book Book Locker. Are there any other things that you folks are working on to maybe expand, like mobile bookmobiles or mobile libraries in some of the more rural communities that maybe don't like Volcano, for instance, where folks want a library, but it's not necessarily something that we can budget for right now.

How are we creating interim access?

It's interesting because everything old is new again. Bookmobiles were like a big thing. And then unfortunately, libraries lost funding and we decimated most of our bookmobiles. So right now we have one bookmobile on Maui, the Mobile, which the Friends of Mahai Library supported. And then we have a funky little van on Molokai that they use to travel.

We do think we need to go more mobile. In moving of Mountain View and merging Mountain View and kl, we're very aware that we need to rethink how we get out to people. So we have to figure out is it an outreach mobile or is it actually a movable branch, which they're kind of two different things.

And so it is something we're looking at. I don't think we've come to any conclusions yet, but because of this merger happening between Mountain View and. Yeah, we're very aware that there are some people who are feeling like now it's even further for them to get to library service.

So we want to make sure everybody has access and we want to make sure that families have access because sometimes it's hard to get somewhere to get books or to drop off books. And we really want to make sure that all of our communities have access. Thank you for asking that question.

And thank you for thanking the libraries. We have amazing staff who are so dedicated every week to building new programs and services. And our children's librarians are really dedicated to helping kids get ready for school. So thank you for acknowledging. We'll let them know that you have thanked them. Thank you.

Thank you. Members of the other questions, how are you defining movable branch that you just referenced mobile branch, A mobile branch.

So this is a definition that's Being talked about at the national level. I'm on a national Committee that looks at what we collect and how we collect data nationally and the type of bookmobiles. It's really changed.

We have there are some libraries that have, like, technology, mobiles and all kinds of other outreach, kinds of mobile types of services. So in order to keep the data clean, trying to show what. Where is it that there are places library services aren't offered?

So we're creating mobile opportunities to come up into a van that has a collection. And it comes at certain time of the day, a certain time of the week. You can always count on it. So it's this mobile branch, as opposed to more outreach, which mostly our whole mobile is a lot of outreach.

We schedule time with schools and other organizations to go and provide services. But also like Lahaina, the bookmobile goes out to Lahaina. There are collections on the bookmobile, but it mostly is doing more outreach right now versus having a set schedule every week where people can rely on that book.

So these services are going out to areas in which you believe that they are needed. Therefore, the mobile you referenced in your presentation that you also help with strengthening literacy rates and literacy in general, how are you doing that past some of the examples that you gave?

So story times are one. So our librarians have been trained in early literacy skill building. So when they're doing their story times, some people think, zero, they're just reading a story and they're coming up with fun things for kids to do. But every story time is deliberate in its creation.

So it's always a sing, read, talk, play, write. So storytime. So anybody who brings their kids to story time, it's giving your kids a heads up, you know, on being able to read because they're reading, they're playing, they're using all the words. So it's increasing and supporting literacy.

We're also looking to work with the Hawaii Literacy Council and Inc. And also Hawaii Kids can on increasing awareness about literacy. So we've been talking about some programming with them we'd like to do more work with with adult learners too. So that's again, doing some more work with Hawaii Hawaii Literacy.

But we're just continually trying to increase capacity. We've also talked about having, in some of our libraries do have these little kits with all kinds of things that kids can do that are around a particular topic. And they're all around building literacy skills.

So our libraries are a great resource to find things to help you if your family doesn't have a lot of resources, the librarians can help you and then also having these great activities that are available.

Thank you for that. And if students like K12 students goes into a library because they need like tutoring as an example, is that something that the library system provides and is it common for libraries to provide that type of services?

We did. We have partnered with Hawaii Kids can who had a program. There's a national program that is a tutoring service that is more focused. It's not just you call somebody and they help you with whatever your problem is. They actually have cohorts of children.

And so we've been talking more with Hawaii Kids can about how we could do more of that. And some of our communities, we don't have tutoring service like an organized tutoring service. I think some of our libraries may have opportunities where people can meet with other people.

Is it common for libraries to have that or is it not common?

It depends on the library. Some libraries have access to these online tools. Some are better than others. Like I said, the ones where you can just call somebody and they help you, it's okay.

But where we see real results is when kids can join into program and be in a cohort and they can actually see movement in the change that they changes to improving their literacy or their math or whatever subject area. So I would like to do more of that because I think it's more beneficial.

And then, you know, working with the Department of Ed to find out, are there areas where we could be doing more of that because there were more need in some communities that we could help.

Thank you so much. Members, any other questions? Seeing none, recess.

Now we have SFA up Members, any questions for School Facilities Authority Vice Chair.

Thank you so much, Director, for being here on the screen. We want to pull up the budget document. I have a question on. Can you please explain what lapsed or restricted means as well as the unallotted line items and what is driving those? What are the reasons for those?

Sure. What I wanted to do is clearly explain the money that's in place. So, for example, let's take pre K, which is. Was the first one. Right. The true funds available is $202 million.

Because in the original appropriations, although they're large, 220 million, the Governor didn't release it and clawed it back because, as you know, there was the Maui fires and that was all cash. So what. What was actually released in allotments was only 116 million.

So although it looks like a big number, we don't have access to it because it was Purposely lapsed or restricted by the government because they needed the cash. That's the only one. The others there was no restrictions because there was bond funding. So there was really not the need to do it.

What's allotted is what he really has released yet. What's unallotted is still in play. A lot of it is still not lapsing until two more years. But there is a chunk in Pre K about 60 million that we just submitted.

The allotment request PDF generally doesn't want you to make that request unless you have specific projects that you're going to cover into. So in our case now it's the hubs. We literally have about 10 hubs identified. The remaining money will probably be only good enough for six.

So that is in play with the government and that is now CIP funds because as you remember, in the fiscal crisis, we swapped the cash for the bond funding to that other fiscal year.

Right.

Can you talk a little bit about that again? So you said 10 new pre K hubs that are currently encumbered.

No. So we've been designed to the point where you can get bids from contractors. And you got it. It is our challenge to encumber by June all the construction funds.

How much is that?

60 million. 60? Yeah.

That's coming out of the 85. That's unallotted.

Yes. So that allotment request is submitted. It's going through its process because now we're at the stage where we had probably 40% schematic drawings where you can get a contractor to bid on the drawings. Unfortunately, because of the time frame of that money, which was two years, permitting is still questionable.

So you're going to encumber without permits and take the risk.

So the appropriation that you have, what's your time frame to spend those funds with? And you said you received them two years ago. What is the time frame to six months?

June 30th. The only money that's not lapsing is the 20 million for fiscal year 26. And we haven't requested any of that yet. And that's in 2020.

Okay. Okay. So thanks for sharing that. Yeah.

So red is the real. Look at the red. Right. That's what's at risk.

Okay. That's the. That needs to be spent out by.

June, the first one. Unencumbered. Yes, by June. And then in the case of the unallotted, because so much was in play, we submitted that allotment request for the balance of the 60 million that is going to lapse in six months.

So something that You've shared was your. So the School Facilities Authority was created 56 years ago. Seven, seven years ago already. I can't keep track. But relatively in the. Less than a decade ago. Yes, because the Department of Education has struggled with cost overruns and like, you know, overall with cap delay.

So you've shared your ability to renovate or build in a relatively shorter time frame. So based on some of the outcomes that you've shared or what you, in your capacity as a current Director, what structurally is the School Facilities Authority doing that the Department currently is not?

And is there something that based on your, like your policy recommendations could be something that should be looked at for the Department to also similarly look at? Because from my understanding it takes at least a decade for a new school build for the dod.

Yeah. There's three ways to solve it. And it's part of our build less, solve more mantra. Right? Standardization first. Because by standardization you shortcut a lot of things. Right now it's a one off. The admin building at this school is different from the admin building at that school. The design of Honolului is different from Kalani Hakoi.

Everything's one on and that's not unique to Hawaii. That whole pattern happened nationwide. The movement towards one off, custom, get lead certification, get a design award. That was a national movement. That's how now swung given the whole fiscal situation nationally. Opposite way the pendulum is going back to standardized.

And the best example is Santa Monica High in LA. They built a high school for 3,000 students. It's just 1260,000 square foot office. One building that can be infinitely configurable in the next 50 years. So it's swinging the other way around. I'm a lot older than Ology here.

At one time in Hawaii, our counties built a new classroom every three days. So the physical plant we inherited, now 70% of them were built in the 50s and 60s at a crazy rate because everything was hollow tile, aluminum slope roof. Super simple. So that's what it's kind of going back to.

We don't want it to go that far back because that's not configurable. Right. Holotau is heavy, structurally expensive. There are better ways. Now we have to go back to standardization. So that's the first thing standardization to me, the next most important thing is don't low bid. But our state is stuck in low bid.

And because that's what we're used to. So that's what we do. I would almost never take the low bid for my own home. You Want the best bid or the best value. So to get around that, you got to put the work in, do an RFP and pre qualify them.

And this is what the Federal Government does, right? May talks idiqs, you pre qualify the vendors so you don't have to take them all in. It's one factor, right? Experience, schedule, quality, those are other factors that could outweigh the lowest bid. And that's what we're using. So don't low bid.

And then the third thing is make it construction agnostic. Because if the supply chain for heavy precast concrete is so expensive at that time, move to something else. Move to mass timber, traditional stick build or cold form steel. So you're not locked into that design.

So those are the three things to me, not just the Department of Ed, but every agency in Hawaii should be doing in order to get it done faster, Control Costs, stick to them. But overall, because again as rep A model knows we'll have to also rep. What's it. The cost of Maui is crazy. Construction cost.

It's even worse than that of Oahu. So we gotta. We can't build as much. It's just, it's just too expensive. Yeah. So you have to make do with less. It's like my eat less, exercise more philosophy which I'm not very good at.

I have one more follow up share, is that okay?

Please go ahead.

I don't know if you have a specific example yet for that. Would you have like a current project that you're working on right now that where in a traditional. The current model. This is what it's know currently costing versus in this three, this three prong like approach or framework. This would be like the actual cost.

That's what my actual question is on workforce housing. But I'll pass on that.

Sure, absolutely. So we have an example. Unfortunately all we have is renovations because the hubs are getting it now. So renovations were done previously with eoel. It took about two years to do a renovation. The cost per classroom was north of 1 million.

Our benchmarks for the 85 classrooms that we renovated for now is literally taking eight months and we're averaging about 350,000 per class. It's dramatic just by doing those things.

Standardizing existing classrooms. Yes. Nothing new. No new construction.

No new construction permitting alone two years. Right. Renovations, no permits. Because you're not. You already have a significant certificate of occupancy. It's one for one rip, one for one replacements. And this is actuated because previous to the SFA doing the renovations. It was done the traditional little bit way.

So that's, that's empirical evidence, you know, less than half the time.

My last question is on workforce housing. So work for educator. Workforce housing is now a statutory responsibility for the School Facilities Authority. And you are currently piloting the first teacher housing project in the state, Mililani at Mililani High School. So you can just quick do a quick brief overview of where you're at with that project.

But also how many units does School Facilities Authority, now that it's part of your responsibility, expect to either either be planned or being targeted for the next years or in other communities.

The first one on Milan High School, you know, now after numerous community meetings, meetings and moving the site, the community is not opposed to the new site, Site B, which is a different part of campus. We have artist renderings, iwrds of the project. So we're in the.

We just submitted our EA and are in the process of the 201 exemption for the Hyde permit. Then thereafter it'd be financing. And that's a long road. Right, because financing, everyone has to line up for public financing. And we just hope we get moved quicker up in front of the line. So that's the new line.

In the terms of other sites. There are so many sites in Hawaii, but we don't have money to pursue that. If you look at the third column on this sheet. Right. We've only been given $5 million and we think the bulk of that will still be spent on. So without future appropriations, we can't do future RFPs.

What we can do is due diligence on two sites. And we're going to do it for Kahi' o elementary and Jefferson, whether there's any showstoppers of those sites. But we'll need future appropriations to frame up RFPs for subsequent developers to bid on them.

Because the process to even do an RFP requires money for due diligence, legal work, bond work, you know, there's all these costs. So we estimate the price per RFP at a location is around. And that's consistent with what happened at the University of Hawaii with the NOAA site project. Yeah.

Million average. Final question is when is the construction expected to start for Mililani and when our teachers expect expected or educators expected to move in?

Yeah, the key blockade is financing. So if you're in this long line of LIHTC fighting, I don't know if all the stars line up 2029.

Three years.

If everything goes accordingly, Key Hero is financing because it's a long one.

Okay, thank you, you full time?

You full time litech for that project?

No, we haven't even applied yet, you know. You have not applied yet. Yeah, we're not even there yet. Until you get the exemption, the zoning, site control, you have all these other hurdles.

We're at the EA phase and we're gonna propose petition the city council for the zoning. Yeah. And then is the project contingent upon you receiving Flightch?

No, I mean it's just there are multiple sources of funding you apply. The most advantageous for a project that tries to hit a 60 EMI is lifetime. Yeah, it's all big financing.

It's a financing challenge for us. A lot of moving parts. You guys got to be able to get that done by 29. The Stars line up and the financing comes through. Yes, Members, any other questions? Okay, I have a couple questions. Thank you so much for being here and thank you for your guys's work thus far.

It has been quite impressive. When you are creating these, I guess to say when you're altering these classroom for pre K instruction or even when you're building entirely new campuses, what is your coordination structure with the Department of Education?

We have seven standing meetings with the Department of Education, with various groups, some of them twice a month. We document every meeting with agenda, action items and to dues. So we're basically following project management. 101 project manager assigned to it, document every interaction, show action items and just push it along.

And the key is schedule, budget and scope. Oversight on that is key. Right, because it's different agencies. So for Pre K, we have a steering Committee on Pre K that sits above us, sits above the Department of Ed, sits above the charter school Commission and sits above eoel. And that steering Committee makes the hard decisions.

Likewise for New School Central Maui, we recently have a steering Committee on that that will be escalated to that similar voice. Because my experience has been on the private side, you don't do anything without a project management office, a PM office, because nothing ever gets done. There's too many things to do. Right.

So you need that group to push and decide, make your case. Decide, go, go, go, go. Otherwise projects just get stuck. So we have those two mechanisms right now for both our initiatives.

Actually, that same steering Committee also sits in the workforce housing too. Okay, so you have steering committees for pre K, for Central Maui Middle School and also for workforce. Yeah, the workforce housing one is the same steering Committee Members which you have already met. Okay, so that's how you're formalizing these discussions. Yes.

In addition to the standing meetings between the steering committees are when their issues. Disagreement. Yeah. So when there is disagreement between the Department of Education and also or in Sfa, you kick it up to the steering Committee. Absolutely.

And then you document it. It's discoverable. Well, not in the legal frame, but in our case, subject to a 92F. So it shows why all the key decisions are made and why. So if you ever want to look back and audit, it's all document documented.

And what you do is each critical decision is documented, what they call a project decision log and that becomes your audit trail.

So that's what's being built. And when do you have to leverage the steering committees? When there's not agreement. At what point is that triggered? Example.

Yeah. Biggest example which you've been a part of is budget for this new central Maui school project. What is the budget? So based on that budget, that decision has to be documented. That, you know, you could build. We could build you a half a billion dollar school if given the money.

Or we could build you $150 million school. That's what the budget is. Have to live within our needs. You know, it's just not.

It's not an open checkbook. You spoke of like standardization and how there's actually a movement to go back towards like more cookie cutter design and build. Some of the schools I've seen on the continent, they actually look very beautiful. They are very individualized. Still, you're seeing that shifting away.

But what I don't want to happen here in Hawaii is that we have standardized cookie cutter buildings. And then you go to the continent and then those schools are looking magnificent. Is there like a medium? Right. So you can arrive?

Yeah, the movement is open building. So the customization comes within how the tenant does it.

Just like how a downtown office building, you can have a private equity firm take one floor and it looks completely different than the next floor, which is not a private equity firm, but like an insurance company or the next firm, which is like a, like a real estate company.

So that's where the action is, is in the learning spaces. And again, the best example is Santa Monica High.

It's a massive office building. What does it look like on the outside when you say, when you bring up Santa Monica, what does it look like? Is it just like a warehouse? Yeah, it's. It's fabulous.

But we don't have a billion dollar budget for that. What does it look like on the outside? It's fabulous. Yeah, it's just Google. Santa Monica High, Samoa Center, Santa Monica High School. What does it look like it looks like work of art.

Yeah. Okay. I can call it. Yeah. Any other questions?

I do, please. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Director, you mentioned a progressive design build model. Will the Central Maui School utilize that and will it make construction faster?

That is why state and local governments and Federal Governments do that. It's a modern iteration of design build. Design build seems progressive, but it's probably 30 years old already. So that industry has iterated to progressive design build.

Where in traditional design build you get 30 sprints schematic, then you bring in the contractor and then he applies on that phase. With progressive design build you bring him further before you even doing schematic design. So that's been awarded.

The hope is that you get a more accurate budget, you can stick to the schedule and so you can build faster.

This is the first one with a follow up. What about with change orders? What happens then? Do costs have a tendency to run away with progressive design build or should it really help it stay within the budget?

It shouldn't because the contractor is giving you a bid as you design. Not after the bid set's done for the document. Traditional change order goes crazy because right. The contractor is not part of the design team. So he gets the bid documents, he makes a bid and then he finds out all the.

These are the things which results in change orders. You're going to get change orders. So the first project ever in the United States was a lighthouse that not George Washington but the next guy was in charge of and it had a major change order. You're never going to get away from change orders.

But by bringing in the contractor in sooner, the guy who makes for equipment, the change orders, the hope is that you can minimize the amount of it and you can catch it before in the design phase. Thank you battery Members. John Adams.

Yeah.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much. Members, any other questions? Okay, we will recess.

Okay.

And certainly not. Wait. Last but not, certainly not least, we're going to have. It's only 3 o'clock. Thank you for still being here with us. Members, do we have any questions for the Standards Board? Vice Chair?

Thank you, Chair. Last session, one of the bills that we had worked on and we heard in Committee was a bill that would have regulated the J1 pathway teaching program to address workforce stability.

And Hawai' I Teacher Standards Board did oppose that legislation and one of the bottlenecks in my conversations with teachers and the employers was having to take the practice exam. So if you can share with the public and the Committee, what is the requirement with the PRAXIS exam?

And does the HTSB currently collect or report data on first time pass rates, repeated failure rates, and just trying to understand how many end up exiting the licensure process because of either repeated failure or just an inability to pass the practice test?

Yeah. So the pass rates we actually can get a hold of if you would like us to. We would just need where the employer has a list of the teachers that are on J1 visas provided to us and then we can look at the test.

Now the test comes in if they actually identify the Hawai' I Teacher Standards Board as a recipient. If they don't, then we don't know what their test scores are unless they upload it. They have three years to finish the testing in order to get a standard license.

And this is not only for J1, this is for all international teachers or anyone on the continent who finished a university. So for example, if someone went to Tennessee University, did their teacher education program but did not get licensed in Tennessee, they can get licensed in Hawaii.

However, because the board doesn't have regulatory authority over Tennessee University, they take the practice exam in order to ensure compliance. That's what we always ask for. Maybe you should do reciprocity. Go through the Tennessee Licensing Board for teacher education. You meet the requirements and we can use reciprocity. So it's not just for J1 teachers.

It's anyone international or anyone on the continent who finishes a program and they don't achieve licensure in their own state, they have to take the exams. But we can get you trend data. We would just need names. We don't track in our system. We don't input that they're J1 visa holders.

Everyone is just a teacher at that point, an emergency hire permit holder until they successfully complete the test and they can convert their permit to a full license.

The HSBA requires taking of the PRAXIS test as quality control as you said. But why don't you collect the data to kind of understand whether or not this basically either enables or reduces our ability to get licensed teachers.

We do have some of the data and I had it last year but again we would have to look at the name. So we have to work in tandem with the Department of Education to get their employment information because we're not the employer.

So we need to get that information and work together but we can get that data. Like I said, there's going to be some nuances where if they didn't put in us as a recipient for the test scores, we would have to ask them for their score report because it's not mandatory to give us their scores.

But we can look at that and ask for a list of all the J1 teachers they're still recruiting from. I understand. So it's not stopping them. So we can look at that as well and give that to you probably next because I mean it's only been a year so it'd be two years next briefing.

But I could give that to you sooner of last year's.

Thank you. I mean I would like to think that because we are hearing that it is a bottleneck it would be helpful for us to understand either by subject to break down that data. Right.

Either by subject type and where are these different teachers applying to and where either are they repeatedly like failing a certain practice exam by subject area? Because right. If it is becoming a barrier then what kind of intervention are we going to design policy wise to figure that out? Because our goal is to produce quality teachers.

And then in follow up to. I know you shared an analogy about, you know, how adults, we get to choose our doctors but kids cannot choose the teachers. But as you said, you know, HCSB doesn't choose the teachers. It is the employer that does the recruitment and the, and the selection. For the doctors.

Like the workforce shortage, right. With healthcare, I mean there's workforce shortages everywhere. But in the doctor sends or in the healthcare field we are able to look at scope of practice, expanding scope of practice.

We are able to look at how can folks continue to practice but under the supervision of somebody who is licensed or we were able to do reciprocity as you mentioned. So what authority does the HTSB currently have to in fact look at. Today.

To kind of adjust what you're currently requiring and adopt certain similar alternate like types of pathways so that those that are currently teaching have the ability to continue to do so or have a pathway to get to where we need them to be.

And I'll give you two examples. There's one state right now, they just did research, they lowered barriers for their educators and now over 50% of their workforce are emergency hires.

In our case, now they're looking at test scores because they found that if someone is being taught by an emergency hire not qualified, it's usually around a six month learning loss for the student. And so you add that to every year they have an emergency hire, it compounds.

And now they're in a crisis where they're trying to figure out how to stuff the genie back in the bottle. And they said it's probably going to be over a decade of learning loss. So that's one extreme. The other extreme is apprenticeship programs.

That's why states are leaning to our apprenticeship because you're under the guidance of a mentor teacher the entire time and it's over 2000 hours of on the job learning. So when you're under a master teacher for that long, you're more than day one ready going through your educator preparation program.

And so those are two different scenarios of they lowered barriers in one state. Now they're facing a different type of crisis with learning loss. And then you see other states trying to do the mentorship under the apprenticeship program. And that's what they're trying to now fix.

Without someone just going in, without mentoring, listening to our colleagues that are in other licensees agencies around the country. There are two things that I keep hearing about retention. It is the preparation program that prepares them and how well they come out prepared. And it's the mentoring.

Those are the two things I keep hearing over and over again that is going to improve retention for teachers. And so when we talk about alternative pathways, actually apprenticeship is an alternative pathway for learning because you're on the job, you're not working at Starbucks and McDonne, you're actually there learning which leads to quality educators.

And then if you add in the token of getting paid to do so, you come out debt free. So you come out and if you're from the community, you come out already set in that community. So that's why they're looking at that pathway. I know there are other stakeholders because we joined the Lieutenant Governor's teacher shortage meeting.

There are other stakeholders out there right now that are developing their own pathways either within their educator preparation program OR, or like P20 within their agency. So there's all types of different pathways and I think that's what we need. It's not just gonna one apprenticeship's gonna Solve everything.

All these different types of on ramps and highways rather than driveways are going to help solve the teacher crisis we're having.

Now which state was that that you mentioned and who made that decision to shift back to test scores? Was that their regulatory board or was. It one education to Edson Texas?

Texas is the one and they lowered barriers by it's not the testing requirements, it's how long you can hold emergency hire permit. It may be actually testing requirements. Some states were advocate like only testing is the way you can proceed with licensure. Our state has not had that it's testing or credits credit hours.

So 30 credits of content area with 15 upper division. So there's different routes in requirements for content. As for the J1 teachers, what we found, and this is from my licensing specialist, is they would call and ask us about a certain content test. But we asked them is that what you have your license in the Philippines?

And they would say no. So that may be another thing we need to look at is if I have a master's degree in the Philippines in math, should I be in a spent setting or should I be in a secondary math setting?

So regulatory vet I know in some states when you're an emergency hire you need a bachelor's degree. You're not allowed to teach any other subject area but what your bachelor's degree in. So if you get a business bachelor's degree, you're teaching a business class at high school.

If you got an elementary Ed Bachelor's degree, you're teaching in an elementary setting us right now, you could have a fashion design degree and bachelor's and you can be placed in any secondary elementary sped you can be placed anywhere. So just looking at those types of nuances within licensing itself and working with our stakeholders.

Do you have that data that said that there are teachers like you know in terms of what their current bachelor's degrees are in and what subject matter.

Yeah, and that would be interesting data because sometimes an emergency hire teaches different lines. Math, science, pe. It's up to the admin on what line they place in the so they could be teaching 56 different lines. That's outside their bachelor's degree, but we can try again. That's why I'm crossing my fingers.

We get our institutional analysts pretty quickly. We're hiring right now because that would be one of the data points that they can grab.

I think that's what I'm trying to get at is like the you just said the emergency hires number went up from last year and also the we have J1 teachers who are also, you know, their end of contract or term will. How long are they able to teach right now? Is it five years? Five years? Correct.

And that will also come up. And we continue to have this ongoing shortage of teachers like new and there's constantly new things we're developing right early childhood and we are creating those pathways so that we are creating the students who can enter into those careers. But we're going to reach a point.

Where at the end of the day like because they're not able to stay and continue to teach and have an ability to get the license, I'm trying to understand how are we understanding how they're getting to where we need them to be.

Are we helping them or creating any interventions in that way so they can remain because they want to teach here? Because we're going to reach a point where the shortage will continue and grow and then we're also going to continue to have emergency hires and that will continue to grow.

And then a kid and a five year old kid in a classroom may not have a teacher at all.

And so as a state and from a statewide policy perspective, what are we doing to look at either other types of measures, other types of alternate pathways and what is HCSB prepared to recommend to us if we're constantly seeing that same thing, practice continues to be a barrier or other types of.

Well, I know the Department of Education from what I heard is actually supporting the J1 teachers with this praxis support. There are agencies out there that actually around because we go to all these conferences and that's their sole job is to support teachers to pass the practice exam.

And so there, I believe the Department of Education, you might want to check with them, are doing these safeguard supports for them. Unfortunately, because J1s are only allowed to stay in our country for five years, they will add to that turnover rate of five years.

So no matter what they're going to do that turnover rate of five years. So that's why again investing in our local teachers or local educator assistants that are in the classrooms from the communities that they should be mentored and perhaps incentivized to finish college. And that's a partnership with the educator preparation programs.

We know that one organization right now has about over 200 teachers. They lost their federal funding. They have 200 teachers that they were working with to get through the license.

They're from the community and now they're unsure what's going to happen because they were paying for tuition and so now it's unaffordable for them to probably pay out of pocket, which is why they're going with this, I guess, Native, indigenous work or program. And so now what happens?

And so those are the things that as stakeholders, not only htsb, but I think it's everyone's issue. It's going to be charter schools, it's going to be doe. How can we come together and take. A real look at what's really happening? What is. And I'm sure DOE can provide data.

Charter schools can provide data, we can provide data. How will we come together and take a real honest look at what's happening, why people are leaving? I know there's some surveys out there, but we need to come together and get that data.

And do you believe that's a function that HTSB can play a role in? Because as we try and address, I think we can.

Because again, when they leave schools and. Even if they're at Kamehameha School and go to Hido, we can, we can track them by licensure. And so that's one way we can help track if they went from DOE and maybe they taught at a charter school for five years and maybe they went to put a hole for.

We can figure out as long as they keep their license. So how can we use all our data? We have a data sharing agreement with P20 right now. We're trying to build that capacity where we're trying to work closely with EOEL because they know we need early childhood teachers as well.

So how can we bring all the partners together to take a real look to see what pathways are out there and how we can use data to report back to you folks and stakeholders?

I think that would be good. And then getting us that data on their path, you know, as they're trying to complete, obtain praxis, if it is creating this unintentional barrier, then we need to understand what. How can we help them get to. Where we need to, you know, where. We need them to.

And then on the apprenticeships, when was. I know we received an update last year too, but when was the. Has apprenticeships always been a part of your. When was that started? And do we have any active apprenticeships right now?

Great question. So it wasn't until 2022 when the US Department of Labor identified as teaching as an apprenticeship, a viable apprenticeship program. That's when Biden put in funding and we call it the SAFE Grant.

And, and so we had to work with our State Department, Department of Labor Industrial Relations, to submit an application for that grant funding now, the first round, it was pretty quick. And so what we did was brought stakeholders all together. We brought the union P20 Hido us. We brought us all together.

And the grant was like, due in a month. I'm like, okay, who's going to take this on? Because we found out you had to apply for it in order. If you didn't get the first round, you may get it the second round because you applied for the first round.

So we're like, all right, who's going to apply for it? And so a lot of people didn't have capacity. So I said, okay, we'll do it. And so we applied with the Department of Labor. The first year, we didn't get it. The second year we did.

And so now, because we are one district, there is a consult to confer a union process that has to happen between the union and the employer. And that's where we're at right now, unfortunately. The grant will expire in 2027. There is for us to start this program. There's about 4.6 million sitting right now.

And so again, trying to work with stakeholders to come to an agreement, because we went through the council for the Department of Labor and they approved our apprenticeship program, but they needed to make sure that the union and employer. All that has flushed out. That has not flushed out just yet. And so when did you get the.

When did you get the funding?

Was it 2020, 24, 2024, 2027 and then 20.

It's now 2026. And you haven't identified an employer?

No, no, no.

Apprenticeship.

We identified the employer. But in order to start an apprenticeship program, because we are one district, there has to be a consult to confer process that happens between the unions and the employer. So. Ha. In this case, they have to come to an agreement in order to sign off.

And then we take it back to the Department of Labor that everyone has signed off on the apprenticeship standards. We're ready to start our foundational work. We haven't had that yet.

I mean, what else is going on? Cause, like, why. I mean, if it's set to expire next year and we don't have any active apprenticeships, like, I'd hate, right? Like, what are you. Well, what's your take on that? And what is your plan for the rest of the year? Also, like, we have all these emergency hires.

Is there any connection at all to them to get them to an apprenticeship? And then maybe that's the exposure they need that. You just said need. The mentorship need, right?

Yeah. So unfortunately, because emergency hires, we call them teacher of record, which means they're solo in their classroom. An apprentice would work under the guidance of a journeyman, and that's the Department of Labor term. So they would work in the classroom with a master cooperating teacher. And they were work in tandem.

And usually it's because they're paid as an EA by the Department of Education, by the employer. What we're doing is paying for their schooling. So their educator preparation program. So if they want to go to, uh, Manoa West Oahu, we're paying for that part, but they're still under. Working under the guidance of a master or mentor teacher.

So emergency hires, that would be a different pathway if someone wanted to support them. This apprenticeship program, because it's only 4.6 million, and I say only it's because. It's a pilot program, it's going to. Take a lot more money than 4.6 on a grant to fully fund this.

But we're hoping to get a lot of research and data on it. And again, that organization I talked about that has 200, over 200 possible teacher candidates in the wings waiting. Those would probably be our first folks that we would continue to pay for their education to help them become teachers.

And they're usually going to be EAs. Educational assistants. So they're already in the schools getting paid.

I keep going back to this, but I'm just struggling to think like we have with the huge capacity of potential teachers around the emergency hires. You're saying there's no pathway for them with the current apprenticeship model to be. To benefit from that program?

Because usually. And that's the thing, they have to be. There's federal guidelines for registered apprenticeship. And so some of the federal guidelines is you can't. It's like a plumber or electrician.

But it's currently written that way, correct? Yes, it has to be in the guidance.

And I'll have Mitzi because she helped write with the grant in the standards.

Yeah, it has to be. So the federal grant, we had to follow federal Department of Labor apprenticeship guidelines. And they're very, I would say, strict about what those guidelines are. That's why this pathway is particularly for. They have to be employed. The student or the candidate needs to. Be employed in the school, in the.

Classroom with the mentor teacher. That slash they call journeyman in that. Classroom the whole time. Teachers of record, emergency hires don't fit into that criteria. So there can be other programs for them, such as residencies, which is what we've heard that has been done in other states. But for this apprenticeship program, it can't be.

I think it could have been written in a way. I don't know, but I feel like it could have been an opportunity then.

That we lost because federal guidelines won't allow it. They were very strict about how we wrote it. They said it had to be this and it had to be that. That was just their guidelines. Cause it's Department of Labor. So they're looking at apprenticeship. It's like how plumbers are electricians. They're one on one.

And that's the guidelines and their structure that we had to adhere to. There's other models, but not that one.

Your plan then for the final year. Because we have no active apprenticeships, what. Is going to be the plan for the remainder?

We don't know. So what we do is we report to the Department of Labor. It's a high risk grant at this point, but we're not the employer. We can't push consult to confer. We're not a part of that process. So we just sit and wait.

And there was mention if it does come through, that we can extend the grant. We would have to ask permission to extend it for a few more years. So right now we're in a sit and wait situation for the grant.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Any other questions? What is the. What is the chance that you're going to be able to extend through the Department of Labor?

That is a good question. I would have to consult with them. I'm not sure. I'm not familiar with the Department of Labor's extension grant process and they would have more background on. Because I'm sure they extended other grants before. But I would have to talk with them about that possibility.

They've mentioned it, but we didn't go into details about, you know, what that would take.

I do know the consultant confer process has to be finished and things have to be signed in order for us to ask.

Yeah, that process has to be done first. That's correct.

Are we close like tomorrow, next week? Do we. Is it hsta? Can we like lock them in a room and tell them to like, get this thing away? That's a lot of money to lose. That is paying for the education of EAs to become teachers. Those are the two parties that benefit from it.

And they haven't shook hands yet.

Yeah, not yet. And again, we're in contact with the Department of Education because they asked us questions because again, they're involved in the consulting firm. We've been trying to ask as quickly as possible or answers or questions. So we're just waiting to hear. We kind of have to stay out.

Of it because we're not a part of that.

Who's dragging their feet?

I don't think anyone's dragging their feet is having those conversations. And I again, I'm not familiar with the contract process and employment between Department and HSTA. So I would leave that up to them to explain it. I'm not too familiar.

So unfortunately, who else is named in. The grant in terms of hgea?

The other union? Actually, that's the EA union and I think they have said that they would sign off as soon as the agreement comes between Hido and HSTA.

Yeah, I think if you can get back to the Committee and be able to just identify for us, like how can we have a plan to make sure we just don't throw or return the funding?

How much was it? 4.62 million, actually. 4.62 million. 4.9 million for. But Department of Labor has taken some of that because they're going to do some data for us. But 4.62 million is for that student teachers like to pay their tuition and to pay more mentors or cooperating teachers or journeymen. $4,000 each.

That's what we wrote it for.

And I can give you guys the DOE's contact we've been working with. Very insightful gentlemen that maybe can give you a more of an update than I can because again, I'm not too familiar with their process with consult to confer.

Okay, thank you. Are. Do you have Members? Do you have any other questions on this? Okay, we're going to need to recess quickly until chair gets back, okay?

Reconvening our informational briefing, and we currently have the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board.

Thank you. Members, any other questions? Have a couple questions for you both since you're here. When we are looking at ensuring that there is student preparedness, where you start is making sure that the educators are prepared. You do that through the pre-service or the pre-service space.

We've been talking about how we can ensure that some of those EPPs are of very high quality. What is the Standards Board's role in talking or interfacing with those EPPs to make sure that what service they're providing to those future teachers is adequate for them to start in the classroom?

And I should mention that I don't think that in my mind pre-service is sufficiently adequate in making sure that educators long term are, you know, maintaining that high quality of educational delivery that they need. Continuous capacity building, in my mind, within the context of the American system, particularly Hawaii is important. But just in that pre-service space, what is the Standards Board's involvement in those EPPs?

That's a great question. I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Jennifer Padua, who is our educator preparation program liaison for our agency.

Hi. Jennifer Padua, for the record. So there's two things. I'm going to start with existing programs. So existing programs like the University of Hawaii Manoa, West Oahu, for their preparation programs, we, our Standards Board require national accreditation. Right. So every seven years there's an accreditation and it's program accreditation, which is looks at teacher preparation program.

For example, we are using AAQEP as well as CAEP. We do have WINHEC, which is an indigenous program accreditation. And I bring that up because our accreditation is different from the institutional accreditation, which is WASC. Right. So every seven years they do that.

They also turn in annual reports to the accreditor as well as us. For new programs, we do have a program review process, which is outlined Hawaii administrative rules. And so say for example, because we were talking about early childhood education, an existing institution wants to apply for an early childhood program, they would start with collecting data if this is a particular need.

In our annual report you can see different shortage areas and what kind of needs and teacher programs that are helpful to lessen the teacher shortage. And so the first thing is they do a letter of intent. The letter of intent asks specific questions like what data did you pick.

Or asking about the qualifications of your faculty, who are the targeted teachers. So for example, a traditional program is people who need a bachelor's degree and then a license. Whereas what you were talking about emergency hires, right.

Is It a post-bac program that we're just focusing on licensure or on the other part because it does plan to a faculty teacher salary. Do we want to do a graduate master's program? So we look, in that letter intent, they kind of identify, okay, what is the need, what are the different pathways and so forth.

You're approving that or is the university approving that?

So it depends. It kind of what has been happening is the UH system has their own sort of, they have to have an academic provost. They start with their own, I guess, senate committee. And then it sort of goes up the ranks throughout their institution. And I believe it goes to the bigger, broader Board of Regents piece.

So most of the times they go through the university route. What we've been saying, is similar to what the other gentleman was talking about, bring your contractors in early so we can look at the different program standards or the program requirements as outlined in administrative rules.

And so once they do the letter of intent, they have two years to develop a program. Throughout the way, we communicate with them, we ask if they have questions. Part of the requirement, as outlined in Hawaii administrative rules, is to have a program review committee.

Going back to the early childhood education example, we'll bring in early childhood practitioners. They are the ones who are going to be working alongside these future teachers. We bring in someone that has like university experience and sort of district experience. We want to make sure that our program review committee has content knowledge as well as practitioner knowledge.

And so the program review will go over, there's five different or more than five specific requirements, like how do you teach reading, how do you address English language learners, what do you do for model code of educator ethics, how are you addressing the Hawaiian knowledge, culture, and language. Those are all specific requirements outlined in Hawaii administrative rules.

And then what does your clinical experience look like? And I agree with you, Chair. Right. I don't. Ours is 450 hours of clinical experience where they do their... So the program review committee looks to see if all these different requirements are in there. There is some sort of consult and confer. Right.

Like we're just using that language. And so once the committee reviews and feel that it can be a recommendation, then the recommendation is given to the board. So the program review committee. Our standards board. Yeah. And so we give, the program review committee gives that recommendation to the board.

The board looks over the recommendations as well as the evidence, and then they decide whether to approve the program and not or to defer it and have the program goes back to it. Once it's approved, the program can start teaching that specific pathway immediately. Those programs are what we call like a provisional license.

So when it's the next accreditation review and the accreditor will look to see, okay, are they implementing according to what the program plan is and is it meeting the program accreditation standards.

Just to add to that, when it goes to their institution, a program, it's not really checked for licensure. Because at the institution, when they bring like a program, maybe they're doing a post-bac and they get it through their markers for their institution, they're looking at the degree or the credits.

When it comes to us, we're looking at the licensure requirements, which is something different. It's an add on to what makes you a licensed teacher. So I kind of equate this whole process as of part building a house. The blueprints is a letter of intent. I want a three bedroom house, two bath, pool.

The board looks at it and goes, okay, that seems great. That's a need in our state. Then it goes through. They have two years to build this house. Okay, your house is built, ready to submit your report. Great. And so then we get subject matter experts in that content area to look at the program.

And one good thing we found is in-service teachers who have decades of experience in public school, because there may be a disconnect between higher ed and what's actually practice at the public school and the Department of Education at the time. And so they actually go in and, okay, give me a program.

Let's see if the lights work, let's see if the toilet flushes. If I'm using the analogy of building a house, they make sure that everything is there. How a person wants to decorate the house, how they want to teach it, that's up to them. They want to put the couch some here, a picture here, that's fine.

But they have to make sure it's a sound program. And once they feel it's a sound program, then they give it to the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board who trust these subject matter experts. Like I said, they're not all subject matter experts in every single licensure area.

And they trust the report that everything has been done and checked off and then they approve it. And once they approve it, it can start on, the board meets on a Friday, they can start enrolling on a Saturday because it's ready to go, it's ready to enroll students.

So it's a very vital process that ensures, like you said, that people are coming out ready to teach. And that 450 clinical hours is really important to be. That's how they do their experience or clinical working in the classroom and doing their lesson plans and being pretty much a regular teacher at that point.

Is there any example to where like a program is developed, it's approved by the institution of higher learning, then it goes to your Standards Board but you do not approve it? Does that happen sometimes?

Yes, there are some. When the program review team has looked at programs, there may be items missing or evidence not provided. Evidence needs to be provided. It can't be just a yes, no, like do you have this. Yes, we have to see where is it at and show us what it looks like.

So there has to be evidence, and that's in accordance to administrative rules. Evidence has to be provided that the review team can actually look at and see and check off. Not just say do you guys have this, and they say yes. And then okay. Without any information on it. The board, when it's not approved, recommended by the subject matter experts or review team, the board does ask that we go back and work with them on it.

And that's, we've had some in person meetings to work with them on it. And usually, sometimes it's all day we go back and forth because it's a clarification. It's hard to do program reviews on Zoom or on email because then you're waiting for someone. Here's a question, here's the answer. Well, here's a clarifying question.

So it's better to do it in person that we're finding. But we want to ensure that the evidence, the standards are being met and everyone's clear. It seems sometimes the educator preparation programs are not always clear on what's administrative rules and revised statutes. So that's where we come in to support the program review team and the institution who's submitting the application.

Thank you so much. That's very thorough. And actually you answered a slew of my questions. I'm going to move on to the next line of inquiry. During the presentation, you mentioned that actually right now you folks are approving mostly emergency hires. Why is that? Do you feel or do you think?

The teacher shortage. Again, just hearing the conversation of what's happening nationwide. The teacher shortage is not just a Hawaii specific shortage, it's a nationwide shortage. So the DOE, we understand, has to have people in the classroom. They just can't have robust course classes of 100 kids.

And that's the issue is they're trying to get folks into the classroom and they're emergency hires. We need to look at different pathways. And this is why, like I said before, and I hate to be a broken record, but apprenticeship, they're looking at that.

If there is a residency program, like Mitzie said, there are residency programs where another organization may take that on to look at emergency hires and help them along. Sometimes when you have emergency hires and they have no teaching background, they're only teaching experiences, their own educational career.

When you go into the classroom today, there's SEL, social emotional learning that happens. There may be behavior issues. And that's one of the biggest things even what prepared teachers have behavior management. Now the whole, you can hear the whole cell phone issue. And so there's a lot of things that happen.

And I know the DOE has mentoring programs. And so what we're going to have to look at as stakeholders, how do we support these emergency hires that have zero training besides their own degree and their own learning? How can we support them? Wraparound services to guide them to teaching. Are they insured or they have a mentor teacher on campus in the department? Is there someone there helping them out? Is there someone from the complex area coming to check in on them?

Does the board help out with the mentoring program withinthe department?

For us, we actually have a mentor cooperating work group that we just formed because of the national concerns that we're hearing. And so we have a lot of stakeholders to come together to look at that. And one of the biggest concerns for mentor cooperating teachers is how much they get paid to do something like that. I was a mentor cooperating teacher.

I think I got 200 bucks, and it actually went to the school, didn't even go to me to have a full time student teacher that's in the traditional route in my classroom. Now I did it because I love my profession and I want to help out and make sure that someone is growing and understands standards and all that.

But I know with apprenticeship programs, some of them are offering these cooperating journeymen teachers $4,000. So do I have to work a second job? Maybe I can just be a mentor teacher, a cooperating teacher and help facilitate these folks through their program. And I don't know if, Mitzie, if you want to add to that as well, because I know you were.

I was just going to add the same thing is that what the mentor teachers that we have now currently, our EPPs, they do what they can. But they can only, they only pay $200, $250 maybe. I heard one that might be a little higher. Maybe it was a thousand, I'm not sure. But it doesn't... It goes to the principal, then the principal decides if it goes to the teacher or if they put it in a pot to use for other things. And that's how it is.

One thing we're looking at too, national board certified teachers. They are at the top echelon of teaching. How can we bring them in to be mentors or cooperative teachers or support? How can we use the... And we had 34 today.

How can we use those 34 this year to help support emergency hires or teacher candidates grow to be the level teacher? What we don't want to do is put them with someone who may be at the end of their career who may be frustrated and tired.

We want to put them with those ones that are like teachers of the year, national board certified. So how can we bring and work together to bring those folks together to have the teacher candidates learn from them or the emergency hires get inspired by them, like this is, I can handle this.

And they're actually eager to be mentors as well.

What percentage of our current educators are emergency hires? Like a rough percentage.

My latest data report is, and I would have to look at how many teachers total we have, but there's 1035 emergency hires. One of the things that I don't know if the public's aware of, and I think it's happening nationwide is elementary education is the biggest. There's about 300 elementary education emergency hires right now. It surpassed SPED. SPED is at 218. That's a real issue. I would say that's a real crisis because, as an elementary teacher myself, this is where we teach kids how to read and write.

When bulk of your emergency hires are down in elementary K-5 that may be a crisis in 5 to 10 years of what happened at that time. So how can we... And the interesting thing is we have a lot of elementary education preparation programs. How do we get them into the programs is another thing. How do we get them in?

Can you explain a little bit of how those first years of learning compounds the rest of the years of learning, as you are ascending during upwards toward The grade levels?

As a teacher or as a student?

Subject matter competency base is built primary school, right. And then you just develop, you build upon those concepts to learn more.

And I'll have my national board teacher over there.

Well, I just know that as a high school english teacher, if my kids come to me without having basic reading skills, they're not going to be in my AP class. Right. And then it goes back down to the remedial english and trying to support their basic skills. As a grandma, little ones that are in elementary school right now, what a difference it has made for my kids who have had good teachers.

And you can physically see the difference in terms of them, one, just being happy at school, but in terms of their learning. And there is a difference. And right now, my grandson at Campbell High School has emergency hires for two of his cores.

And I have to say it concerns me because I know that they don't have necessarily proven themselves, right, as being content based. But if they have their foundation from elementary, hopefully they'll be able to get through the high school without having perhaps the best content specialist.

And can I add, Dr. Jennifer Padua, she actually used to supervise elementary educators that are going through a preparation program, so if I can...

Yeah, thank you. But I also was a Title 1 Reading Intervention Specialist. And so I'm going to talk to that point. For someone, you know, they know they should know their basic reading skills or language skills or even writing skills.

And so, you know, As a Title 1 intervention, when we start seeing that at the end of kindergarten, we're going in and helping them. And then at the end of first grade and they're still struggling, we'll what are the different ways that they have to do?

And I think so much focus has been on reading, which is great, but the other part is how do we get that oral language to print, right? So, you know, so much emphasis has been on reading, but how do we get that print language in? Because as adults, majority of our time is spent writing.

And so when they can't get that reading, writing connection, but also the language development in terms of vocabulary, right. In elementary we have science, social studies, math. So if we can't articulate the vocabulary of the discipline, that might be a little bit tricky. So just imagine like a first grader who's doing a social studies lesson and they can't even read something about history or something. They're just going to kind of struggle along the way.

One of the statistics was they should be able to learn 2,500 vocabulary words at the end of the first year in kindergarten, and for some students, they might not be able to. So going back to Executive Director's point, I used to teach the literacy methods over at the university.

And so one of the things in my methods courses was to show them all these different diagnostic assessments in reading, but also to writing. Because many people, and my son's one of them, he's a great oral language speaker. Right. And sometimes that's the interface that we have.

Just because they can articulate themselves well doesn't necessarily mean that they have the print literacy, the language functions, and the language demands of what to do. And so with my teacher candidates, we would learn reading diagnostics. When we work with one to one a student, what is this information, going back to your data.

How does it tell us what do we look at in writing, but how do we also look at that in oral language as well? And so those whole four different language domains in the particular disciplines that they're required working with students.

It's very important. And we're getting late in time. So I'm going to just fast forward to national board certified educators. What can we do as a state to encourage more teachers to go through that pathway? And it's very difficult. I'm thinking about only, not only the amount of bonus that we offer, but also if we can provide technical support or if that's not even accurate in terms of what we need. If I'm off base, if you could speak to that.

I think you're spot on with what it is. One, they need knowledge of what it is. And that's one of the things that I found that's been really helpful that we've been able to do with our educator preparation programs is we now tell all of the new teachers when they're finishing up their program.

Put National Board on your radar. You're not ready yet. You're just starting off. But put it on your radar because there are still teachers who don't know what national board certification is. I know without question I'm a better teacher because I went through the National Board process.

What I learned, what it pushed me to do, and even going through my maintenance, right. Reminding myself what is important. And those core propositions that guide National Board really should be at the forefront. I think of every teacher. I mean in my world, every teacher would strive to be a national board certified teacher.

That it would just become the norm. I think about doctors, and when I go to a doctor, and these people know I see a lot of doctors, I have a lot of really weird things that are wrong with me. But I find board certified doctors because I want a doctor that knows his stuff.

And that's the same thing that I see with our teachers. Why don't we, right, strive to be board certified. I don't know a doctor that says, oh, I don't want to be board certified. It's too much work. Right. We have to build that kind of... And I think we're getting closer to that.

But I think what we have to do is we have to build the teaching culture as a profession, and we have to help teachers to see we are professionals. And even though the public might not see it that way, we are professionals. And National Board is how we govern our own profession because it's devised by teachers for teachers. The National Board is not somebody telling teachers what to do, it's teachers saying what good teachers do.

And I'd like to add to that because when I was teaching on Kauai, one of the things that I think would have pushed me to National Board because it is, it's a difficult, rigorous process. I went the master's degree route. But if you have cohorts in schools. We do a lot of PLCs, planning, learning, all those data.

What if we put that data, and that's what National Board teachers do. They have to do data driven activities. So what if we as a school put money into paying for your testing, putting the modules, because we do this stuff anyways with weekly data mining and all the things we do for assessments.

Why can't we work together as a cohort? Because I know teachers like to move together sometimes. It's safer and it's a scary, I mean, you hear about national board, you're like, that's kind of scary. How can we work together in what we do daily? We always diagnose, we always assess, we always...

And how can we make that a part of the job as a school? If I was a principal, I would say, okay, who wants to join in? Now you don't have to participate in a sense where we're, you don't have to go towards National Board, but we're going to do the same practices.

So maybe one day you'll feel comfortable enough to do it. Those who are comfortable, we're still going to do the same practice. You can go take those modules. So that would be one way to support teachers and to pay for it. Because I know there's a cost. I don't want to leave out charter school teachers. I know sometimes they get payment a little bit different. Maybe Tracey can add to that. I want to make sure it's not only DOE teachers. Charter school teachers are also involved in this process.

And I know for the charter schools it has been an ongoing challenge for the national board certified teachers. They get certified by state law, right? They're supposed to receive their $5,000 incentive. The DOE has like a line item that I believe comes in for that. The charter schools don't. So it comes out of the charter school budget.

So the charter school admin don't want to pay some. Or they... And maybe don't want is not the correct word. Maybe it's just, it's too much of a challenge because their budgets are small. And so. But it does have to come out of their programs.

And so I know one of our national board certified teachers who was at a charter school, her principal said, well, if I give you this, I have to shut down whatever program it was. And she didn't want the program to get shut down. So she actually ended up leaving the charter school and going back into the DOE. But that shouldn't be happening. And that's an unfortunate thing in terms of, I guess, how funding and things go with the charter schools.

And I should reference that the DOE does sometimes pay for that charter schools, but not, but not always. And that is a difference in the funding strength structure, looking at the camera, between DOE schools and charter schools. Okay, so there is actually a difference in funding structures.

There is. And the DOE reimburses the DOE teachers. The charter schools, I don't believe, get reimbursed for their process.

Digress. But any other questions, Members?

Just closing. If I may, Chair, just closing comment. I think, just closing comment. I think I understand your position and your function, and I know what you're trying to say that and what you're pushing for, which is, you know, strict quality, strict licensure because you believe it protects our kids, it protects the quality of their education. In practice, though, right?

Theory and also in practice, we know that there continues to be a huge workforce shortage crisis. The DOE has come to us and said, like create the J-1 pathway program or look at the emergency hires and extend it even. Because there's just no, you know, it's a big problem. Right. We're trying to solve.

And we have teachers, like you said, 1000 emergency hires, plus I don't know how many J-1s. They're already in that pipeline. And we don't have the current active apprenticeships either. And so what I would hate is to lose people who are staying and who are wanting to be in that profession and are making a big difference.

I mean, I've been to the classrooms, and if they're teaching english learners or they want to stay in that profession. And I hate for an administrative barrier which is meant to help them become a barrier, an unintentional barrier for them to entry. And so please have those conversations with these employers because they're the ones that you know are struggling to fill that. Kaiapuni education is another one where they're probably all emergency hires.

And so I think, I think that's just like something that I would want us to get to that is because if every year we just come back to like we're not, you know, coming to some type of like agreement then we will reach that point where we just have no longer have anyone even in like the pipeline. And so I think that's where I stand.

And it's, you know, very multifaceted. It's extremely complicated. But we want to get to the place to where we're making sure that we have quality infused into the system. We know that jurisdictions have figured it out. It is hard to get there, but we have to continue to push forward. With that, we thank you for all you folks do. You are an asset to this state. And with that, we are adjourned.