An incident where schoolchildren were hit with pepper spray at an Oʻahu school has added momentum to calls for counselors, not cops, on campus. 

In late February, a Honolulu police officer deployed pepper spray against Kapolei Middle School students while trying to break up a fight, a rare use of force against Hawaiʻi minors in an educational setting. 

Emily Hills, senior attorney with the ACLU of Hawaiʻi, said she would like to see more counselors and mental health professionals addressing issues on campus rather than police, who can sometimes escalate tensions.

“We are talking about kids in school and concerns about criminalizing behavior that really should be better dealt with through school officials or authorities,” she said. “Aside from whether or not this is constitutionally excessive force, was this really necessary?” 

A police officer told attendees at a neighborhood board meeting that the officer used the pepper spray because he was outnumbered. 

School safety is an ever-present concern and high-profile fights in recent years led parents and politicians to  in some OÊ»ahu schools. School resource officers were  in KaimukÄ«, Kapolei and WaiÊ»anae in January. 

There was no SRO present during the February middle school incident but some advocates, say is was nonetheless a sign there should be less police presence in schools, not more. They want to instead see a focus on getting more counselors and therapists in schools to help address student mental health and behavioral issues to prevent problems such as fights and bullying. 

“It’s shocking to think of pepper spray being used with children that age,” said Deborah Bond-Upson, president of the organization Parents for Public Schools. “I just think we need to do everything we can to make the atmosphere in our schools more peaceful and positive.” 

Bond-Upson was pushing this session for passage of , which would be a first step toward requiring licensure for school psychologists in HawaiÊ»i. HawaiÊ»i is the  that doesn’t require its school psychologists to be licensed by the state board of psychology. 

The Education Committee deferred the bill last week, which generally kills a bill’s chances of making it through session. Committee Chair Donna Kim did not respond to a request for comment on why.

The Department of Education is also asking the Legislature for , who are school psychologists assigned to work with students with the highest levels of mental health needs. 

The interventionists would focus on assessing a student’s risk of self-harm or harming their peers and also help with transitions if the student is referred to an educational placement outside of a traditional classroom setting. 

Bond-Upson said she wishes more mental health support could help prevent fights and serious bullying from happening in the first place. She fears the use of pepper spray in response to the fight at Kapolei Middle School will lead to more negative consequences for students. 

“I’m afraid it alienates them from the police. I’m afraid it makes them less comfortable being in school,” she said. “So I would just want to see that we do everything we can to avoid that kind of situation, and one of the biggest things we need to do is to really fund psychological support in our schools.”

Three Students Arrested 

The fight at Kapolei Middle School broke out around 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 24. A group of girls had attacked another girl, Honolulu police Cpl. Roland Pagan shared at a public meeting. 

A responding officer, who would be the only officer on scene, grabbed one of the girls who was assaulting the victim and attempted to arrest her. A group of girls then grabbed the officer and other kids grabbed ahold of the girl he was trying to arrest, Pagan said. At that point, the officer used pepper spray. 

The incident occurred after school near the back entrance of campus, according to a statement from Department of Education spokeswoman Nanea Ching. School officials didn’t know how many students were involved, but she said no serious injuries were reported and those who were affected by the pepper spray were near the officer. 

One girl was arrested on a charge of third-degree assault, and two others were arrested for resisting arrest. Police declined to provide the ages of the girls and said they would not release further information.

Christine Denton, spokeswoman for the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office, said the office is prohibited from discussing juvenile cases. Criminal justice records involving minors in HawaiÊ»i are shielded by law from public view. 

In a letter sent home to parents, Kapolei Middle School Principal Daryl Agena said the pepper spray was deployed to “disperse the crowd and restore order.” 

Leslie Keating, the parent of an eighth grader at Kapolei Middle School, brought up her concerns about the incident at a Makakilo-Kapolei-Honokai Hale Neighborhood Board meeting in February. She said her son was not present during the fight, but she was worried about the use of pepper spray on young students. Kapolei Middle School includes grades 6-8, and students could be anywhere from 11 to 14 years old. 

“These are chemical weapons that have chemicals that we don’t know the long-term effects of,” she said. “I’m not okay with it.”  

Pagan said he is unaware of any long-term effects of pepper spray. 

“Pepper spray is one of our lowest-level uses of force,” Pagan told the neighborhood board, “and he used it because he was outnumbered.” 

‘Extreme Force’

Keating told Civil Beat she doesn’t agree with the use of pepper spray on students or adults, but she is especially concerned about its use at a middle school where some children may have asthma or other breathing issues that make them particularly sensitive. 

“I mean, some of these kids weigh 80 pounds, they don’t have adult bodies yet,” she said in an interview. “So using pepper spray on them, I don’t know, it very much irked me.” 

Jannet Lee-Jayaram, an emergency pediatrician and clinical associate professor with the University of Hawaiʻi’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, said pepper spray isn’t known to have long-term effects, but it can cause injuries to the lungs and eyes, including corneal abrasions from people rubbing their eyes too hard after exposure.

In the short term, pepper spray can cause intense pain in the eyes, irritation in the nose and lungs and burning of the skin. 

The use of chemical agents, like pepper spray, sits in the middle of the spectrum in . The policy ranges from techniques with the lowest risk of injury to those with the highest risk of serious injury or death. 

The first three options are officer presence, verbal directions and physical contact. Chemical agents, including pepper spray, are listed as the fourth option. The options escalate from there, including using physical strikes, canines or even firearms. 

The policy states that the use of chemical agents on a crowd should be directed by an incident commander on scene unless an officer believes someone is in immediate danger of serious injury or death. 

Wookie Kim, legal director of the ACLU of HawaiÊ»i, said it’s difficult to determine whether the officer’s use of pepper spray in this scenario was justified without knowing more of the details. But, he noted of chemical agents should be reserved for the most threatening scenarios. 

In an instance like this one, which involved young people at school, other deescalation methods should have been considered first. 

“We should be very concerned about the use of such extreme force with middle schoolers,” he said. 

‘Counselors Not Cops’ 

Pepper spray has been used at schools before in HawaiÊ»i — and around the country. 

In 2023, Honolulu police officers  to break up a fight at Kapolei High School. Paramedics treated multiple students for exposure but no serious injuries were reported, according to an HNN article from the time. 

In other parts of the country, however, children have been hospitalized from pepper spray exposure at school. 

In February, a 12-year-old in Tulsa, Oklahoma, went to the hospital after  students participating in an ICE protest outside their school. In September, 32 students and faculty members at a Florida high school were hospitalized after school police and administrators  to break up a large fight. 

The incident at Kapolei Middle School brings up the question of whether police officers should be the ones addressing student behavioral problems on campus, Kim, of the ACLU, said.  

“Our whole position is that we shouldn’t have substantial police presence on school campuses,”  he said. “We want counselors, not cops.” 

The focus, many advocates and parents say, should shift to getting more mental health support for students. 

During the last Education Committee, committee members and testifiers discussed HB1889 and debated whether creating a license structure would help or hinder the Department of Education’s ability to recruit more psychologists and fill its vacancies. 

Currently, a psychologist  to work as a school psychologist in HawaiÊ»i. 

While advocates say creating a license structure would create training and ethical standards for the position, Sen. Donna Kim questioned whether adding the requirement would create more bureaucratic hoops for school psychologists to jump through.  

But Bond-Upson, of the Parents for Public Schools group, said requiring licences would allow eligible services in schools to be reimbursed by Medicaid. 

Overall, she said she hopes the pepper spray incident can lead to change in how behavioral issues are handled at schools. 

“I am heartbroken that the police had to enter the situation,” she said. “And that’s why my first responses are, ‘What is it we can do to make the atmosphere of the school such that this kind of alarming behavior does not happen to kids and with kids?’”

Parents, lawmakers and county leaders across HawaiÊ»i have made a recurring request to the education department in recent years: open up school playgrounds and fields for the public when classes aren’t in session.

The ask seemed to be gaining traction at the start of this year, with lawmakers introducing multiple proposals to require the Department of Education to make recreational facilities available to communities. Halfway through the session, however, the Legislature is moving in the opposite direction with a bill to crack down on school trespassing that may also criminalize parents.

Under Senate Bill 2611, families who set foot on school grounds on weekends or holidays could face  without even receiving a warning from police or school administrators. Consequences could include up to a year in jail and $2,000 in fines. The bill passed through the Senate and is now awaiting a hearing in the House. 

Not all after-hours visitors intend to vandalize school campuses, said parent Maya Childress. School playgrounds can be a weekend gathering place for families, especially in communities without city parks in walking distance.

“People are just trying to get their kids out of the house and into a safe and controlled environment,” Childress said. “It’s just making it more difficult.” 

Some school districts on the mainland have gone the other way, opening up their campuses for more public use. For example, in the San Diego Unified School District, people can use many school fields and playgrounds on the weekends as well as in the afternoons. In exchange, the city helps upkeep the campuses.

But two bills to expand the public’s weekend access to HawaiÊ»i schools died in the House and Senate Education Committees last month. Rep. Trish La Chica, who authored one of them, said she’s determined to find a compromise that allows families to use campus facilities for recreation, while still addressing schools’ concerns about liability and safety. 

“The perception is that there’s nothing we can do to promote recreation and physical activity,” La Chica said. “I feel like we should be willing to work through the logistics of that to grant more access to our community.” 

Changing Families’ Behavior? 

In recent legislative hearings, principals have raised concerns about worsening vandalism, homelessness and unsanitary conditions on their campuses. Property damage and trash left on campuses put an additional burden on teachers and custodians, and principals say schools need to hold trespassers accountable for damaging school spaces on the weekends.  

“Every Monday morning, my staff is forced to deal with a staggering array of vandalism and biohazards before students can safely step onto campus,” Kaimukī High School Principal Lorelei Aiwohi said in written testimony to the Legislature.

Under the current law, individuals can be charged for trespassing on campuses on the weekends or holidays, but they need to have first received a warning from administrators or law enforcement. No warning is required to charge people trespassing on school campuses at night, between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

DOE doesn’t track the number of calls to the police regarding trespassing after school hours, Communications Director Nanea Ching said.  

If passed, Superintendent Keith Hayashi said in his written testimony, Senate Bill 2611 could protect against harassment and violence against school employees — a growing problem that gained  after a parent assaulted a high school athletic director last year.

Eliminating the warning requirement for trespassers could help schools more effectively address aggressive or unsafe behavior on campus, said KāneÊ»ohe Elementary Principal Derek Minakami. 

While schools may have cameras and alarm systems installed on campus, Minakami said they don’t always have the 24/7 security needed to catch intruders and call the police. In some cases, he noted, things don’t have to go that far because written warnings to families and community members about trespassing on campus have been enough to deter unwanted behavior. 

At Holomua Elementary in Ê»Ewa Beach, Principal Christopher Bonilla said he’s hopeful that changing the state trespassing law will discourage the public from entering school campuses on the weekends. If the bill passes, he said, schools and lawmakers would need to clearly communicate the change to their communities to impact people’s behavior.  

“If the public is more aware of this, they’ll think twice,” he said.

But Childress said she’s skeptical that changing the trespassing law will deter families from visiting school playgrounds on the weekends, especially in communities with limited alternatives. Families are drawn to local elementary schools that can offer safe spaces for their kids to play and socialize, she said, and are willing to chance a rare encounter with the police. 

“People are going to still go. They’re going to chance it,” Childress said, adding that she has actually never been approached by police or school administrators when taking her three children to play at ʻAikahi Elementary’s playground on the weekends.

Limited Outdoor Options

Some lawmakers and county leaders have argued that the solution to improving campus safety and community well-being is more public access to schools, not less.

 proposed a four-year pilot program that would have required schools to make their outdoor facilities available for public use on the weekends without fees or permitting applications. It required schools to post signs notifying visitors that the DOE is not responsible for injuries that occur on the weekends.

While DOE already  for vetting public requests to use their campuses, the approval process can be inconsistent across schools, the bill said,  on the issue. Community members also need to have insurance and pay hourly fees covering the costs of utilities, custodial staff and facility rentals.

“The current system for granting access is highly principal-driven, discretionary, and inconsistent across campuses,” the bill said. The measure died in the House Education Committee. 

 can range from $2 for an unlit parking lot to more than $230 for a large, air-conditioned auditorium. Renting a school playfield costs $5 an hour, according to the DOE. 

Opening up campuses to the public for free would remove the bureaucracy communities currently face when trying to access schools, La Chica said, adding that city parks are often overcrowded with sports leagues’ practices and games. 

But Minakami said the application process for facilities ensures that outside activities aren’t overlapping with school events while helping schools hold people accountable if they damage facilities or bring tobacco or alcohol on campus. 

DOE leaders raised similar concerns in their testimony against that bill, arguing that allowing public use of playgrounds and fields could lead to costly repairs. Schools have faced significant damage to their campuses, including vandalism at Ê»Aikahi Elementary’s playground in 2021 and a fire intentionally set at  in 2023. 

“That’s like managing a park,” said Deputy Superintendent Jesse Souki in a recent legislative hearing about the bill. “That’s a huge amount of energy and resources.” 

La Chica said opening campuses to the public could in fact encourage community members to take better care of campuses. 

“There’s always going to be risk attached to it, but if we open spaces for families, for youth, for neighbors to use responsibly, I feel like we see the opposite of vandalism,” she said. “When the community feels that a space belongs to them, they take care of it.”

More than 20 years ago, state leaders advocated for a similar change — and found a solution at Farrington High School. 

A pilot program in 2005 allowed the City and County of Honolulu to run free exercise programs on Farrington High School’s campus several times a week, inviting students and community members to take free classes such as volleyball, hula and aerobics. 

Under the agreement between the city and DOE, the Kalihi campus was open for community activities after school as well as Saturday mornings. The city provided staff to run the classes, while the school offered the recreational space at no charge. During the pilot, the school did not report any cases of vandalism, Department of Health Administrator Lola Irvin said in a recent legislative hearing. 

Researchers at the University of HawaiÊ»i labeled the , with more than 80% of participants reporting they found a safe space to exercise during the pilot and increased their physical activity. But the initiative was short-lived after funding for the city’s exercise classes ran out. 

The Honolulu parks department and DOE have not entered any similar partnerships since the Farrington pilot, although city leaders have pushed for more cooperation between the agencies in recent years. Earlier this year, lawmakers  on behalf of the HawaiÊ»i State Association of Counties asking DOE to open its outdoor campus facilities to the public when classes aren’t in session.

Those resolutions have not yet been scheduled for hearings in the House or Senate.

Childress, a mom of three, remains skeptical that state and county agencies will be able to come to an agreement in the near future.  

“If they could get some kind of agreement on paper and expand access to playgrounds on weekends or off school hours, that would be amazing,” she said. “Then we wouldn’t have to jump a fence.” 

From where the leaders of the Senate Education Committee sit, one thing seems clear: The Hawai‘i public school system is broken. 

“Talk to the people that are on the ground,” Sen. Samantha DeCorte told heads of the Board of Education and education department during a heated January briefing. “According to my community, you guys are failing.”

Lawmakers have become increasingly critical of the DOE since Sen. Donna Kim took charge of the education committee this session. At the January hearing, lawmakers berated the school leaders for millions in school construction funding that remained unspent. In recent months, senators have grilled the department on poor student literacy rates and failure to properly report millions in travel expenses.  

The rising animosity between lawmakers and school leaders has drawn criticism from union leaders and taken some political observers by surprise. But lawmakers’ belief that schools aren’t meeting students’ needs seems to be striking a chord with their communities. An  by DeCorte asking “Is DOE failing?” sparked thousands of comments and gained more than 20,000 likes from frustrated teachers, parents and the general public. 

Now, lawmakers are proposing a dramatic — but unlikely — reform of the education department.  aims to reshape the DOE by overhauling its current leadership structure and giving more power to school-level committees responsible for soliciting feedback from families and community members.

The bill drew opposition from roughly 200 principals, education department administrators and union leaders earlier this month, who argued that cutting top superintendent positions would reduce support for schools and destabilize the department. Debate on the bill was punctuated by yells and boos outside the hearing room, which Kim later blamed on principals and described as .   

The head of the HawaiÊ»i Government Employees Association — the union representing 1,200 school workers, including principals — has called the bill a political ploy allowing lawmakers to settle grudges with principals in their districts and push out school leaders with whom they disagree. 

Kim, meanwhile, acknowledges the bill may not pass in its current form. But she says the proposal comes from high community demand for educational reform and frustrations with DOE’s leadership system, which has  even as student enrollment shrinks. 

State leaders have debated the merits of a statewide school district for generations and have repeatedly argued department leadership is too centralized. But it’s been more than two decades since the last major shakeup to the state system, and some families and community members say change is long overdue.

“There’s real problems going on,” Kim said. “Until we face it straight on, we’re not going to be able to deal with it.” 

Looking Back

More than 20 years ago, lawmakers and school leaders were grappling with the same questions of how to reform public schools amid arguments that DOE leadership was too OÊ»ahu-centric and failing to serve its students and families. 

In her 2003 state of the state address, former Gov. Linda Lingle argued that the education department was losing families to private schools and called for the statewide school system to be replaced by multiple districts and school boards that would give communities more power at their local campuses. 

“The public knows and we should not be afraid to say it,” Lingle said, “Hawaii’s public school system is broken.”

While the state never went as far as creating multiple school districts, lawmakers passed a comprehensive bill the following year that promised to reform public education. Act 51 changed school funding models, gave principals more training and authority over their budgets and created community councils that gave families and staff a direct say in how local campuses were run. 

It took more than a year to write and finalize the bill, since lawmakers wanted the input and support of school staff, families and unions, said Roy Takumi, who  as former chair of the House Education Committee. While the bill gave schools more control over their budgets, lawmakers wanted to make sure principals and community members had enough support to successfully take on these new responsibilities, said Takumi, who currently serves as chair of the Board of Education.  

Kim said her bill is strengthening some of the reforms introduced by Act 51 by giving more power to schools and making top administrators accountable to their communities.

The bill would eliminate the department’s complex area superintendents, who are in charge of overseeing schools and principals in 15 regions, and replace these positions with district-level leaders. The proposal would strengthen accountability for school leaders, Kim said, since district superintendents could report directly to Superintendent Keith Hayashi.  

The bill would also give more power to school community councils, which are supposed to give teachers, parents and community members a direct say in their schools’ operations. While the councils currently provide some input in the evaluation and hiring of principals, the bill would make their feedback account for half of the principal selection process.

“This is not just overnight,” Kim said, adding that teachers and parents have repeatedly called her with concerns about their local schools and frustrations with top leadership. “Those are the things that I’m trying to be responsive of.” 

Possible Disruptions

But opponents of the bill say there are key differences between Kim’s bill and Act 51. The principals’ union and DOE administrators said they were not meaningfully consulted before Kim introduced the bill, and it’s unclear if the proposal will achieve its goal of empowering schools with a lack of buy-in from principals. 

At Mauka Lani Elementary School in Makakilo, Principal Neil Battad said complex area superintendents serve as principals’ first point of contact during emergencies and manage issues that affect multiple schools, such as redistricting plans and enrollment projections affected by new housing developments.

Cutting these superintendent positions may require principals to take on more responsibilities than usual, he said, reducing their capacity to support their schools. 

The current version of the bill proposes replacing the 15 complex area superintendents with district and deputy district superintendents. While the bill doesn’t specify how many districts would replace the current complex area structure, in the early 2000s, DOE had seven districts managed by 14 superintendents.

If the bill returned the department to its original leadership structure, there would be few changes in the total number of top officials, but each superintendent would be in charge of more schools, Hayashi said. For example, the Leeward District superintendent could be in charge of more than 40 schools stretching from Kapolei to Waipahu to WaiÊ»anae, he said, even though these campuses have unique needs and serve distinct communities.  

The current leadership structure and reforms established under Act 51 has worked for HawaiÊ»i schools, Hayashi said, pointing to the state’s improved ranking on national math and reading assessments over the past 20 years. While there is always room for improvement, he said, major leadership disruptions could impede schools’ progress. 

“There have been gains over time, and I fully expect those gains will continue under the system that we have,” Hayashi said. 

Following the strong opposition earlier this month, Kim said she’s open to revising the bill to place a cap on the total number of school superintendents, rather than eliminating the 15 complex area leaders completely. While she’s still not sure what the cap should be, Kim said, she doesn’t want the education department’s leadership ranks to continue to grow without explanation.

Last spring, the department created a  position to oversee school meals, transportation and campus security. In 2022, the department added  to its leadership ranks, despite strong public pushback and concerns about the lack of transparency in the hiring process. 

The bill is scheduled for decision making in the Senate Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday. Already, the bill received more than  of testimony in advance of the hearing, with many principals writing in to oppose the measure.  

Support For Change

In Kalihi, community member and grandparent Lynette Kumalae said she feels a growing sense of frustration from her children and neighbors who send their kids to public schools across the state. Families don’t feel supported or seen by school administrators, she said, when long-standing problems like bullying in schools go unaddressed.

The bill’s proposal to give school community councils a greater say in the hiring of principals is a good start, she said. Currently, councils may have limited input on campuses’ academic or financial plans, and requiring them to play a larger role in the principal selection process ensures that schools are hiring leaders who will have strong relationships with families, said Kumalae, who serves on KaÊ»ewai Elementary School’s council. 

But some educational advocates say shifting more responsibility to school community councils isn’t the answer, although they support greater investments in community outreach and family support. 

Often, families are not aware of school community councils or how to participate, said Deborah Bond-Upson, president of Parents for Public Schools HawaiÊ»i. Some schools have no webpages with current council information, she said, while others haven’t posted their meeting minutes for years. 

Families have legitimate frustrations with the school system and the challenges of communicating with administrators and teachers, Bond-Upson said. But a bill to rework the education department’s top leadership structure isn’t addressing key needs in areas like mental health or support for students with disabilities, she said. 

“It just seems like a real misuse of energy and funds,” she said. 

The principals’ union has also opposed the bill’s proposal to give school community councils a greater say in the hiring process, arguing the change would need to go through negotiations with the union. 

With strong opposition mounting against the bill, it seems unlikely the proposal will pass, said Colin Moore, a political scientist at the University of HawaiÊ»i Mānoa. But it could be a politically popular move for Kim to push for more community involvement in schools, he said, noting that the senator is up for re-election later this year. 

Even still, he said, it was unusual for Kim to rebuke principals on the Senate floor last week after they booed and cheered during the bill’s hearing. Principals are well-known community figures, he said, and publicly criticizing them sparked the ire of their union.

“What anyone is trying to accomplish with this is a little uncertain,” Moore said. 

Often, bills don’t pass on their first try, Kim said, but she hopes her proposal will spark more discussions and reflection from the DOE moving forward.

“This is sort of to light a fire under them, to get them to recognize there are issues, there are concerns,” she said. 

Parent Jessica Wright said she believes the department needs major reform to better support teachers and students. Before she pulled her son out of DOE schools in 2021, she said, she saw little outreach to families or opportunities to participate on the school community council. 

But the bill doesn’t seem to address parents’ main concerns with the public education system, said Wright, who currently homeschools her son. Rather than restructuring top leadership positions in the department, Wright said, she would like to see more investments in mental health resources in schools or staff positions that specialize in community outreach and support for families. 

“I feel like it’s just like anything that we do, we just put a band-aid on it,” Wright said. “We don’t get to the root of the problem.” 

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Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

Anton Avanozian loves teaching at Baldwin High School on Maui, taking pride in his efforts to grow the science department and support activities like the student science fair. But despite his satisfactory job evaluations and the state’s teacher shortage, he’s worried about losing his position after next year. 

Avanozian has an emergency hire permit, which allows people with a bachelor’s degree but no teacher’s license to work in classrooms for up to three years while they take the courses and tests needed to earn a credential. While he expects to complete his program before the deadline next summer, it’s still challenging to balance a full-time job and a few hours of coursework every day, he said. 

“I’m applying a lot of pressure on myself to get it done,” Avanozian said. “I’m really pushing towards it, but I do have that worry in the back of my mind, what if it doesn’t work out?”

HawaiÊ»i public schools are undergoing a dramatic transformation in who’s filling classroom positions and teaching students. This year, the Department of Education employed roughly 1,000 emergency hires — around 8% of the overall teacher workforce and more than double the number from four years ago. In some parts of the state, emergency hires make up more than 15% of the teaching staff. 

As reliance on emergency hires has grown, so too has concern over losing workers who can’t earn a license in three years.

A  that would allow emergency hires to work in schools for five years is now sparking debate around the role unlicensed teachers should play in HawaiÊ»i classrooms. Emergency hires are becoming too entrenched in the school system, some lawmakers and the teacher licensing board argue, reducing the quality of education and disadvantaging students in rural and neighbor island schools, which have a greater reliance on unlicensed teachers.  

The education department’s stance is that giving emergency hires more time to earn their licenses is a better option than losing educators after a few years and relying on long-term substitutes, though the department has failed to provide lawmakers with any data on how many teachers need this assistance. Unlike emergency hires, substitute teachers aren’t required to have a college degree or work toward licensure. 

The proposal also moves HawaiÊ»i in the opposite direction of states like Texas that are trying to phase out emergency hires and put more constraints on what subjects unlicensed educators can teach in schools.   

“My concern is that we’re accepting them as an integral part of the workforce for teachers,” said Rep. Andrew Garrett, who introduced  at DOE’s request. “I just want to make sure that we don’t get too reliant on this.” 

How Long Is Too Long?

Extending emergency hire permits from three to five years could impact hundreds of teachers who are working toward their licenses and may need to leave public schools in the near future if they aren’t successful, DOE Deputy Superintendent Tammi Oyadomari-Chun said in the hearing last week. Roughly 150 to 200 teachers are currently in their third year as emergency hires, she said, meaning they need to earn their license by the end of this school year in order to remain with the DOE. 

When lawmakers pushed school officials for more details, the department was unable to provide data on how many emergency hires receive their licenses in three years or how long employees would ideally need to finish a licensing program. The teacher standards board also doesn’t have easily accessible data on how many licenses are awarded to emergency hires in their third year, since licenses are granted on a case-by-case basis, board chair Kristi Miyamae said. 

“Moving beyond the three years is important,” Oyadomari-Chun said. “But whether it’s five or 10 is the magic number, there’s no data to back up that choice.”

Studies from other states that loosened their teaching requirements during the pandemic show that emergency hires tend to be less effective than licensed educators. In Texas, students who were taught high school math by an unlicensed educator received the equivalent of nearly five months of instruction compared to a full nine months from a licensed teacher, according to a  from the University of Texas at Austin. 

Emergency hires tend to face the greatest challenges in their early years in the classroom and experience greater turnover than licensed teachers, said Michael Marder, who authored the UT Austin report. In turn, he said, schools relying on emergency hires may struggle even more with teacher retention if they’re forced to hire long-term subs and more unlicensed teachers to fill positions. 

Some lawmakers are concerned that schools in rural or low-income communities are more likely to rely on emergency hires, exacerbating educational inequalities. In the 2023-24 academic year, LānaÊ»i employed the greatest number of unlicensed teachers, followed by the KĆ«lanihākoÊ»i and WaiÊ»anae complexes. 

But giving emergency hires more time to earn their licenses is a better alternative than losing teachers after their third year in schools, Chun said. To ensure the quality of emergency hires, she said, the department regularly checks that teachers are making progress toward their licenses and pairs them with more experienced teachers to receive mentorship. 

While teacher preparation programs typically last from 18 months to two years, it’s not a guarantee that emergency hires will complete their coursework in that time frame, said Diane Gibson, an instruction and professional development specialist with the HawaiÊ»i State Teachers Association. Not all licensing programs are designed to accommodate teachers with full-time jobs, she said, and emergency hires also have families and other responsibilities taking up their time outside of the school day. 

The state standards board has paused work on vetting and approving additional mainland programs that offer teacher licenses to ensure the quality of the 14 programs currently authorized — most of which are offered through HawaiÊ»i universities. But some outside programs currently excluded from HawaiÊ»i’s approved licensing pathways offer more online or affordable options that could fit the needs of emergency hires, Gibson said.  

At Ke’elikƍlani Middle School in Honolulu, teacher Nathan Sellner said he saw an improvement in his students’ learning last fall when he took over a science position that was previously filled by substitutes. Last year, nearly a third of eighth graders at the school scored proficient in science, up from 21% the previous two years. 

“I think it really is important that students have a qualified teacher as soon as possible,” said Sellner, who started as an emergency hire and earned his teacher license halfway through last year.  

Sourcing Internationally 

At LānaÊ»i High and Elementary School, emergency hires make up nearly a third of teaching staff, Principal Douglas Boyer said. Many of the school’s emergency hires are international teachers who have classroom experience and licenses — just not a HawaiÊ»i-specific license.

DOE has increasingly relied on international teachers to fill positions in such hard-to-staff, rural schools. This year, the department employed more than 300 international teachers, who work as emergency hires until they can receive a HawaiÊ»i license. 

The influx of international teachers has allowed Lānaʻi High and Elementary to offer more classes such as choir and physical education, Boyer said, and has prevented the school from relying on vice principals or long-term substitutes to fill vacant positions.

“It’s really allowed us to create that consistency for our students and to give our students a lot of offerings,” Boyer said. 

Most international teachers are brought here on a visa that is valid for up to five years, though they can’t stay for the full term if they don’t earn a local teaching license in the first three years. 

It can be costly for teachers to pass their licensing exams, said Sen. Troy Hashimoto, and not all international hires want to invest the time and money into these tests if they’re not able to work long-term in schools. 

Hashimoto has  that would require the teacher standards board to develop a teaching permit to allow international hires to work in HawaiÊ»i schools for the full five years of their visa. While the standards board could determine the specific requirements for the permit, Hashimoto said he would like to see alternative ways to evaluate international teachers’ qualifications to work in schools, rather than relying on costly licensing programs and exams. 

Even still, he said, an extended permit — for international teachers or local emergency hires — isn’t a permanent solution for the state’s teacher shortage. Moving forward, he said, he would like to see the standards board and HawaiÊ»i universities find more ways to attract local candidates and retain teachers in public schools. 

“It’s trying to help us to bridge the gap,” Hashimoto said. “I think we cannot believe that this is a permanent fix.” 

This was originally published on .

Hawaiʻi is expected to see the greatest decline in high school graduates in the nation over the next several years, raising concerns from lawmakers and Department of Education officials about the future of small schools in shrinking communities.

Between 2023 and 2041, HawaiÊ»i could see a 33% drop in the number of students graduating from high school, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. The nation as a whole is projected to see a 10% drop in graduates, according to the commission’s , published at the end of 2024.

In 2041, public schools in the state are expected to award diplomas to just over 7,600 students, down from roughly 11,500 in 2023. Private schools are expected to see a similar drop in their graduating senior classes over the same time frame.

Already, the education department has seen its enrollment drop by nearly 12% over the past decade, with school leaders citing the state’s declining birth rate and the number of families leaving Hawaiʻi in recent years.

Last year, the department discussed the possibility of , with some lawmakers and school leaders arguing that it was financially unsustainable to keep small campuses open. But the department changed course last fall, proposing a  to avoid closures.

Closing schools is a controversial and slow process. The department hasn’t closed a school since 2011, when it received strong pushback from families and community members around its decision to shutter Queen Liliʻuokalani Elementary School in Kaimukī.

Now, some lawmakers want to force the department to take swifter action.  introduced last week by Sen. Troy Hashimoto would establish an independent commission to review school facilities and recommend the consolidation, closure or realignment of schools.

“Decades of enrollment growth led to the construction of new campuses, but the recent and continuing decline in student numbers has left many facilities underutilized,” the bill states, adding that Hawaiʻi is facing more financial constraints amid possible federal cuts.

The bill requires the commission to submit its findings to the Legislature and the governor by fall 2027. If lawmakers and the governor approve the findings, DOE would be required to implement the commission’s recommendations following the 2028 legislative session.

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy, and “Data Dive” is supported in part by the Will J. Reid Foundation.

At a time when local schools are facing shrinking enrollment and talks of closure, Hawaiian immersion programs are bucking the trend. 

Enrollment in schools that teach primarily in Ê»Ćlelo HawaiÊ»i — collectively known as Kaiapuni schools — has increased by 68% over the past decade, with the number of campuses run by the state education department growing from 14 to 26. But students tend to have fewer immersion options in middle and high school, and the pool of qualified teachers isn’t keeping up with families’ growing demand.

Recruiting qualified teachers is one of the largest barriers to expanding Kaiapuni programs, Office of Hawaiian Education Director Kau‘i Sang said in a recent education board meeting. The Department of Education needs to find a balance between adding more classrooms to meet families’ needs and hiring enough teachers to support existing Kaiapuni schools, she said. 

DOE plans on opening two new Kaiapuni programs at Haleʻiwa Elementary on Oʻahu and Kalanianaʻole Elementary on the Big Island.

“We cannot open classrooms unless we have qualified staff,” Sang said. 

Currently, DOE has three unfilled Kaiapuni teacher positions, Communications Director Nanea Ching said in an emailed statement. The department also employs 25 unlicensed Kaiapuni educators who still need to fulfill their teacher training requirements, she said. 

But the number of additional teachers needed to fully staff Kaiapuni schools could be closer to 100, said Kananinohea MākaÊ»imoku, an associate professor at the University of HawaiÊ»i Hilo’s College of Hawaiian Language. Some Kaiapuni teachers are taking on larger-than-average class sizes because of staffing shortages, she said, meaning the annual vacancy rates underestimate the number of educators schools need. 

DOE will need 165 more Kaiapuni teachers in the next decade to fully staff its classrooms and meet families’ growing demand, according to ʻAha Kauleo, an advisory group of Hawaiian language schools and organizations. The projection doesn’t account for a large group of teachers who are expected to retire in the coming years, Mākaʻimoku said.

Last year, UH Mānoa and Hilo produced a total of 12 licensed Kaiapuni teachers.

It’s difficult to find candidates who are both fluent in Hawaiian and interested in teaching, MākaÊ»imoku said, especially because Hawaiian language speakers are in high demand in many careers. But a lack of teachers doesn’t mean schools should stop expanding Kaiapuni programs, she said, especially when the movement has so much family support and momentum. 

‘No Option But To Leave Their Home District’

The HawaiÊ»i Supreme Court has  that the education department has a constitutional duty to provide families with access to Hawaiian immersion education. Two lawsuits  argued that DOE has fallen short of this responsibility by creating unique barriers for immersion families, such as waitlists for enrollment and limited immersion programs in some school districts.

One of the lawsuits was dropped over the summer, but the second remains active. 

Currently, families are pushing for more immersion options in Pearl City, which has no middle or high school for Kaiapuni students. Children can attend the Kaiapuni program at Waiau Elementary until the sixth grade but then need to transfer to immersion programs in Kapolei or Honolulu for middle school or switch to an English-language program.

 to add Kaiapuni programs at Highlands Intermediate and Pearl City High School received more than 100 signatures over the past three weeks. 

“Our keiki start their educational journey in Hawaiian immersion programs, but upon reaching intermediate and high school levels, they find themselves with no option but to leave their home district,” parent Chloe Puaʻena Vierra-Villanueva said in written testimony to the Board of Education.

The department is planning to add more grade levels to existing Kaiapuni schools next year and provide families with more information on how to enroll in immersion programs, Sang said. Her office also plans on tracking the number of open seats and waitlists across the state to determine which communities have the greatest demand for Kaiapuni classrooms. 

Since 2020, the state has also offered a $8,000 salary bonus to Kaiapuni teachers to attract more people to classroom positions. 

Kahea Faria, an assistant specialist at UH Mānoa’s College of Education and a Kaiapuni parent, said she would like to see more DOE campuses solely dedicated to serving immersion students across all grade levels. Creating environments where Hawaiian is the only spoken language is critical to students’ development, she said, and could possibly encourage more kids to pursue teaching careers in Kaiapuni schools. 

“Right now, with a growing number of students, they have very limited opportunities to grow their language abilities,” Faria said. 

The state also needs to look beyond Kaiapuni graduates to expand the potential pool of immersion teachers, MākaÊ»imoku said. For example, she said, offering more Hawaiian language classes to families and community members could encourage more people to earn their Kaiapuni teaching credentials. 

“That’s definitely a conversation that all communities in HawaiÊ»i should have,” she said. 

This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat.

The Department of Education is hiring fewer teachers and seeing an uptick in unlicensed educators in its schools, according to a recent  for the 2024-25 academic year. 

Last year, roughly 48% of newly hired HawaiÊ»i educators did not have a teacher’s license, a significant jump from the 27% of new teachers who didn’t have one in the 2020-21 academic year. The numbers include those who have completed an educator preparation program but have not yet earned a state teaching license. 

The number of unlicensed educators, also known as emergency hires, has steadily increased since the pandemic, partly due to the recent increase in pay for these workers. The state also has programs in place to help emergency hires earn their license while teaching.

This fall, DOE reported the lowest number of  in five years, largely due to the uptick in emergency hires filling open positions. Emergency hires can work in schools for up to three years while they make progress toward earning a license. 

The department hired 1,300 teachers last year, down from more than 1,600 the year before that. Of those teachers, 82% were Hawaiʻi residents — the largest percentage of resident hires DOE has seen in the past four years.

Fewer teachers also left HawaiÊ»i schools last year, with 1,116 retiring or resigning from their jobs, down from roughly 1,200 the year before. Most commonly, teachers said they left their jobs because they planned to move out of HawaiÊ»i. 

The state has introduced more initiatives to improve teacher retention in recent years, including bonuses for educators working in hard-to-staff positions and increasing teacher pay. 

During Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, Assistant Superintendent Sean Bacon said the DOE is continuing to work on recruiting local teachers. For example, he said, schools are developing more career pathways for high school students interested in becoming teachers or educational assistants after they graduate. 

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy and â€œData Dive” is supported in part by the Will J. Reid Foundation.

Since 2020, the Hawaiʻi education department has offered the largest bonuses in the nation to special education teachers to address staff shortages. But the state has seen limited improvements in filling special education teacher positions, according to recent data from the department and the National Council on Teacher Quality.

The HawaiÊ»i Department of Education introduced bonuses — also known as pay differentials — for teachers working in special education and other hard-to-fill positions in 2020. It’s a strategy that has become popular in other parts of the country. In 2025, 85 districts offered financial incentives for special education teachers, up from 63 in 2022, according to a .

Hawaiʻi continues to offer the largest bonuses to its special education teachers, with local educators receiving $10,000 annual salary increases. On the mainland, Atlanta Public Schools in Georgia provides a $3,000 bonus to special education teachers, while Jackson Public Schools in Mississippi offers $5,000 pay bumps over three years, according to the national report.

In some parts of Hawaiʻi, special education teachers also qualify for hard-to-staff bonuses, further boosting their pay. All Hawaiʻi educators working in schools that are geographically isolated or significantly struggle with vacancies receive pay bumps ranging from $3,000 to $8,000, meaning that special education teachers in these schools can earn up to $13,000 to $18,000 in annual bonuses.

But a  on teacher pay commissioned by the DOE shows the bonuses did not fix the shortage. Statewide, the percentage of licensed special education teachers has increased since the bonuses began, but schools still face many unfilled positions.

Vacancy rates for special education teachers fell in 2020, the first year the bonuses were introduced, then rose steadily during the pandemic. Those rates have since improved but remain roughly at or above pre-pandemic levels for most schools in the state.

The only improvements to special education vacancies were in the Nānākuli-Waiʻanae and Hāna-Lānaʻi-Molokai complexes, where teachers earned the maximum $18,000 annual salary boost. In those schools, vacancy rates for special education teachers fell from 14% to 5% over the past seven years.

The proportion of unlicensed special education teachers in those schools also fell from 14% to 6% since 2019, according to the salary study.

Statewide, special education vacancies have made up a smaller proportion of unfilled teacher positions since the bonuses began. In 2024, special education positions accounted for 20% of total teacher vacancies, compared to 30% before the pandemic. 

The number of bus drivers serving Hawaiʻi schools has reached its highest point in four years, but the Department of Education is still falling short of meeting families’ transportation needs.

This year, 545 bus drivers are serving HawaiÊ»i schools, up from 436 last fall, from the DOE. The department is still short 130 drivers, who are primarily provided through the bus companies Ground Transport Inc. and Roberts HawaiÊ»i.

The department sparked widespread criticism from parents and lawmakers last August when it  over 100 bus routes for students days before the new school year. To avoid severe shortages this year, DOE consolidated some bus routes with low ridership and launched a new carpooling initiative for parents, according to a recent memo from Deputy Superintendent Jesse Souki. 

Last year, nearly half of HawaiÊ»i students didn’t qualify for bus transportation because they lived within walking distance to their local schools or received a geographic exception to attend a campus outside of their neighborhood. This fall, nearly 13% of students rely on the bus services available to regular education students, down from roughly 16% in the . 

Special education students receive their own bus services that are required under federal law. 

Demand for bus drivers has fallen over the past two years, with DOE contracting for 694 drivers in 2023, compared to 675 this fall. Bus companies were better able to keep up with DOE’s demands before the Covid-19 pandemic, and the state was only short 28 drivers in 2019.

Despite the decline in DOE’s need for drivers, the costs of transporting kids has increased over the past several years. Last school year, the department spent a total of $76 million in state and federal funds on student transportation, compared to $60 million in 2022.

To reduce families’ reliance on buses, the department has offered  to middle and high school students on OÊ»ahu and KauaÊ»i. In the first quarter of the school year, roughly 6,200 OÊ»ahu students and 99 KauaÊ»i students took advantage of the bus passes, according to the DOE, with the majority of participants from OÊ»ahu schools.

Maui and Hawaiʻi County already offer free bus services to students.

This fall, DOE also introduced a carpool pilot program, which allows parents in the Mililani and Kekaulike complexes to connect with nearby families who can transport their kids between school and home.

Only 3% of families in the complexes have registered for the program, according to the DOE.

The department will give more updates on student transportation during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

At 7:45 am on a recent Friday, Fern Elementary’s cafeteria exploded with shouts and cheers as school counselor Talon Henderson called students to the front of the room. The students, selected at random, received small prizes as rewards for showing up to school on time — a small but important reason to celebrate, Henderson said. 

“Remember to come to school every day,” Henderson told students enthusiastically as he dismissed them for the first class of the day. 

The five-minute game, which Fern Elementary holds once or twice a week, is one of many strategies Hawaiʻi schools have pursued to improve attendance in recent years. Other solutions range from raffling PlayStations and televisions to students with perfect attendance to offering health screenings on campus and holding home visits with families to figure out why kids are missing class.

Some schools, like Fern Elementary, have made significant progress as a result. Last year, 77% of students at the Kalihi campus attended class regularly, up from just 45% in the 2021-22 school year.

But not all schools have seen the same success. Statewide, nearly a quarter of kids were chronically absent last year and 10 schools reported that half or more of their students weren’t attending class regularly. Those figures are an improvement from the height of the pandemic, when more than a third of kids were chronically absent, but are still far from ideal. 

Students who are chronically absent — defined as missing 10% or more of instructional days — tend to have lower graduation rates and worse math and reading scores than their peers, according to a  from the department, adding to the urgency of addressing the problem.

There’s no single reason for the high absenteeism rates, though principals and teachers say stricter health policies during the pandemic could have more parents keeping kids home when they have minor illnesses. Schools have also seen an increase in students struggling with mental health. One thing is clear: schools are about to have less support in their efforts to address the problem. 

Last fall, millions of dollars of Covid-relief funding for attendance initiatives expired, and recent legislative efforts to direct state funding to successful school programs have failed to pass. While principals have largely been tasked with developing school-specific strategies to deal with the problem, some parents and advocates say they would like the education department to streamline its communication and outreach to families moving forward.

Others say they would like more comprehensive support for parents, who may not be able to prioritize school attendance when they’re juggling multiple jobs and responsibilities. 

“I think a lot of times we like to blame the families,” said Kathleen O’Dell, coordinator of the HawaiÊ»i Ê»Ohana Support Network, “but you don’t know what families are going through.”  

Where Did The Kids Go? 

As schools returned to in-person learning after months of online classes during the pandemic, some kids didn’t seem to understand the value of attendance, said Lahainaluna High School teacher Jarrett Chapin. In some cases, he said, students would show up to get counted at the start of class and attempt to leave before he started his lesson. 

“It was jarring, for sure,” Chapin said, adding that the school has seen more success with attendance since it adopted a new communication app allowing teachers to directly message families. Last year, 36% of Lahainaluna students were chronically absent, down from around 45% in 2021.  

DOE defines chronic absenteeism as missing 18 days of school for any reason, including excused absences like illness or a death in the family. 

Schools can refer students and parents to Family Court when a child is considered truant and has more than 18 unexcused absences, according to . But schools try to avoid punitive approaches to attendance whenever possible, Honouliuli Middle School Principal Todd Fujimori said. 

At Honouliuli Middle, counselors and teachers work with students to improve their attendance, he said, and the school partners with the judiciary to meet with parents before they’re referred to Family Court. In some cases, an attendance officer from the judiciary meets with families to develop plans and strategies to improve kids’ absenteeism rates.

“It’s to try to be proactive,” Fujimori said, adding that the school has only referred families to truancy court once or twice over the past six years. 

Families also became accustomed to keeping their kids home when they had mild illnesses during the pandemic, which began in March 2020, since schools were quick to send students with Covid-like symptoms home, said Hannah Loyola, principal at Kohala Elementary on the Big Island. Some families are still hesitant to send their kids to class when they aren’t feeling well, even though the school has eased its health policies in recent years. 

“After the restrictions lightened up a little bit, I don’t think parents fully understood,” Loyola said. 

It’s also been harder for parents to motivate kids to attend school since the pandemic, O’Dell said. Some students developed more social anxiety during online learning, while others had fewer opportunities to develop basic learning skills that could help them adjust to in-person classes.  

When schools first reopened after the pandemic, some principals reported an  and aggressive behavior as students struggled with their mental health and a lack of social skills needed to resolve disagreements.

Families are also struggling to feel a strong sense of belonging on campus after many schools were closed to the public for more than a year during the pandemic, O’Dell said. In some cases, schools don’t call parents unless their kids are in trouble, she said, making it harder for families to develop trusting relationships with teachers and feel comfortable sharing the challenges keeping their children from attending class.

“A lot of families don’t feel very welcomed on the campus,” O’Dell said. “So how are we proactively creating relationships with our families and getting to know their needs?” 

Strategies Abound 

In the 2024-25 academic year, nearly 75% of Kohala Elementary’s students attended class regularly — a 12% jump from the previous year and a 24% increase from when the school first returned to in-person learning in 2021. 

Last year, Kohala Elementary offered free pizza coupons or field trips to reward students with good attendance, said Vice Principal Allison Tinnin, and administrators scheduled calls and home visits to families if children began missing school early on. 

Kohala Elementary is also part of the state’s network of , which offer comprehensive support to families in the form of food pantries, after-school tutoring and more. By addressing families’ basic needs, these schools can help improve student attendance, said Paula Adams, executive director of HawaiÊ»i Afterschool Alliance. 

Several community schools reported some of the greatest improvements in attendance rates in the state last year.

“The results are very, very clear,” Adams said. 

But right now, many principals need to find their own sources of funding to cover the costs of becoming a community school, including hiring a coordinator to manage partnerships with local organizations and developing close connections with families. Running a community school costs around $120,000 a year, Adams said. 

While the initiative has seen success on Big Island and OÊ»ahu, it has yet to reach schools on Maui and KauaÊ»i, partly because not all principals are familiar with community schools, Adams said. introduced in the last legislative session would have set aside nearly $4 million to fund community schools and hire a statewide program manager over the next two years, but the measure failed to pass. 

In other cases, DOE has developed partnerships with outside agencies to address barriers to attendance. The HawaiÊ»i Keiki initiative, run in partnership with the University of HawaiÊ»i Mānoa School of Nursing, places nurses in schools across the state to treat students’ illnesses and promote healthy habits for kids and families, aiming to reduce the amount of class time kids miss because of sickness. 

The program, which began in 2014, reduced absenteeism in high schools by up to 4% in its early years of implementation, . The study did not analyze the impact of the initiative on attendance after 2019. 

Funding is a significant barrier to expanding and scaling those initiatives moving forward. The DOE sought $160,000 earlier this year to hire an educational specialist who could support attendance initiatives statewide, but lawmakers didn’t fund the request. Another  in 2024 to fund 75 health technician positions in schools under the HawaiÊ»i Keiki Initiative also failed. 

Federal funding for Covid recovery in schools , including millions that had supported attendance initiatives.

Some schools now need to dip into their own budgets for attendance programs. At Fern Elementary, the school has been able to replace federal dollars with its own money to purchase rewards for students with good attendance, Vice Principal Mark Atta said, but maintaining attendance initiatives could be more challenging for schools with tighter budgets. 

Deborah Bond-Upson, president of the advocacy group Parents for Public Schools HawaiÊ»i and interim director of the Hui for Excellence in Education Coalition, said families are looking for ways to strengthen their connection with schools and get more involved in their children’s learning. Multiple communication platforms and apps make it harder for families to find information about their kids’ schools, she said, and providing a more streamlined source of data on student learning and outcomes could boost parent engagement.   

“The kids who see parents not really understanding what’s happening in school, not really feeling connected, that makes them feel disconnected,” Bond-Upson said. “If the parents are more connected, then it’s easier for the kids to feel comfortable in the school, open to it and move forward positively.” 

Kristine Kaneichi enrolled her oldest son in WaikÄ«kÄ« Community Preschool eight years ago, drawn to the center’s low cost, safe facilities and flexible hours that accommodated her schedule as a college student. 

She went on to send her two younger kids to the center. The youngest, now 3, is still a student there but, for the first time in years, Kaneichi doesn’t have to worry about paying tuition or applying for state tuition subsidies. 

Last month, WaikÄ«kÄ« Community Preschool became the first program to make the transition from a private to charter school in HawaiÊ»i. As a result, the school reports to the State Public Charter School Commission, receives state funding — and is tuition-free.  

“This helps a lot,” Kaneichi said. 

WaikÄ«kÄ« Community Preschool is part of the state’s ongoing strategy to involve more charter schools in its ambitious goals to provide all 3- and 4-year-olds access to preschool by 2032. Charter schools currently operate 33 preschool classrooms in the state, including six at WaikÄ«kÄ« Community Preschool, said Deanne Goya, who oversees early learning programs at the charter commission. 

The state opened an additional 26 preschool classrooms this fall on Department of Education campuses and plans to add around 25 more next year. Roughly 6,700 children don’t have access to preschool, meaning that HawaiÊ»i needs to open around 330 classrooms over the next seven years, according to . 

Preschool directors and advocates say charter preschools can help solve the state’s long-time shortage of early educators. Private preschools typically struggle to hire staff and increase teacher wages because they’re reliant on tuition payments and don’t want to raise the prices for parents, said Malia Tsuchiya, early childhood policy and advocacy coordinator at HawaiÊ»i Children’s Action Network. 

Converting private preschools to charters creates a steady source of state funding for providers and often ensures higher wages for teachers, making hard-to-fill jobs more attractive, Tsuchiya said. Teachers working for charter preschools are state employees and receive the same benefits and salaries of educators working in K-12 public schools. 

The current funding model makes it difficult for other programs to follow Waikīkī Community Preschool’s lead, however. Charter preschools receive $171,000 in state funding per classroom, which Tsuchiya said falls short of what schools need to cover staff, rent, facilities and other expenses. Most charters run small preschool programs, she said, so it’s harder to spread the costs across multiple classrooms.

The Waikīkī preschool is counting on its nonprofit partner, Waikīkī Community Center, to help fundraise thousands of dollars to make up the shortfall of state funds this year.

A New Type of School

WaikÄ«kÄ« Community Preschool always focused on serving low-income families, drawing parents who worked in the tourism industry and sometimes held multiple jobs, said Caroline Hayashi, president of the WaikÄ«kÄ« Community Center. In recent years, the preschool charged low-income families around $500 a month but only after extensively fundraising to lower the costs. Families covering the full tuition paid around $990 a month. 

“We’ve been really trying to do what we can as a nonprofit to help make quality early education affordable,” Hayashi said. “We have been successful, but always kind of struggling to subsidize.” 

When the state started looking for private preschools interested in becoming charters, the center jumped at the opportunity, Hayashi said. The school wanted to be tuition-free, she said, and receiving state funding would alleviate some of the pressure of fundraising. 

In addition to eliminating tuition costs, becoming a charter school also allowed the center to operate at full capacity for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, Hayashi said. 

When it reopened after Covid, the school wasn’t able to staff one of its classrooms and could only serve 85 students. More educators seem willing to work for a charter preschool, Hayashi said, likely because they can receive the same pay as K-12 public school teachers with more flexible work schedules. 

Now, the school operates at its maximum capacity and is serving 98 kids this year, with a waitlist typically of between 10 and 30 students. 

Private preschools often struggle with staffing and increasing teacher pay because they don’t want to raise tuition for families. In 2021, preschool teachers in HawaiÊ»i earned an  of roughly $37,000. In comparison, licensed public school teachers – including those working in charter preschools – have a  of $53,390 this year. 

Charter preschools can offer more stability and state benefits for staff members, Hayashi said, but it also raises the bar for teacher qualifications. Teachers working in private, licensed preschools must hold an associate degree or credential in early childhood education. But charter schools require educators to be licensed, meaning that they must have completed both a bachelor’s degree and a teacher preparation program. 

It’s a hard requirement to fill amid a statewide shortage of early educators, Hayashi said. Five of her six lead teachers are emergency hires, meaning that they have three years to complete their licensing requirements. Once they meet those requirements, they’ll be eligible for higher salaries. 

Complicating staffing challenges, Hayashi said, several preschool teachers also work as after-school care staff. The after-school program runs separately from the charter school and is offered through WaikÄ«kÄ« Community Center for $200 a month. 

It’s sometimes difficult to offer after-school care when teachers have afternoon staff meetings for the charter school, Hayashi said, but it’s the best solution she’s found to meet the needs of working families. 

“It’s just been an adjustment,” she said. “The only way that it works so far is that we have a lot of our staff that have been willing to have basically a second job.” 

Short On Funding

Like K-12 public schools, charter preschools rely on state dollars — but the current funding levels aren’t enough to sustain these programs, Goya said. 

The state provides  up to $1,500 for low-income families attending private preschools, Goya said, meaning that these programs could receive up to $300,000 annually in state funds for a classroom of 20 students, compared to the $171,000 for a charter classroom. 

DOE schools receive less money — around $146,000 for every preschool classroom they open on their campus — but they also need to cover fewer costs than charters. For example, Tsuchiya said, DOE schools already have money set aside in their budgets for principals and janitors, regardless of whether they add a preschool classroom to their campus. 

On the other hand, she said, set costs for administrators’ salaries and facility maintenance are spread across just a few classrooms in charter preschools, which typically have smaller programs and fewer kids. Most charters face the additional expenses of rent and facilities since they aren’t located on state land. 

Hayashi estimates WaikÄ«kÄ« Community Preschool will face a budget shortfall of around $150,000 to $200,000 this year, although she’s confident the school can raise enough money with the support of the community center, which has raised similar amounts of money for the preschool in the past.   

Another charter, Parkway Village Preschool in Kapolei, is also facing budget shortfalls after  earlier this year. While Parkway originally projected it would have an annual deficit of $34,000 per classroom, it’s now up against shortfalls of closer to $50,000 to $60,000 per class as it grows its staff, said Ben Naki, who oversees early learning programs at Parents And Children Together, the nonprofit associated with the preschool. 

The school is prepared to make up the difference through fundraising and support from foundations, Naki said, and hopes to participate in a federal meals program that can help reduce the costs of producing lunches. But the current levels of funding make it difficult for small programs to become charter schools, especially if they’re not partnering with outside organizations that can provide administrative support or help with major fundraising efforts. 

“We’re committed to it with the notion, or, I guess, hope, that funding will increase on the charter side, because that would be huge,” Naki said. 

Earlier this year, the state received only two applications from prospective charter preschools — Waikīkī Community Preschool and Mana ‘Ulu Montessori Charter Lab School. Mana ‘Ulu planned to build on existing partnerships with Chaminade University’s lab school, which has its own private preschool, but its application was not approved.

Turning privately owned programs into charters won’t necessarily add new preschool seats for the state, Tsuchiya said. But, with enough funding, the charter model can stabilize existing programs at risk of closing by providing them a steady stream of state funding and incentivizing educators to earn their teacher licenses and qualify for higher pay. 

At the same time, Goya said, the commission is working with K-12 charter schools to add preschool programs to campuses with available space. Currently, she said, the commission is planning to add 15 more preschool classrooms by fall 2028. 

The School Facilities Authority, the state agency in charge of preschool construction, recently received $20 million to build more preschool classrooms over the next three years, but the funding can only go toward adding classrooms to schools on government-owned land.

Since many charters are on private property, not all schools qualify for the money, authority director Riki Fujitani said. But the agency was still able to renovate three preschool classrooms at WaiÊ»alae School this summer and is working on preschool projects at an additional four charter campuses. 

“Charters,” he said, “have really been quick to embrace pre-k.”

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

A conservative mainland group whose lawsuit against Harvard University ended affirmative action in college admissions is now building support in Hawaiʻi to take on Kamehameha Schools’ policies that give preference to Native Hawaiian students.

Students for Fair Admissions, based in Virginia, recently launched the website . It says that the admission preference “is so strong that it is essentially impossible for a non-Native Hawaiian student to be admitted to Kamehameha.”

“We believe that focus on ancestry, rather than merit or need, is neither fair nor legal, and we are committed to ending Kamehameha’s unlawful admissions policies in court,” the website says.

Kamehameha’s Board of Trustees and CEO Jack Wong said in a written statement that the school expected the policy would be challenged. The institution — a private school established through the estate of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop to educate Hawaiians — successfully defended its admission policy in a series of lawsuits in the early 2000s. The trustees and Wong promised to do so again.

“We are confident that our policy aligns with established law, and we will prevail,” the statement said.

The campaign also drew criticism from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, established in the late 1970s for the betterment of Native Hawaiians. OHA’s Board of Trustees called it an “attack on the right of Native Hawaiians to care for our own, on our own terms.”

“These attacks are not new — but they are escalating,” the trustees said in a written statement. “They aim to dismantle the hard-won protections that enable our people to heal, rise, and chart our future.”

Several groups have tried and failed in the past to overturn Kamehameha’s admissions policy. Federal courts, siding with Kamehameha, have ruled that giving preference to Native Hawaiians helps alleviate historical injustices they faced after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.

In the 2006 decision upholding Kamehameha Schools’ admissions policy, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel pointed to longstanding challenges Native Hawaiian students have faced in schools. 

“It is clear that a manifest imbalance exists in the K-12 educational arena in the state of HawaiÊ»i, with Native Hawaiians falling at the bottom of the spectrum in almost all areas of educational progress and success,” Judge Susan Graber wrote in the majority opinion. 

These disparities persist. Just over a third of Native Hawaiian students in public schools were proficient in reading in 2024, compared to 52% of students statewide. Less than a quarter of Native Hawaiian students were proficient in math.

The state education department has also fallen short of providing families with adequate access to Hawaiian language immersion programs, according to two lawsuits filed against the department this summer. The Hawaiian immersion programs are open to all students, not just those of Hawaiian ancestry.  

Moses Haia III, a lawyer and former director of the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., said that improving outcomes for Hawaiian students is Kamehameha’s primary reason for existing. He said this new challenge appears to be based on ignorance of Hawaiʻi’s history.

“Ultimately, what I see is these people being uneducated,” Haia said of the mainland group. “Not knowing the history of HawaiÊ»i, not knowing the reasons for Kamehameha’s existence, and just once again trying to push Hawaiians into this box
 and wanting to be on top.”

Past Challenges 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that private schools can’t discriminate based on race in a case called Runyon v. McCrary, which involved Black school students trying to gain admission to private schools that had yet to integrate non-white students.

An anonymous student sued Kamehameha in 2003, invoking the 1976 ruling and alleging that the school’s policy of giving preference to Hawaiian children was discriminatory. The case eventually landed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A majority of the appeals court judges sided with Kamehameha. They used a part of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in the workplace as a legal framework for looking at the admissions policy.

Judge Graber wrote that a preference for Native Hawaiian students “serves a legitimate remedial purpose by addressing the socioeconomic and educational disadvantages facing Native Hawaiians, producing Native Hawaiian leadership for community involvement, and revitalizing Native Hawaiian culture, thereby remedying current manifest imbalances resulting from the influx of western civilization.”

But it was a narrow victory for Kamehameha, an 8-to-7 vote. Dissenting judges wrote that admitting mostly Hawaiian students didn’t create a diverse student body; others said that the policy was clearly discriminatory.

The anonymous student appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But Kamehameha entered a $7 million settlement with the student and their mother before the court decided whether to take up the case.

While the settlement safeguarded the admission policy from a ruling by the nation’s highest court it also meant lawyers punted the issue.

Another group of anonymous students challenged the admissions policy a few years later and again took that case to the Supreme Court. But the court declined to take up that case in 2011.

Students for Fair Admissions previously brought two landmark cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, arguing that the two schools’ race-conscious admissions policies discriminated against Asian American and white applicants. The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that colleges cannot use race as a factor in their admissions, although the decision didn’t specify what this could mean for K-12 schools.

Last fall, the number of Black students  fell, although some researchers cautioned that colleges might not see the full impact of the Supreme Court ruling until a few admissions cycles have passed. 

The challenge to Kamehameha Schools’ admissions policies comes amid national pushback on efforts to promote diversity in schools. In February, the U.S. Department of Education said any colleges and K-12 schools using race-based practices in hiring and admissions could lose federal funding, although a court subsequently prevented the department from enforcing those requirements. 

Kamehameha receives no funding from the federal government, according to its tax filings. The school, which is the state’s largest private landowner, has assets valued at about $15 billion.

This was originally published on .

As students returned to class earlier this month, Hawaiʻi schools reported the lowest number of teacher vacancies the state has seen in more than five years. As of last week, only 73 teacher positions were unfilled, compared to more than 1,000 in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But schools are employing a growing number of unlicensed teachers, also known as emergency hires, to fill those vacancies. Last August, HawaiÊ»i schools started the year with 670 emergency hires, an 80% increase from four years ago. 

Emergency hires can work in schools for up to three years but must make progress toward earning their licenses. 

The recent increase in emergency hires partly stems from state efforts to put more teachers in classrooms, including increasing pay for unlicensed educators in 2023. But while  that emergency hires tend to have higher retention rates, they may also be less effective than licensed teachers, who typically have more training and classroom experience.

While the HawaiÊ»i teacher licensing board  in schools, it doesn’t publish regular data on how many of these teachers go on to earn their teacher licenses and continue working in public schools here.    

Even so, principals and researchers say hiring unlicensed teachers is better than leaving positions vacant, which can leave schools scrambling for substitutes. The state has also explored other options to , like raising teacher pay and bringing in workers from the Philippines, but some solutions may only be temporary. 

“There’s a united front to attract qualified educators that are already certified,” said Chris Sanita, principal at Hāna High and Elementary. “I think it’s a larger state issue on housing and affordability.” 

A Growing Population

In 2018, Brandon Galarita began teaching at Ke’elikƍlani Middle School as an emergency hire, hoping to build on his experience as a substitute teacher and use his college degree in English. While the pay was low, Galarita said, working full-time as an emergency hire allowed him to earn a living while also completing the requirements for a teacher license. 

“At least it starts building a teacher if they want to go into education,” said Galarita, who earned his license from the University of HawaiÊ»i Mānoa in 2020. “I would hope that the influx of emergency hires will result in more teachers that are staying in the profession.” 

Osa Tui Jr., president of the state teachers’ union, said he attributes the big jump in emergency hires to the pay raise they received two years ago. Currently, emergency hires earn about $50,300 a year, compared to $38,500 previously. 

“These numbers reflect exactly what we were hoping to accomplish,” Tui said. 

The state has encouraged prospective educators, including emergency hires, to earn their licenses through the Grow Our Own initiative at UH Mānoa, which helps cover the costs of tuition for teacher preparation programs. Teachers who complete the program and earn their licenses must work in public schools for at least three years. 

Emergency hire numbers don’t always reflect teachers’ progress toward earning their licenses, said Waiʻanae Intermediate School Principal John Wataoka. While he has around 11 emergency hires on staff this year, only one of the teachers has yet to complete a teacher preparation program.

The rest have finished their training but are waiting to take a licensing exam or haven’t received the results of their final tests yet, Wataoka said. 

“Right now, it’s just a waiting game,” he said. 

But a recent study of emergency hires entering Massachusetts schools during the pandemic suggests that unlicensed teachers may be less effective than other educators. Students taught by emergency hires tended to have lower math and science test scores compared to their peers,  from the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. 

Jonathon Medeiros, a teacher at Kauaʻi High School and vice president of the Hawaiʻi Education Association, said he understands parents’ possible concerns about emergency hires and the quality of education students are receiving. But it’s still preferable to have an emergency hire in a classroom than a substitute — or nobody at all.

In the past, Medeiros said, students were occasionally sent to the library or cafeteria for study hall when there weren’t enough educators to teach every class and the state faced a shortage of substitute teachers. 

Unlike emergency hires, DOE doesn’t require  to have a college degree.   

“We all want skilled, caring, talented teachers who are from the community and committed to their schools,” Medeiros said. “How do we make sure we get those people in every single classroom is the key question.”

Expanding The Pool

While the boost in emergency hire pay has attracted more teachers to public schools, the state is still searching for other solutions to increase the hiring pool. 

At WaiÊ»anae Intermediate, Wataoka said he’s hired seven international teachers to fill staff positions over the past two years. The J-1 visa program, which DOE has participated in since 2019, allows teachers from other countries, primarily the Philippines, to teach in the state for up to five years. 

This year, the department hired around 100 new teachers through the visa program, Superintendent Keith Hayashi said in a Board of Education meeting earlier this month. International teachers’ interest in working in HawaiÊ»i is comparable to past years, he said, despite concerns that participation could drop after Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents  of teachers from the Philippines last spring. 

On Maui, Sanita said he’s also seeing the impact of the bonuses introduced for teachers in hard-to-fill positions five years ago. While it’s difficult to attract people to Hāna — a town with limited housing and no stop signs – the $8,000 bonus for remote schools helps retain teachers who would otherwise struggle with the high cost of living, Sanita said.   

“The differentials have really helped people, our teachers in Hana, not to have five different side hustles,” Sanita said. “They can actually teach and make ends meet.” 

The bonuses have also incentivized teachers to remain at Waiʻanae Intermediate even when they face long commutes from other parts of the island, Wataoka said. While the Leeward Coast has the greatest concentration of new teachers in the state, the $8,000 bonus has helped experienced teachers cover the cost of gas to West Oʻahu and remain at Waiʻanae Intermediate.

But despite more retention measures in place, the department saw a jump in the number of teachers leaving schools last year. Over 1,200 teachers voluntarily resigned or retired from DOE in the 2023-24 school year, compared to roughly 1,000 the year before.

Tui said there’s no single answer as to why the number of teachers leaving schools jumped. In some cases, teachers may have felt more comfortable changing jobs after the pandemic as they faced less uncertainty in the job market, he said. 

This year, educators continuing to work in public schools will receive a 3% pay raise, with some veteran teachers receiving a larger raise of around 7%. While the pay increase will encourage teachers to stay in schools longer, Tui said, it’s possible the state will see a wave of educators retiring after three years as they qualify for higher state pensions. 

For teachers hired before 2012, the state uses their three highest years of pay to determine their pensions. 

“We have to make sure that we can get people into the profession that we can recruit to handle a drop off like that,” Tui said. 

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

Mia Palacio felt like she lost a piece of herself after wildfires destroyed much of her hometown of Lahaina in 2023. 

Palacio struggled to deal with the grief of losing her town and home. She isolated herself from her loved ones and often felt angry — that her family didn’t have a permanent place to stay, that more people weren’t able to evacuate the night of Aug. 8, that she was moving between high schools where she didn’t feel welcomed. 

The pain only intensified as the months wore on and, finally, nearing the first anniversary of the fires, Palacio reached out for help.

Hundreds of students like Palacio have struggled mentally since the fires and not all have received the help they need. The HawaiÊ»i Department of Education estimates more than a third of Maui students lost a family member, sustained a serious injury or had a parent lose a job after the fires, which killed 102 people and damaged more than 3,300 properties in Lahaina. 

Two years later, many in Lahaina are ready to return to normal. But therapists say students’ mental health challenges continue to mount. 

That’s common after a disaster, especially at the two-year mark, when adrenaline wears off and stress remains high, said Christopher Knightsbridge, one of several researchers at the University of HawaiÊ»i who has studied the well-being of Lahaina fire survivors. While kids may feel numb immediately following a disaster, after two years, they’re facing the toll of constant uncertainty and change, he said.  

It’s a phenomenon seen wherever schooling has been disrupted by natural disasters, reporting by Honolulu Civil Beat, The Associated Press and several other news outlets shows. But a couple years after the disaster, schools are not always prepared with extra mental health supports. On Maui, for instance, the island is dealing with an ongoing shortage of specialists. In the past few years, the number of psychiatrists serving youth has dropped from four to two, even as demand has grown.

“The crisis isn’t over,” Knightsbridge said. 

Two Years In 

Palacio made progress with the help of a school counselor and then a local organization that supports teens’ mental health through outdoor activities and adventures. Now, the senior at Lahainaluna High School said she’s more comfortable confiding in others and controlling her emotions, and she takes pride in mentoring younger students who have also struggled since the fires. 

But two years in, many kids still wrestle with depression and anxiety.

DayJahiah Valdivia, a senior at KÄ«hei Charter School, said her stress levels still spike when there’s strong winds or small brush fires on Maui. Valdivia lives in Upcountry Maui, which also faced wildfires that burned over a thousand acres of land on the same day as the 2023 Lahaina fires. Her home was spared, but it took months for her family to return because their property was covered in soot and needed professional cleaning. 

She feels less anxious now that her family has discussed their escape plan for future disasters. But a summer fire near a friend’s home in Central Maui renewed her fears about her loved ones’ safety. 

“The anxiety never really wore off,” she said, adding it was especially difficult to concentrate in class or feel safe on windy days during the first year after the fires. 

In a  conducted in 2024, just over half of children reported symptoms of depression, and 30% were likely facing an anxiety disorder. Nearly half of kids in the study, ages 10 to 17, were experiencing PTSD. 

Children in disaster-torn towns across the U.S. can relate. 

In Paradise, California, where the 2018 Camp Fire took 85 lives, a protracted period of disillusionment followed what some called the “hero phase,” where the community pulled together and vowed to resurrect their town. Both Lahaina and Paradise had housing shortages after their fires, so families had to move away or live with friends to go to school or work in the area. In general, students who don’t have a permanent living arrangement tend to struggle more academically and have more behavioral challenges,  shows. 

Many Paradise students still cope with anxiety and grief, seven years later, making it difficult to fully engage in school. A year after the Camp Fire, 17% of students were homeless, and the suspension rate was 7.4%, compared to 2.5% statewide. The suspension rate remained nearly triple the state average last year, and more than 26% were . 

Aryah Berkowitz, who lost her home, two dogs and her family’s business in the Paradise blaze, dealt with lingering behavioral challenges following the disaster. For nearly a year afterward, her family of seven, plus a pair of surviving pitbull-labrador mixes, lived with a friend in nearby Chico, sharing two bedrooms and a bathroom. Berkowitz, then in sixth grade, slept on the couch.

“I was having to help my family a lot and wasn’t able to handle it,” said Berkowitz, a once-high-achieving student who was suspended twice after the fire. “I was holding it inside and took it out on other people. Some days I’d just walk out of class.”

Back on Maui, many students similarly disengaged from school.  In a DOE survey of Maui students in the first year after the fires, roughly half of kids said they were having trouble focusing in class or felt upset when they were reminded of the wildfires.   

Some have found it difficult to retain class material or simply stopped attending in-person classes as they moved between hotel rooms and temporary housing, according to Lahainaluna High teacher Jarrett Chapin. A few moved to online learning as their families faced continued instability. 

“They just sort of vanished,” Chapin said. 

A Shortage Of Specialists

Maui has long dealt with medical workforce challenges. Even before the fires, Maui faced a shortage of mental health professionals because of the state’s high cost of living and housing shortage.

The fires brought burnout and greater economic obstacles, only exacerbating the issue. Since then, Hawaii’s education department has tried to bulk up Maui’s mental health staff, first by bringing in providers from neighbor islands and the mainland and then by using a $2 million federal grant to support students’ well-being and academics. 

But hiring mental health staff has been so difficult that even the federal money hasn’t made much of a dent: In the first nine months of the grant, the state education department primarily used the money to  nearly an hour to Lahaina schools from other parts of the island.

The state has now used the money to hire five part-time mental health providers working with students and staff, including one specialist who works in the evenings with students who live on Lahainaluna’s campus as boarders, said Kimberly Lessard, a Department of Education district specialist.

Still, two of the six behavioral health specialist positions in Lahaina schools remained unfilled as of this summer and have been for years, Lessard said. 

Valdivia, who still deals with anxiety from the Upcountry Maui fires, has seen the impacts of the provider shortage firsthand. She’s on a two- to three-month waiting list to see a psychiatrist on Maui, and she’s seeing an OÊ»ahu-based therapist via telehealth because there aren’t enough providers who can meet with her in person. 

While she’s grateful to have connected with a therapist who can make their virtual meetings work, it’s frustrating to go through such a lengthy process to get help, Valdivia said. 

“Even just to get evaluated (by a psychiatrist), it’s literally months,” she said. “I just think that’s crazy.”

It’s common for disaster-torn communities to struggle with shortages of psychological staff, often because of burnout and a lack of resources. 

In Puerto Rico, which has suffered from a series of disasters since Hurricane Maria struck in 2017, students have experienced high rates of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Yet despite legislation in 2000 to create more school psychologist positions, it wasn’t until the pandemic that the commonwealth’s Education Department dedicated money to hire them. 

The school psychologists “can’t keep up,” said Nellie Zambrana, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Puerto Rico at RĂ­o Piedras. Those who are working are overstretched, according to a study by the university’s Psychological Research Institute. One psychologist, the study said, was assigned to more than 100 students at three schools. 

New Ways To Help

On a Tuesday afternoon in June, Loren Lapow wasn’t deterred by the storm clouds gathering over D.T. Fleming Beach on Maui. The social worker helped teens carry an inflatable paddleboard to the water’s edge, cheering them on as they swam. 

Amid the fun, Lapow directed the teens to reflect on their fears and losses, asking them how they feel when they smell smoke in the air or think about Lahaina’s Front Street, most of which was destroyed in the blaze. 

“Places are like a friend to us,” Lapow said. “When you lose places, it hurts.” 

Lapow founded the Maui Hero Project, which  describes as “adventure-based counseling services.” The eight-week program Lapow started just over 25 years ago teaches kids basic disaster preparedness skills and immerses them in outdoor activities. It’s also a form of mental health support. Healing from trauma comes in many forms, Lapow said, whether it’s helping kids create new friendships or leading small group discussions about the mental toll of the fires.  

“We need to create a culture of healing and resiliency,” Lapow said.

Lapow’s approach has become a common strategy for nonprofits and therapists trying to reach kids who have balked at discussing their mental health since the fires. But those efforts aren’t always reaching kids who need the most help. 

There’s a strong stigma around seeking mental health services, particularly in Filipino and Latino communities that make up a large portion of Lahaina’s population, said Ruben Juarez, a professor at UH who led the research study on fire survivors. Families may see counseling as a sign of weakness, he said, and children may be reluctant to open up to therapists out of fear of being judged or scrutinized.

Yet in the study, Latino teens reported the highest rates of severe depressive and PTSD symptoms. Filipino teens reported some of the highest rates of anxiety. Similar cultural trends are seen in communities across the U.S.

Moving forward, Juarez said, kids’ mental health needs to be at the forefront of recovery plans. 

The state is hoping struggling students will open up to their peers.  A new Oregon-based program called YouthLine will train HawaiÊ»i teens to respond to crisis calls, said Keli Acquaro, the administrator for the Department of Health’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division. In addition to providing kids with real-time support from people their own age, Acquaro said, it will hopefully strengthen the pipeline of local students considering careers in mental health. 

Keakealani Cashman, who graduated from Kamehameha Schools Maui in 2024, is hoping to be part of the state’s solution to provide more mental health support to the next generation of children. 

After losing her home to the fires, Cashman spent her senior year talking to Native Hawaiian practitioners and researching how cultural values, like connections to the land and her ancestors, could help her community heal from the trauma of the fires. The project improved her own mental health, said Cashman, who regularly met with her school’s behavioral health specialist. 

Now, Cashman is entering her second year at Brigham Young University Hawaii and hopes to work as a behavioral health specialist in Hawaiian immersion schools.  

“This horrible, horrible thing happened to me and my family, but I don’t have to let it kill the rest of my life,” Cashman said. “I can really help my family, my community in school, and just make an impact in what I know how to do.” 

In January, the Department of Education released a shocking number: it now costs nearly $9 to produce a school lunch in HawaiÊ»i. Lawmakers and advocates — after they recovered from the sticker shock — responded with a reasonable question: Why are school meals so expensive? 

Eight months later, the public still doesn’t have an answer. Despite pressure from lawmakers, the department has yet to publish detailed information about why it costs so much to feed students. 

The department doesn’t share — and may not even collect — campus-level data on how much individual schools are spending on meals. It has provided no breakdown of how much the state spends on items like milk or fresh produce that go into lunches.

But lawmakers say schools need to explain what’s driving up the costs, especially since the DOE is struggling to make ends meet with its lunch program and has requested an additional $40 million from the Legislature over the past two years on top of the state and federal funds it already receives for its meal program.

HawaiÊ»i law requires the education department to charge families half the cost of producing school meals, although current lunch prices fall far below that threshold. In January, the DOE proposed gradually  over the next four years, but state lawmakers stepped in with funds to avoid increasing costs for families.  

Under the DOE’s proposal, lunch for elementary and middle school students would cost $4.75 by 2028. High schoolers would pay $5 for meals. 

Breaking Down The Numbers 

The DOE serves more than 18 million meals every year to students across 258 campuses. This spring, lawmakers set aside roughly $50 million to fund the school meal program over the next two years. 

The department publishes  for its food services branch, but the online reports only track the total amount of money coming in and out of the meals program. Through of the 2024-25 school year, the program brought in $108 million in student payments and state and federal funds, but spent roughly $123 million on meals, salaries and other expenses.

In response to a Civil Beat public records request for school and state-level spending on lunches this spring, a representative from the superintendent’s office shared a one-page financial report breaking down the meal program’s spending and revenue in more detail. Roughly 40% of the 2023-24 budget went toward the salaries and benefits of workers, and the department spent roughly $81 million on food. 

But there was little information explaining what goes into a $9 school meal — for example, how much the department spent on specific ingredients or juice, or what cafeteria supplies cost the department more than $5.6 million in 2024. The department provides more detailed estimates of its purchase of local ingredients in its , but this spending makes up only 5% of the school meal budget.

In response to Civil Beat’s request, the DOE also said it didn’t have records of schools’ annual financial reports for campus meal programs. The department did not respond to requests for interviews about the availability of school meal data and the rising costs of lunches.

Jesse Cooke, vice president of investments and analytics at Ulupono Initiative, said he’s concerned about a lack of consistent tracking and reporting from schools. He said he hasn’t seen any data breaking down the costs of meal programs at individual schools on a regular basis, which makes it harder for the department and lawmakers to identify what’s driving up the costs of meals and understand how programs can operate more efficiently. 

“When you’re trying to make decisions, trying to make something more efficient, you need pretty quick numbers,” Cooke said. “They’re not looking at specific schools and their numbers.”

The education department has also come under fire from the federal government for its lack of data collection. When HawaiÊ»i sought an increase in  in 2015, officials denied the request because the department wasn’t able to provide enough details on the costs of its lunches, said Daniela Spoto, director of food equity at HawaiÊ»i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice. 

“Historically, the only thing they could provide is what they provided here,” Spoto said. “Here’s our cost, and here’s the total number of meals we provide.” 

Lawmakers passed  this spring asking the department to produce a detailed breakdown of its meal programs, including the cost of ingredients, beverages and supplies. The DOE currently has no process of reporting and publishing such costs, the resolutions stated.

“It is essential to ensure that proper reporting processes are in place to provide transparency as to the costs of producing school meals,” one resolution said. 

DOE leaders argued they publish enough information to justify rising lunch costs, but they’ve given lawmakers mixed messages on the data that’s readily available. 

In one hearing, Interim School Food Services Branch Administrator Sue Kirchstein said the DOE already collects and publishes data on the costs of ingredients and other factors going into school meals. But another official said the DOE doesn’t collect data with the level of detail lawmakers were requesting, and the department’s communications team was unable to provide the report Kirchstein mentioned during the hearing. 

Besides looking at rising inflation rates, the department hadn’t completed a detailed analysis of what’s increasing the costs of meals, former Deputy Superintendent Dean Uchida said in another hearing this spring, drawing strong criticism from lawmakers. 

“You should be looking at it, and maybe there’s a different way that you can do things,” Sen. Troy Hashimoto said during the hearing. “But you won’t know that unless you do the analysis.” 

The department has not said if it’s working on a cost analysis for the Legislature. Any report DOE submits to lawmakers won’t be published until late 2025 or early 2026 in the lead-up to the new legislative session. 

Just three days before the start of school, Relinda Nakasone picked up her children’s classroom supply list from Lunalilo Elementary and searched the emptying shelves of Fisher Hawaiʻi for erasers, markers and more. Nakasone had waited until her husband got paid to start in on the list for their two children, but the $200 total price tag would be a financial burden for the family.

Nakasone planned to buy as many items as possible, but said she might have to hold off on some until her husband gets paid again. In particular, she said, the prices of hand sanitizer and paper towels seemed to have increased over last year.

“Whatever we’re short on, then hopefully they can cover,” Nakasone said, adding the school often provides students with supplies their families can’t afford. “If not, then they’re just going to have to wait until dad gets paid again.”

Most of Hawaiʻi’s public elementary schools send supply lists to families near the end of summer, requesting students bring staples like backpacks and pencils on the first day of class. But some parents say the pressure of buying everything on those lists is financially draining, especially when they’re expected to contribute communal supplies, like boxes of tissues or reams of paper, and more specialized items like watercolors and recorders for music class.

HawaiÊ»i schools are not supposed to require students to buy things in exchange for a grade or extra credit, according to a  issued to principals over the summer. But the guidance is vague, schools don’t always communicate this to families and HawaiÊ»i has no policies specifying what principals can and cannot request in supply lists, leaving parents feeling pressured to spend big at start of the year.

While campuses serving low-income families tend to keep their supply requests short or do away with the lists altogether, families may find themselves spending more than $150 on supplies at schools in wealthier communities.

When families can’t afford school supplies, it often falls to teachers or principals to fundraise or use their own money to backfill.

In California, the state constitution and  crack down on lengthy supply requests from districts, specifying that schools must provide a free public education and can’t require families to purchase supplies. The HawaiÊ»i Constitution lacks the same protections for students, and recent state efforts to provide schools with more funds for supplies have fizzled.

“It’s stressful financially and emotionally,” Nakasone said. “But then it’s something that we’ve got to do.”

A Range Of Requests

In his strongly worded June 20 memo to principals prohibiting schools from asking students to purchase items in exchange for grades, Superintendent Keith Hayashi made it clear that doing so is unfair to poorer families: “This action can be construed as unequal treatment of students who cannot otherwise afford to bring in certain items or participate fully in these activities due to a lack of finances,” he wrote.

Yet because the memo stayed silent on requiring families to furnish school supplies, principals have discretion in how to handle their lists, leading to wide variation among schools.

At Kamaile Academy in Waiʻanae, Principal Paul Kepka cut down his school supply list so families don’t have to spend more than $25 this year. Purchasing supplies can be a financial challenge for families, he said, especially if they have more than one child attending the charter school.

The school has received donations of backpacks and pencils, Kepka said, and he set aside money in his budget this year to cover hand soap, paper towels and other sanitary supplies that parents often purchase for classrooms elsewhere. While Kepka wants families to bring in whatever they can afford from the school’s shortened list, his main focus is making sure kids have strong attendance records this year.

“The number one thing I need from families is their support to get their kids to school,” Kepka said.

Miriam Webb, a parent of two students at Lincoln Elementary, said the supply list still feels like an expectation, not a suggestion or donation request from the school. While she doesn’t mind contributing classroom supplies, the price of some items — like a $25 backpack from Walmart — came as a surprise this year.

At Kaʻiulani Elementary, Principal Bebi Davis said she tries to keep her supply list minimal, especially since the school receives donations from local businesses and community organizations to support low-income families. While she wants families to pitch in however they can, Davis said she reminds parents that they don’t need to purchase everything from the list if they can’t afford it.

“If they show up with nothing on the first day of school, we will provide it,” Davis said. 

But supply lists at other schools — often located in more affluent communities — are more extensive. For example, Kāhala Elementary’s  includes nearly 40 items, ranging from a set of 12 oil pastel crayons to two types of Sharpie pens. At Walmart, that list would cost families roughly $190, , which runs school supply requests through retailers such as Target and Amazon to estimate their cost.

Catherine Payne, a former Board of Education chair and longtime principal at Farrington High School, said principals are typically attuned to their communities’ needs and will work with families to provide for their children if supplies are too expensive. But principals could use additional guidance from district or state leaders, she said, particularly about finding alternative ways to purchase supplies and communicating their expectations around supply lists.

A Policy Question

At ʻIlima Intermediate, teacher Sarah Milianta-Laffin estimates that a quarter of her students start the year without all of their supplies. While the school stockpiles folders and pencils to fill the gap, Milianta-Laffin said, she’s also solicited donations or used her own money to purchase supplies to help parents who are struggling financially.

Teachers at low-income schools seem to spend more of their own money on supplies, Milianta-Laffin said, especially if parents aren’t able to donate items or fundraise to cover classroom expenses. A  from 2023 found that HawaiÊ»i educators spent an average of $953 of their own money on school supplies. 

“The need outweighs the supply in terms of what our kids are facing in our public schools,” Milianta-Laffin said.

In recent years, lawmakers have introduced several proposals to  for teachers and families, but most efforts to provide free supplies to students have stalled. 

In 2022, the state set aside roughly $800,000 to fund supplies at 20 low-income schools. The one-year pilot reduced families’ financial burden and improved students’ sense of belonging in schools,  the DOE submitted to the Legislature at the end of the initiative. Two principals reported that families transferred to their school when they heard supplies would be free.

Kepka, whose school participated in the pilot program, said Kamaile Academy used the extra funds to purchase supplies in bulk throughout the year. Having the extra support allowed kids to simply focus on their academics instead of worrying about necessities, he said.

But the pilot never became a permanent program. Rep. Justin Woodson  in 2023 to extend it to 2025, but the bill didn’t pass and was never reintroduced.

Woodson said he’s not sure why lawmakers never reconsidered the pilot, especially since it received such positive reviews from families and the education department. Moving forward, Woodson said he would support providing low-income families with free school supplies, but funding could be difficult as Hawaiʻi faces cuts to its federal dollars.

Even in California, districts’ compliance with the provisions of the education code and the constitution likely varies throughout the state, said Julie Marsh, a professor of education at the University of Southern California. It’s not always clear to parents that supply lists are optional, she said.

The state has cracked down on lengthy supply lists for parents. Last year, a  urged schools to stop sending out the lists, arguing that it violated students’ access to free education protected by the California Constitution and pressured parents into making expensive purchases.

“Having a state policy on the books that says this speaks volumes about what’s important, what we mean by free education,” Marsh said. “There’s a lot of other elements that go into learning, and we want to ensure that all students have equal access.”

In Michigan, the state Supreme Court ruled that schools  to purchase their own supplies, since that state’s constitution also protects students’ access to a free education.

Unlike other states, the  does not specify the right to free public education. While the HawaiÊ»i Board of Education could create a policy similar to California requiring schools to provide free supplies to students, it would be difficult for schools to follow this mandate without extra funding from the Legislature, said Board of Education Chair Roy Takumi.

Schools currently have no extra pot of money to buy supplies for their students, Takumi said, although he supports using state dollars to help low-income families afford supplies.

Milianta-Laffin, the teacher at ʻIlima Intermediate, said it should ultimately fall on the state to provide schools with enough funds to cover supplies, rather than shifting the responsibility to teachers or families.

“It is an economic justice issue,” she said. “You see economic anxiety in the families, you see economic anxiety in the schools.” 

Droplets of blood red algae dance in a bubbling beaker in a WaiÊ»anae High School classroom, as LeihƍkĆ« Elementary schoolchildren huddle around. 

Recent WaiÊ»anae graduate Hyrum Tom and teacher Tyson Arasato tell the visiting children all about the algae, limu kohu, a popular edible species native to HawaiÊ»i. The algae population is declining in the wild,  to feed the community and help the wild limu recover.

By next year, Arasato said, the school hopes to scale up from beakers to large tanks full of algae for the community to consume.

“Instead of them having to go out and pick it, where it’s not found as much, we’ll let it restore outside in the wild,” Arasato said. “Then we can actually supply people with the food that they need — that’s the goal of aquaculture.”

The Marine Science Learning Center is the only dedicated high school aquaculture center in the state, and it’s been expanding its operations in recent years to give students more hands-on experience cultivating and caring for species many believe could become the lifeblood of HawaiÊ»i’s food system and economy.

The state’s aquaculture industry is expected to boom from a $90 million a year industry to $600 million a year in the next decade — according to the Department of Agriculture — and researchers say it will soon face a dearth of workers, which needs to be addressed if the industry is going to reach its full potential.

But it’s something of a Catch-22: despite predictions of workforce shortages and future growth, few of the students who have gone through the Waiʻanae center have found jobs in the field.

Part of the challenge is that many of the existing jobs require college degrees, something that . A bigger issue is that jobs at any level of experience are limited at the moment.

“The big bottleneck is not that we can’t do workforce training,” said Maria Haws, an aquaculture professor at the University of Hawaiʻi Hilo. “It’s that we need to grow the industry.”

But the state has done little to invest in the industry in recent years and lawmakers have yet to heed calls from local industry leaders and researchers to encourage growth through regulatory reform or investments in infrastructure.

Now, as a major aquaculture producer shutters on the Big Island and another sues the state for crippling its business, concerns are growing over whether HawaiÊ»i can actually achieve its potential. 

Despite the uncertainty, leaders and students at the Marine Science Learning Center are continuing to build upon the center’s decades of research.

The school is now using grant funding to expand its footprint with new tanks, as part of its ultimate bid to boost Leeward Oʻahu’s food security and establish a hatchery for native fish to reestablish throughout the state. Those species include Waiʻanae’s namesake ʻanae — native mullet.

Restoring mullet’s place on the Westside is intended to help students connect with their heritage and sense of place, but also as a way to boost food self-sufficiency and address the region’s food insecurity, which is among the worst on Oʻahu.

“We need to get our fishponds functional again,” learning center coordinator Dana Hoppe said. “You want to talk about food security? That’s food security right there.”

Addressing Industry Challenges

Industry leaders have long said aquaculture is the most promising sector of agriculture for HawaiÊ»i, a claim in line with global trends that show  for farmed fish and other marine species is accelerating.

HawaiÊ»i, they said, has a key role to play in the U.S. and global aquaculture industries — but the state has to address multiple obstacles for that to happen, according to .

In addition to building a workforce pipeline, the state needs to simplify the regulatory landscape, to attract entrepreneurs and encourage more private and public investments in the sector.

, completed by an international aquaculture consultant group hired by the state, noted that the state needs to invest more in infrastructure to help foster that development, such as land and processing facilities.

But the workforce was a key issue, one nearly every aquaculture business surveyed noted. They struggled to find well-qualified candidates within the state, while also finding it difficult to attract out-of-state talent.

Without fixing the apparent workforce deficit, the report said, the state’s aquaculture outlook would only worsen.

But the state has yet to show substantial support for the aquaculture industry and workforce development, according to Sen. Glenn Wakai, a longtime proponent for aquaculture in the Legislature.

The industry’s potential to grow to $600 million a year by 2034 requires dual efforts, happening simultaneously, to ensure jobs are there for young graduates, Wakai said. One idea is to build spaces for budding aquaculture entrepreneurs and businesses, like agricultural parks, while also attracting established businesses to conduct research in the state.

But the model for such an effort — Hawaiʻi Oceanic Science and Technology Park in Kona — has run into problems with water supply and tenants are suing the state for damages related to water quality.

Without the park, or more like it, graduates and the workforce will have nowhere to go but outside Hawaiʻi, Waikai said.

“Kudos to Waiʻanae,” Wakai said. “But when the kids all want to go to college, what kind of job opportunities will be here for them?”

Teaching Rigorous Skills

Hoppe and learning center staff, including former students, recently picked up a shipment of speckled and colorful tilapia for a senior capstone project. 

The tilapia will continue to grow in their tanks as students adjust the level of salt in their water tanks, to gain a better understanding of how water salinity affects flavor. Hoppe said she’s hopeful that fish raised at the school will soon follow the path of ogo, a seaweed the school provides – about 250 pounds per month – to the community’s elderly through the ‘. 

Students learn to monitor water quality, salinity, fish health and a long list of complex tasks as part of their work. And they also pass on their knowledge to visiting school groups, Hoppe said.

“We make sure that the curriculum is rigorous science,” Hoppe said. “But the skills are universal: Trying to teach them how to think critically, trying to teach them how to be responsible, trying to teach them values.” 

Hoppe said the practical experience helps show students their own potential. 

And while students at Waiʻanae may not all make their way into the aquaculture industry, the education is not wasted, Hoppe said, nor does their final career destination matter that much.

“The skills are universal,” she said.

Waiʻanae High School’s work has found support from lawmakers and state agencies, which fund many of the center’s projects, including the upcoming expansion.

The center is poised to begin work Thursday, installing new tanks and increasing the center’s footprint on campus, which will allow for more research in coming years.

Past students have investigated everything from raising shrimp, mullet and tilapia within one system, to an upcoming project focused on how salt levels in water influence the flavor of tilapia. The school is also part of a research collaboration with Big Island biotechnology firm Symbrosia on raising limu kohu.

WaiÊ»anae High School’s center is already unique from every other school in the state, with the only secondary learning center dedicated to aquaculture, uniquely positioning the roughly two dozen students enrolled each year to learn highly technical aspects of fish and algae farming.

In addition to Waiʻanae, four other schools statewide have learning centers focused more broadly on food and agriculture.

Waipahu High School is one of those schools, with brand new facilities dedicated to natural resources and agricultural education. Aquaculture is part of that, led in part by former shrimp farmer and Waipahu teacher Jeff Garvey.

Garvey has developed a workforce program to help build interest in aquaculture, alongside the University of HawaiÊ»i Hilo, which is the only college in the state to offer a full, four-year bachelor’s degree .

But even with a new “fancy and chic”  at Waipahu High School, Garvey said, it can be difficult to attract students to the field.

For many students, attaining a college degree is out of reach, according to marine center coordinator Hoppe. So getting a job in an industry that wants certain qualifications is difficult, despite their years of experience, making jobs in the trades more attractive and attainable.

But even college graduates are suffering. Some are forced to take other work due to a lack of opportunity within the industry, according to Maria Haws, a UH aquaculture professor and director of the Pacific Aquaculture and Coastal Resources Center.

One recent college graduate has just become a firefighter, Haws said, planning on saving money to later start her own farm due to the cost of getting started in Hawaiʻi.

“If we cannot set up farms, and if families and small businesses can’t set up farms because of regulatory inhibitions, what’s the point of producing a bunch of well-trained students that will just go somewhere else and get paid a lot more?” Haws said. “There’s not enough business here to absorb them.”

And while some students end up in research roles or as educators, Haws said,  on academic funding may also compromise that pipeline, too.

Haws said she hopes more lawmakers step up to address the shortcomings in the industry, in light of climate change, movements at the federal level and for the benefit of the state in general.

“If we have to import 80% of our seafood, yet we consume almost twice as much per capita as other states,” Haws said, “what the heck are we really doing?”

“” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.

Sarah Osofsky returned to school last year to earn her master’s degree in social work, hoping to give back to her community and find a job that would pay enough to survive Hawaiʻi’s high cost of living.

Now, less than two weeks away from graduation, the mother of two is struggling to find a position that can sustain her family.

Most social work jobs she’s seen in recent months offer salaries of $60,000 or less — enough to disqualify her from safety net programs like food stamps, but not enough to comfortably provide for her kids. She’s considered moving back to California where she has family who could support her, but she wants to stay in Hawaiʻi so her children can be near their dad.

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“What I’m balancing right now is, do I take a low, low paying job that then I’ll qualify for services like food stamps and Medicaid,” Osofsky said, “or do I hold out and try to find those few and far between really good jobs that will make enough so I don’t qualify but I don’t need it.”

Osofsky’s struggle is a familiar one for working families in Hawaiʻi. In 2024, nearly 30% of Hawaiʻi households were living paycheck-to-paycheck and struggling to afford basic necessities like housing, child care and food, according to an annual count of the state’s ALICE families — an acronym for people who are asset limited, income constrained, and employed.

Like Osofsky, roughly 40% of these families considered leaving the state over the past year, according to a study from Aloha United Way.

While some reports indicate that more locals have been returning to Hawaiʻi in the last few years, the state’s high cost of living continues to drive some families away, straining the public education system and economy.

Earlier this year, the Department of Education said its kindergarten enrollment dropped from 13,000 in 2019 to nearly 10,800 this year, citing estimates that 20% of people leaving Hawaiʻi are school-aged kids. The department is now starting the process of consolidating small schools, although it hasn’t yet identified which campuses are at risk of closure.

A few years ago, state lawmakers grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic proposed a bold slate of reforms to improve the plight of working families: free school meals for all, universal access to preschool and paid family leave. But the state’s big plans for progress have resulted in incremental steps, and some families and advocates say change isn’t happening quickly enough.

Lawmakers this session created a working group to study paid family leave but failed to turn the yearslong proposal into law. The state expanded eligibility for preschool tuition subsidies and funded preschool construction but failed to address the ongoing shortage of early learning educators. And Senate Bill 1300 — considered one of the biggest wins for students this year — expanded access to free school meals but stopped short of providing them for all kids.

At the same time, uncertainty looms around the future of programs that rely on federal dollars to support working families, including school meals and early learning centers.

Amid the upheaval, state lawmakers were hesitant to pass big spending measures this year, opting instead to set aside $200 million to help Hawaiʻi prepare for federal funding cuts. But some advocates say now is exactly the time for the state to make a bigger investment in families.

“The state Legislature, and frankly, the counties, should be thinking, ‘Bad stuff is coming,’” said Deborah Zysman, executive director of Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network. “We don’t quite know what yet, but we should be thinking about how to take care of our own people.”

An Urgent Need For Child Care

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Osofsky worried about the social development of her son, who was just turning 2 when lockdown restrictions began. But when he began attending the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa Children’s Center later that year, Osofsky said, he received services for his speech delay and became comfortable making friends and recognizing letters.

But paying for preschool was a challenge, Osofsky said. The Preschool Open Doors program provides a state subsidy to help cover tuition, but her son was ineligible when he started because the program only covered 4-year-olds at the time. The program expanded to include 3-year-olds last year.

Hawaiʻi has pledged to offer preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds by 2032. The Ready Keiki initiative, led by Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, currently estimates the state needs to add more than 330 classrooms in the next seven years to provide preschool to an additional 6,700 children.

While lawmakers successfully expanded access to tuition subsidies and funded more preschool construction this year, progress toward the state’s ambitious goal has slowed on other fronts.

One successful bill this session expands eligibility for preschool subsidies by including 2-year-olds and repealing the requirement that families must use the subsidy at a nationally accredited provider, which has created financial and administrative barriers for smaller programs in the past, Zysman said.

But the Department of Human Services is on track to spend only $20 million of its $50 million budget for preschool subsidies this year, said Scott Morishige, administrator of the department’s Benefit, Employment and Support Services Division.

To ramp up its spending, DHS is considering expanding the income eligibility to 500% of the federal poverty line. If DHS adopts the rules this summer, Morishige said, a family of four could make up to $184,000 annually and still be eligible for assistance, compared to the past income limit of $110,000.

The state budget sets aside $20 million to build more public preschool classrooms over the next three years. The state plans on opening 25 public preschool classrooms this fall and an additional 25 classrooms the following year, far less than previous estimates that Hawaiʻi could build 40-50 classrooms annually.

While the state would like to take a more aggressive approach to opening public preschool classrooms moving forward, Luke said, the Ready Keiki initiative is also relying on private providers and charter schools to help expand access. The state is starting larger construction projects, like standalone preschool centers, that could add seats more rapidly as they open in the next few years.

“There is an urgency for us to open as many preschool seats as we can,” she said.

But families’ demand for preschool could grow beyond what the state has anticipated if the federal government stops funding its own child care programs. Head Start, which relies on federal funding and serves roughly 2,800 children and pregnant mothers, is currently Hawaiʻi’s largest provider of early learning services, said Ryan Kusumoto, president and CEO of the nonprofit Parents And Children Together.

The Trump administration has previously threatened to cut funding entirely for Head Start, although the most recent version of the federal budget keeps program funding intact. Some Hawaiʻi Head Start programs are still waiting to receive confirmation for next year’s funding, and the recent closure of some regional offices could create backlogs in awarding this money, said Ben Naki, president of the Head Start Association of Hawaiʻi.

“There’s no existing infrastructure that can pick up those 2,800 kids,” Kusumoto said. “And we’re talking about kids who don’t have any other resources.”

First Steps For Free Meals

Since September, Christine Russo said paying for meals has become a greater challenge for her family as her twins joined her 10-year-old in attending school every day. She sets aside roughly $180 each month so her kids can purchase breakfast and lunch at school — a challenge for the public school teacher, whose husband is a retail store manager.

Russo’s kids don’t qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, but she said her family could still benefit from the ongoing push to bring back a pandemic-era program that made meals free for all students.

Lawmakers stopped short of funding a universal free meals program this year but took incremental steps by passing Senate Bill 1300. Starting next year, the state will provide free school meals to students who currently qualify for reduced-price lunch. The following year, eligibility for free school meals would be expanded to families making up to 300% of the federal poverty level, or roughly $110,000 for a family of four.

The bill appropriates $565,000 to provide more free school meals next year and an additional $3.4 million for the program’s expansion the following year. More than 68,000 students in the Department of Education qualified for free meals this year, and 10,000 qualified for reduced-price meals.

The bill also requires schools feed students who don’t have enough money to purchase lunch or already have meal debt. Students have accrued more than $105,000 in meal debt this school year, DOE communications director Nanea Ching said.

At Castle High School, junior Tayli Kahoopii said she receives free meals, but some of her friends don’t qualify. When someone doesn’t have enough money in their account to purchase lunch, the register makes a buzzing sound — loud enough to embarrass students and, in one instance, deter Kahoopii’s friend from trying to purchase meals for a week.

“On a daily basis, you see kids getting their food taken away, and there’s really nothing that they can do about it,” Kahoopii said, adding that it’s difficult for students to learn and focus when they don’t have access to food during the school day.

Rep. Scot Matayoshi, who has introduced bills for the past three years proposing free school meals, said SB1300 is an important step. But he still plans on advocating for universal free school meals in the coming years, especially since it would reduce the administrative barriers schools and families face in determining who qualifies for free meals.

Daniela Spoto, director of food equity at Hawaiʻi Appleseed, said providing all students with free school meals could also become more important with federal funding on the line. Proposed federal cuts to a program allowing schools in low-income areas to provide free meals to all children could impact 52 schools and more than 27,000 kids in Hawaiʻi, according to estimates from the Food Research and Action Center.

“It should be a staple for our schools to have free school lunch,” said Castle junior Haliʻa Tom-Jardine, who will begin qualifying for free school meals next year. “It should be a right.”

‘Bad Things Are Coming’

During the pandemic, people saw lawmakers step up and meet the needs of working families through federal initiatives like the child tax credit and free school meals, said Kayla Keehu-Alexander, vice president of community impact at Aloha United Way. Now, she said, state lawmakers need to do the same during times of uncertainty.

“If we don’t start making some big policy changes around the cost of living, around housing, we could potentially be looking at a larger out-migration than we’ve had in the past,” she said.

Hawaiʻi is already starting to see the possible impacts of out-migration on its schools and economy. While some people are coming back to Hawaiʻi to raise families, Keehu-Alexander said, it’s unclear if they’re joining the workforce in areas with the worst staffing shortages, like education or healthcare.

Looking ahead to next year, Zysman said she would like to see a successful bill establishing paid family leave in Hawaiʻi, which would provide caregivers paid time off to care for their loved ones. Lawmakers have failed to pass a bill for several years, although they did approve a resolution last month establishing a working group that will study how to implement paid family leave over the next year.

Zysman added that she’s concerned about the long-term impacts of the historic tax cut lawmakers passed last year. While she supports cuts that can make it more affordable for people to stay in Hawaiʻi, she said, she’s worried that tax breaks for the wealthiest will make it harder for the state to fund programs that can keep working families afloat.

“In my gut, I feel like bad things are coming,” Zysman said, “and we should have acted more preemptively.”

This was originally published on . Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

Mai Hall expected that her oldest child would automatically receive special education services for her autism, dyslexia and ADHD when she enrolled in a KaimukÄ« elementary school 10 years ago. But the school said Hall’s daughter didn’t need any additional support, insisting that she earned good grades and got along with her friends. 

It was only after Hall received training from a federally funded parent information center that she was able to successfully advocate for her daughter — and later, her son — to get the support services they needed.

Parents of students with disabilities have long struggled to ensure their kids have the resources and support they need in public schools in Hawaiʻi, which ranks among the worst states in the nation when it comes to academic outcomes for special education students.

Today, Hall’s daughter is attending college and her son is receiving the accommodations he needs to feel supported and happy at school. But Hall and other families are worried that potential cuts to federal funding and efforts to shutter the U.S. Department of Education will result in fewer services and learning opportunities for special education students.   

“We really don’t need to worry about our children’s education any more than we already are,” Hall said. 

Education advocates and families say federal funding and regulation have played a key role in strengthening protections for special education students in Hawaiʻi, but it’s unclear what oversight will look like moving forward. President Donald Trump cut the U.S. DOE’s staff by nearly half last month, resulting in the closure of seven civil rights offices dedicated to processing student discrimination claims, including those related to disabilities.

A  from the administration also aims to dismantle the U.S. DOE, and the administration has proposed shifting special education programs to the Department of Health and Human Services. But the health department doesn’t have the staff or expertise to hold states accountable for following federal special education laws, said Meghan Burke, a professor at Vanderbilt University.    

A reduction in federal oversight may make it harder for HawaiÊ»i families to receive support and resources for their children, said attorney Keith Peck, who leads the  providing legal representation to families seeking special education services. 

Federal funding is currently tied to HawaiÊ»i’s compliance with special education laws, Peck said, but he’s worried the new administration may provide states with more flexibility and less accountability on how the money can be spent.   

“If the funding is no longer linked to allowing the parents to assert their rights and dispute against the Department of Education, if the (HawaiÊ»i) DOE no longer has to comply with those protections, then nobody will have any protections,” Peck said. 

What’s At Stake? 

HawaiÊ»i’s education department enrolls over 18,000 special education students and receives $50 million from the federal government each year to educate those children. To access the money,  HawaiÊ»i must submit annual data reports and comply with federal laws requiring schools provide special education students with necessary services, from physical therapy to one-on-one aids. 

Teachers, families and educational specialists work together to determine the specific services students with disabilities should receive in schools. 

But HawaiÊ»i has fallen short of meeting federal benchmarks for the quality of special education services for the last decade, according to  from the U.S. DOE. 

HawaiÊ»i’s special education students rank among the lowest in the nation in reading and math proficiency and learn in traditional classroom settings at lower rates than their peers on the mainland. 

Researchers and families say  in general education classrooms provides them with important opportunities to interact with their peers and raise their academic achievement. 

Leah Yim said she’s lost count of the hundreds of meetings she’s attended over the years to advocate for her two children with special needs. 

Yim’s 6-year-old daughter currently receives speech therapy for her autism spectrum disorder, while her 15-year-old son has a nurse and aid accompanying him in class. He also receives services like physical and occupational therapy as part of his treatment after having a stroke in utero. 

Yim said she hasn’t heard of any changes to her children’s services so far, but worries that federal funding cuts could reduce the number of educators and specialists in schools, which already face a shortage of special education teachers. 

“My worry would just be the amount of caseloads that they’re carrying, and then how that would affect their quality of services one-on-one with our child,” said Yim, whose family also  against the state education department in 2023 accusing a teacher at Kaiser High School of sexually abusing their son. 

While the U.S. DOE plays a key role in protecting the rights of special education students, the agency has limited enforcement powers.

In the most extreme cases, the U.S. DOE can take away special education funding if states aren’t complying with federal law, said Nathan Stevenson, an associate professor at Kent State University. In most cases, he said, the federal government steps in with grants or training to support states in areas where they’re struggling. 

In HawaiÊ»i, the federal government has provided a variety of aid, such as training sessions teaching staff how to resolve disputes with parents over special education services and collaborations with national centers to expand access to preschool for students with disabilities, said department spokesperson Krislyn Yano. The department declined an interview for this story. 

The U.S. DOE also has a regulatory branch, the Office of Civil Rights, dedicated to processing complaints from students who file claims of discrimination based on gender, race, age or disability against their schools. As of January 2025, HawaiÊ»i had  in both public schools and universities, 17 of which had to do with students’ disabilities. 

JD Hsin, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, said recent staffing cuts to OCR and the closure of seven regional offices will make it much harder for the remaining employees to handle families’ complaints and ensure states are providing special education students with the services they need. As of January 2025, OCR had over 12,000 pending cases that could take years to close and required in-depth investigations involving families, schools and federal attorneys.  

Now, with fewer staff on board, Hsin said, he’s worried that many cases will be left unresolved, leaving families with no answers about the support their children should receive in school. 

“Those are kids’ lives,” Hsin said. “These are just kids who want an education.” 

Reduced Oversight And Enforcement 

At the HawaiÊ»i Disability Rights Center, Executive Director Louis Erteschik said he’s most concerned about what accountability will remain if the U.S. DOE is dismantled and special education is moved to the Department of Health and Human Services. Already, he said, many students with disabilities aren’t receiving the education they deserve under law. 

In 2019, Erteschik  with the Office of Civil Rights arguing that students with disabilities weren’t receiving adequate services because they were suspended at three times the rate of the rest of their peers. 

While Trump has proposed shifting special education oversight from the U.S. DOE to the Department of Health and Human Services, the move would require an act of Congress, said Jennifer Coco, interim executive director at The Center for Learner Equity. But there are ongoing worries that the federal government could reduce funding for students with disabilities, she said, adding that the U.S. DOE is already underfunding special education in schools and has consistently fallen short of its promise of covering 40% of the costs of providing services. 

Currently, the funding HawaiÊ»i receives from the U.S. DOE makes up roughly 10% of what the state spends on special education. 

U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda said the state would have to fill in the funding gaps if the federal government reduces its support for special education. But, she said, the uncertainty around the future of federal funding makes it hard for state lawmakers to plan on how they’ll meet special education students’ needs.  

“I have great fears that we will go backwards in terms of actually providing the appropriate and adequate education to our special needs students,” Tokuda said.  

Federal funding for HawaiÊ»i schools should remain roughly the same from this year to next year,  Superintendent Keith Hayashi is slated to give to the Board of Education on Thursday.

Peck at the Advocacy Project said he’s most concerned that the federal government won’t enforce the mandates that have historically accompanied its special education funding to states. With the administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. DOE, the federal government will lack the staff and expertise needed to oversee states’ compliance with special education law, he said. 

HawaiÊ»i has a state equivalent of the federal special education law that also requires schools to meet the needs of students with disabilities, providing families with an extra layer of protection if the federal government stops enforcing its laws. But the state still needs an external source of enforcement to keep schools accountable, Peck said.    

It’s unlikely the HawaiÊ»i education department will take on the added responsibility of strengthening oversight over its schools, Erteschik said, adding that states don’t have the same familiarity with special education law and requirements compared to the federal level. 

“The state can’t oversee itself by definition,” he said.

This story was originally posted on .

Natalie Watts loves her computer science classes at Campbell High School. The junior has studied everything from coding robots to creating online computer games and was initially attracted to the career track because of the technological skills she could gain and the high-paying jobs that could follow. 

But when Watts recently participated in a presentation highlighting Campbell’s STEM programs, she received an unexpected question from the audience: Is being in the program “like going to an all-boys school?”

In the 2022-23 school year, 70% of students in Campbell’s information technology classes were boys. The school had a similar gender gap in its architecture and science programs. 

Watts has always felt supported and welcomed by her male peers and teachers, but she also wants more girls to see computer science and engineering as a part of their futures. 

Campbell is one of 46 Hawaii public high schools enrolling students in career and technical education courses, which provide hands-on learning, internships and training to prepare students for life after graduation. Students usually enroll in a single CTE program throughout high school, taking multiple classes related to careers in fields such as nursing, teaching and engineering. 

The number of students enrolled in CTE pathways has exploded in Hawaii in recent years, amid debates about how to help students secure high-paying jobs after graduation and combat the state’s high cost of living. Nearly two-thirds of the class of 2023 participated in a high school CTE program. 

But the programs  across the state. 

In the 2022-23 school year, boys made up nearly 75% of Hawaii CTE programs focused on STEM and information technology, and roughly 70% of programs focused on manufacturing. On the other hand, girls made up three-quarters of health care programs like nursing. 

Researchers say these patterns reflect and reinforce larger trends in the state’s workforce, where men dominate lucrative careers such as engineering and computer science. Statewide, women make 86 cents for every dollar men earn, in part because of which careers they pursue,  from the University of Hawaii. 

Federal legislation requires states to track gender enrollment in these programs and dedicate funds to address enrollment disparities that help perpetuate longstanding  and shut women out of higher-paying opportunities. But many states — including Hawaii — have made little progress in closing the gender gap over the past five years. 

Hawaii has slightly better success than mainland districts in getting boys interested in careers in education — and has equal participation in some career tracks like business and hospitality — but the state is lagging behind the national average when it comes to enrolling girls in fields most likely to lead to high-paying jobs in the future.

The Hawaii Department of Education declined multiple interview requests for this story, but individual principals say they are exploring a range of strategies to address the problem, from career fairs highlighting women in STEM to presentations encouraging middle schoolers to keep their minds open about future jobs. Outside organizations and employers have also stepped in to help schools close gender gaps.

But efforts vary by school, and some CTE coordinators say the state isn’t doing enough to help schools create gender-balanced programs.

“There’s no real systematic approach,” said Jeremy Seitz, who leads the engineering CTE program at Farrington High School. 

Federal Funds And Few Plans 

Eden Ledward is the face of the University of Hawaii’s CTE carpentry program. A minute-long video on the university’s website shows Ledward building houses, studying construction plans and operating a handsaw as she explains how CTE classes help her pursue her passion for building.  

“My classmates and instructors are solid, and we get real experience doing real work,” she says to the camera. 

The promotional video is the product of federal funds Hawaii receives annually to support CTE programs at the high school and college level under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. Of the $7 million the federal government provided Hawaii for its CTE programs in 2024, the state was required to set aside $60,000 to address gender disparities.

Many of these dollars have gone toward creating promotional videos posted on the . The videos feature students who are pursuing CTE programs that have traditionally been dominated by a single gender, such as construction or nursing, said Warren Kawano, career pathways and strategy director at the organization .

UH isn’t required to report on the outcomes of specific gender equality initiatives using Perkins funds, and it’s difficult to measure the impact of these marketing campaigns, Kawano said. But he hopes the videos help broaden students’ understanding of the careers they can pursue. 

“If you’re interested, there’s a place for you,” he said.  

The state Department of Education gets about $1.4 million a year of the state’s Perkins funding. In the past, department spokesperson Kimi Takazawa said, schools have used some of the federal funds to purchase safety gear for girls in CTE programs, bring in female guest speakers to speak about their experiences in STEM fields, and more.

But the department could not say how much money was spent on initiatives around gender equality and doesn’t track in detail how schools use the funds. 

Schools receive Perkins funds based on the number of students enrolled in their CTE programs, said Waiākea High School Principal Kelcy Koga, but staff have a lot of flexibility in how the funds can be used. Waiākea has used the money on everything from hiring CTE staff to running a daylong program teaching elementary and middle school girls about robotics and engineering.

State leaders have said that equity and access in these programs is paramount, but there are few details on how they will achieve that. When the state submitted a comprehensive plan in 2020 to the federal government outlining how it would improve equity and enrollment in its CTE programs, there was not a single mention of how Hawaii would close its gender gap in the 157-page document.

That doesn’t mean that the state disregarded the issue completely, Kawano said, since the $60,000 designated for gender equality is only a small portion of the funding Hawaii uses for CTE. It’s up to the education department and individual schools, he said, to determine how to achieve greater equality in their CTE programs. 

Since the plan’s implementation, the state has made some progress, but the change hasn’t been the same across all programs. The proportion of girls enrolled in STEM programs rose from 20% to 27% between 2020 and 2022, but the percentage of boys participating in the health science career track stayed roughly the same, at 25%. 

‘Highly Segregated By Gender’

Hawaii is not alone in this.

A 2024 analysis from the U.S. Department of Education found that high school girls earned roughly the same number of CTE credits in architecture and construction in 2019 as they did in 1990. At the same time, the gap between the number of boys and girls in CTE health care programs grew as female students enrolled in classes at higher rates.   

“These results underscore the need for continued leadership in this space and an urgent, strategic focus on better engaging females in career pathways that lead to good jobs,” U.S. DOE Assistant Secretary for Career, Technical and Adult Education Amy Loyd wrote last year. “CTE programs in some career clusters remain highly segregated by gender, as do the occupations for which they prepare students.”

A number of factors can explain states’ ongoing challenges in achieving gender equality in career-based learning, said Emily Passias, deputy executive director of the national advocacy group Advance CTE. Gender gaps may persist as students gravitate toward the same classes as their friends, she said, or feel family pressure to pursue traditional careers. Sometimes, she added, CTE programs like welding may not have equipment specially fitted for girls, further enforcing gender stereotypes. 

“Those are things that signal to young people, I’m welcome or not welcome here,” she said.  

Some schools have shown that it’s possible to address gender segregation in CTE. 

Roughly half of students in STEM programs in the District of Columbia were girls in the 2021-22 school year, compared to the national average of 30%. The district said its success comes from teaching girls about careers in STEM from a young age and hosting career fairs and guest speakers emphasizing the importance of gender diversity in fields such as health care and engineering. 

But efforts in Hawaii are mostly piecemeal.

When Jeremy Seitz began teaching engineering and design technology classes at Farrington High School in 2008, all his students were boys. Roughly a quarter of students in the school’s engineering program are now girls. 

Making engineering classes a more welcoming place for girls has taken time, Seitz said. Growing up in Kalihi, he said, students have few opportunities to explore career options, and girls are often expected to stay home and take care of their younger siblings. 

The school brings in female engineers as guest speakers, Seitz said, and high school girls visit nearby middle schools to give lessons and show younger students what it’s like to study construction and architecture. 

Watts, the junior studying computer science at Campbell High School, is working with classmates on events that encourage girls to sign up for STEM programs. 

“If you want to do it, you should do it,” Watts tells younger students. “Don’t let male domination keep you from doing what you want to do.” 

‘You Just Have To Keep Trying’

There’s been little statewide effort to make sure all programs are taking similar steps. The state education department has occasionally completed equity audits of schools’ CTE programs, Seitz said, but he hasn’t seen any action taken based on that data.   

The CTE program at Waipahu High School, formerly under the leadership of Superintendent Keith Hayashi, is considered one of the trailblazers in providing career-based learning to all students during their four years on campus. Over 90% of Waipahu’s graduating class of 2023 participated in CTE, and the school opened a  hosting the culinary and natural resources programs just over a year ago. 

“It’s an opportunity for us in the department to lead change not only in Hawaii but, I believe, across the country,” Hayashi said at the learning center’s grand opening in December 2023. 

Even the state’s premier CTE school has significant gender gaps in its health care and engineering programs. Only 15% of students in the industrial and engineering technology program are girls. Meanwhile, only a quarter of students are boys in the health and science program.  

Waipahu High School Principal Zachary Sheets said achieving gender equality in CTE is a top priority. He tries to make sure there’s equal gender representation in the presentations and promotional materials the school gives to students choosing their CTE programs and has added career tracks like kinesiology to try to make the health care program appealing to more boys. 

“Don’t limit yourself,” Sheets said he tells students. “If you really have a passion about it, we want you to pursue that.” 

Sheets is optimistic that efforts by feeder schools to provide career education to younger students will help close some gender gaps at the high school level.

An equal number of boys and girls are enrolled in classes such as woodworking and aquaponics at nearby Waikele Elementary, said Michelle Tavares-Yamada, the school’s academy pathway director.

Younger kids aren’t always aware of gender stereotypes around certain jobs, she said, and the school capitalizes on this by encouraging students to explore their interests.

“I think our students see that, so they don’t think about those gender inequities,” she said. 

With limited statewide guidance, some community groups and local employers are also stepping in to help schools close their gender gaps. 

Since 2018, the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii has led a pilot program targeting middle and high school girls who are interested in careers in STEM. The program, taking place in the Castle, Campbell and Waipahu complexes, connects schools with female leaders in the field and hosts activities and panels teaching girls about engineering at partner campuses. 

Kathleen Chu, who helps lead the initiative and works at the local engineering firm Bowers + Kubota, said young girls aren’t always aware that engineering is a high-paying career path. When talking to girls about their CTE options, she shares the challenges of working in a male-dominated field but also emphasizes that women can bring leadership skills and new perspectives to the job. 

“You can’t give up,” said Chu, adding that she doesn’t want girls to disregard a career in engineering because they struggle with math or haven’t seen many women at a construction site before. “You just have to keep trying.” 

In the three school complexes hosting the pilot program, the percentage of girls in engineering CTE programs has increased from 17% to 26% over the last five years. The Chamber of Commerce is trying to expand the program and identify new schools as future partners, said Lord Ryan Lizardo, vice president of education. 

Even with these partnerships and guest speakers, it’s still difficult to encourage students to pursue programs where they’ll be in the minority, said Tracie Koide, a teacher at Campbell High School. Teachers try to create welcoming environments for all students, regardless of their gender, she added, but many kids want to enroll in the same programs as their friends.

Looking Ahead

Hawaii has the opportunity to ramp up its efforts to achieve greater gender equality this year, as the state prepares to submit a new CTE plan to the federal government. 

The  offers few details on how schools will address gender gaps, but the public will have the opportunity to provide feedback on the document beginning next month.

For now, said UH research economist Rachel Inafuku, differences in career preparation for boys and girls can contribute to gender gaps already existing in the workplace. 

Nearly 80% of Hawaii’s elementary and middle school teachers are female and earn a median income of $63,000. Electrical engineers, 90% of whom are male, have a median income of more than $100,000. 

At the Chamber of Commerce, Lizardo said he’d like to see more professional development for teachers when it comes to helping students make informed decisions about CTE. It’s important for schools to be honest about gender inequalities in the workforce, he added, but students should also have as much information as possible when deciding what CTE programs to pursue so they’re not swayed by their families or friends.  

David Sun-Miyashiro, executive director of HawaiiKidsCAN, said the state should take a closer look at the way schools are marketing and administering CTE programs with clear differences in enrollment for boys and girls. CTE programs should open up new opportunities for students, he added, rather than confining them to the limited representation they currently see in the workforce.   

“I think we need to have those really honest and sometimes tough conversations,” he said. 

This story is a collaboration between  and , with support from Ascendium Education Group.

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

Karisa Bayudan spent her junior year of high school moving between hotel rooms after her family lost their home in last yearʻs Lahaina wildfires. She did her homework from the couch when she didnʻt have space of her own.

Now a senior at Lahainaluna High School, things are better — for her and her classmates. Sheʻs keeping up with her coursework and taking classes at a local community college. And school spirit is better, she said, with students more eager to participate in homecoming traditions and volunteer events.

But there are still challenges ahead. Bayudan is worried about what will happen when her familyʻs temporary housing ends in the spring. And the consequences of the devastating Lahaina fires on Aug. 8, 2023, can be seen in her classmatesʻ academic scores and attendance, even as Hawai‘i’s education department has struggled to bring more mental health support to the schools.

“I’m in a much better head space now than I was in junior year, especially since I’m in more stable housing at the moment,” Bayudan said.

Recent data from the Hawaiʻi Department of Education illustrate just how difficult last year was for Lahaina students, with math and reading proficiency rates dropping by nearly half at some schools between 2023 and 2024.

The department received a $2 million federal grant to support student learning and mental health earlier this year, but a shortage of behavioral specialists and therapists has prevented schools from hiring necessary personnel. Instead, most of the funds spent so far have gone toward bus services allowing students to commute from Central Maui to Lahaina for school.

Only two-thirds of Lahaina students have returned to their schools since the fires, which destroyed King Kamehameha III Elementary and closed three other campuses from August to October 2023. Some families are skeptical that Lahaina schools will ever return to previous levels of enrollment and staffing, especially as teacher burnout is high and some students move away from West Maui.

But educators like Jarrett Chapin, who teaches at Lahainaluna, believe their students are benefitting from the stability and structure of this year. Kids are more engaged in class and attend school regularly, teachers say, and schools are doubling down on tutoring and personalized check-ins, with an eye on ensuring kids graduate on time. 

“The fire is a landmark or touchstone that everyone has in common, but it’s not as raw,” said Chapin. “I think school life has improved.”

Improvements In Learning

At Lahainaluna High School, Chapin said his students were in survival mode after the fires. It was difficult for students to stay focused and motivated, he added, especially when they were facing so much uncertainty at home.

Last year, 5% of Lahainaluna students tested proficient in math, down from 10% in the 2022-23 school year. The school’s college enrollment rate dropped from 48% to 40% between 2023 and 2024, despite the University of HawaiÊ»i’s offer of full scholarships to students who graduated from Lahainaluna in June.  to keep up in their classes after the fires and complete graduation requirements.

Test scores for the current school year won’t be released until next fall, and it’s unclear what long-term effects the fires will have on student learning. But at least itÊ»s a less chaotic year.

“Kids still go through stuff, but gosh, it was so raw last year,” Chapin said. “We are so much further away from that.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, meeting with state leaders and Lahaina principals earlier this month, emphasized the importance of high-quality support for students as they continue to grieve after the fires, and for staff, who may be experiencing burnout.

Students at King Kamehameha III Elementary experienced some of the greatest disruptions, missing over 50 days of school last year. In the spring, roughly a third of students tested proficient in math and reading, down from 45% the year before.

Mindi Cherry, a teacher at King Kamehameha III Elementary, said her first graders seem to be on track with their learning this year. To curb absenteeism, the school is offering ice cream parties to classes with the highest attendance rates, she said. Teachers will also offer tutoring in January to students who have fallen behind.

DOE said recruiting and retaining teachers also remains a priority, although the drop in student enrollment at some schools has corresponded to the loss of some staff. Lahainaluna lost a few teachers in the math and English departments, Chapin said, but the remaining staff has been able to serve the existing student population, which fell by 200 kids this year.

Erin Vegas, who taught fourth grade at Princess NāhiÊ»enaÊ»ena Elementary last year, said she’s worried schools could continue to see a drop in their staffing in the future with the high cost of living and lack of affordable housing in West Maui.

“They won’t be able to retain anybody if there’s this huge fear that so many teachers will never be able to stay,” Vegas said, adding that she moved to OÊ»ahu after she wasn’t able to find housing at the end of last school year. The education department plans to build  on Lahainaluna’s campus that could be available for teachers starting next summer. 

Where Did The Students Go?

While Lahaina’s student population dropped by a third this year, not all students left at the same rate.

Before the fires, roughly half of Lahaina students were low-income. Now, at least three-quarters of students at Lahaina schools are, according to data from standardized tests issued every spring.

King Kamehameha III Elementary teacher Robert Livermore says wealthier families may have moved out of Lahaina schools since the fires and transitioned to private or charter schools.

“Those who could did, those who couldn’t went without,” Livermore said, adding that he sees more students coming to school without snacks or supplies this year.

It’s more difficult to explain declining enrollment trends among other groups of students. For example, white students made up over 45% of King Kamehameha III Elementary’s student population before the fires but have since dropped to less than 30% of the overall enrollment. English language learners now make up more than a third of the elementary school’s population, compared to only 18% before the fires.

The department did not respond to questions about enrollment, and there’s little data available on how the overall population of Lahaina has changed since the fires.

Shrinking student populations in Lahaina could mean cuts in staffing and budgets in the coming years, since enrollment determines a large part of schools’ budgets. DOE Deputy Superintendent Tammi Oyadomari-Chun said the department plans on slowly reducing Lahaina schools’ budgets over the next few years to prevent schools from losing resources and teachers entirely.

Some families who sought other learning options after the fires still haven’t returned to Lahaina schools.

David Weeks chose to enroll his children in HawaiÊ»i Technology Academy, a charter school with a Lahaina campus, when he didn’t feel safe sending his children to DOE schools near the burn zone last year. While his daughter returned to Lahaina Intermediate this fall, Weeks added, his son has remained at HTA. 

Kaliko Storer, a parent at Princess Nāhiʻenaʻena Elementary, said some families simply don’t have the money or time to wait for housing to open up in West Maui. She’s hopeful more students will return to Lahaina schools in the future, but she also understands if families don’t want their children to keep moving campuses.

“It’s a work in progress,” she said.  

A Need For More Services

But while there are some indications that academics are on the upswing in schools, staff and students say they’re worried about having enough mental health resources to help those who are still processing the events of last year.

Heather Long, program director for Maui Youth and Family Services, said some students are only now understanding the loss and trauma they experienced after the fires. When Lahaina schools reopened last year, she added, many students were still focused on securing their basic needs and weren’t fully processing their emotions.

“Dealing with the trauma now, I actually do think it gets worse,” Long said, adding that a shortage of counselors and therapists on Maui can make it harder for students to connect with trusted adults or focus on their schoolwork if they’re struggling emotionally.

King Kamehameha III Elementary Principal Ian Haskins said the elementary school has two counselors and a behavioral specialist for students, but it’s still a struggle to find providers . After the fires, DOE trained Lahaina staff to help students cope with mental health struggles and trauma, and partnered with Kaiser Permanente and other organizations to offer support groups for students.

The Lahaina complex and surrounding region is hiring five positions focused on student behavior and mental health, with some of the positions vacant since January, according to DOE’s .

But the department has struggled to spend much of a $2 million federal grant supporting mental health and academics. So far, Chun said, DOE has spent roughly $600,000 on bus services for students who are commuting to Lahaina schools from other parts of the island, but hasn’t been able to hire mental health professionals like it intended under the grant.

The grant will run until next summer.

In the meantime, school principals say they’re worried about students and staff who spent the last year running on adrenaline. Teachers are tired, said Lahainaluna Principal Richard Carosso, and many were burned out at the end of last school year.

“I don’t think summer was long enough for our staff,” he said earlier this month in a meeting with state and federal leaders.

Bayudan, the senior at Lahainaluna, said she’s grateful for the therapists available on campus but wishes students received more encouragement to seek care. Many of her friends and classmates are hesitant to open up about the emotions and challenges they’re facing, she added.

“I don’t think what we have right now is serving us enough,” Bayudan said.

This story was originally published on Civil Beat.

When Espie Chapman began teaching introductory agriculture classes at Kailua Intermediate School three years ago, the plot of land near her classroom was mostly vacant except for a small orchard of fruit trees.

Chapman had no farming experience, but she was determined to create a space where her seventh and eighth grade students could grow fresh fruits and vegetables. She asked the teens what they wanted to plant and got to work purchasing wheelbarrows and seeds for her class.

The school’s garden now produces fruits and vegetables like bok choy, spinach and papaya that Chapman’s students transform into soups and salads to sample during class.

“We just try and look at what’s in our farm, and what kind of recipes can we do with that,” Chapman said. “If they’re going to try and eat it, we’ll make it happen.”

Chapman’s class teaches teens about nutrition and sustainability, but while students are cooking the kind of locally sourced and culturally relevant lunches that the Hawaii Department of Education aspires to provide in all schools, they can’t actually serve meals in the cafeteria.

DOE previously ran a pilot program to train schools on food safety and enable them to serve produce from their gardens, but the program has been on pause since the Covid-19 pandemic. Without it, Chapman would have to figure out how to meet strict federal and state protocols on her own to supply the school’s cafeteria with produce from the garden.

DOE did not respond to questions about the status of the Garden to Cafeteria program and whether schools will be able to participate in the future.

Approximately 85% of Hawaii schools have gardens, but only a few have serious agricultural programs where students earn certifications as food handlers or gain firsthand experience harvesting and selling produce and using sustainable growing methods.

Typically teachers use school gardens for lessons ranging from the life cycle of a plant to a poetry unit focused on nature. But some want to take their lessons a step further by using produce from the gardens in school meals, exposing more kids to fresh fruits and vegetables and giving students a sense of ownership over what they’re eating.

DOE has historically struggled to increase the use of local ingredients in school lunches, and advocates say gardens can encourage students to eat healthier.

“School gardens can galvanize a community,” said Natalie McKinney, chief program officer of the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, which promotes environmental education and runs a learning farm in Haleiwa.

‘A Hidden Gem’

Third grade teacher Rex Dubiel Shanahan planted a garden at Sunset Elementary when she first started teaching in 1987 and takes pride in showing students how to plant seeds or make kimchi using the carrots they grow.

“You can teach almost everything through the garden,” Dubiel Shanahan said.

Sunset Elementary participates in the Aina In Schools program, which is run by the Kokua Hawaii Foundation and provides schools with activities that tie gardening to lessons in science and nutrition. But, Dubiel Shanahan said, she would like more schools to have access to resources on sustainability and healthy eating for students.

In recent years, DOE has offered more professional development opportunities for teachers interested in starting gardens. It has developed resources for schools to create peace gardens to support student mental health and is helping teachers incorporate more lessons about native plants into their classes, said Jennifer Ryan, the department’s school garden coordinator.

Even with more resources and professional development available, it can be daunting for teachers to maintain school gardens on their own, said Waikiki Elementary Principal Ryan Kusuda. Schools don’t have a dedicated source of funding to hire full-time garden coordinators, and many campuses rely on families and teachers when it comes to weeding, harvesting and other tasks.

Waikiki Elementary has the extra budget to pay for a sustainability teacher and a part-time farm manager dedicated to facilitating student learning and keeping up the garden, Kusuda said, adding it would be difficult to maintain the space solely through volunteers.

“It’s a hidden gem,” Kusuda said, adding that the school has roughly 80 fruit trees supplying tangerines and starfruit that students can sample during class.

In some cases, schools use gardens to help jump-start students’ careers.

In Leilehua High School’s career and technical education program, students in the natural resources pathway are responsible for 3.5 acres of land on which they grow lettuce, beets, radishes and more. CTE teacher Jackie Freitas requires her students to earn their certifications in food handling and gain experience selling produce to teachers and families every week.

“We are trying to help our community and provide them with fresh produce that they can afford and that they know is safe,” Freitas said.

Other schools have taught their students the importance of eating local by drawing on their gardens to supply produce to their cafeterias.

Last month, students at the Hawaii Academy of Arts and Science supplied 160 pounds of kalo from their garden to the cafeteria. Cooks at the Big Island charter school turned the taro into poi, which students enjoyed with their lunches of kalua pork and rice, said teacher Wendy Baker.

While the gardens don’t produce enough fruits and vegetables to supply 600 lunches every day, Baker added, occasionally incorporating food from the garden in school lunches helps students appreciate the time and effort that goes into their meals.

“When they help the garden, the garden helps them,” Baker said.

But including produce from the garden in school meals raises the stakes when it comes to requirements around food safety.

Schools already follow best practices around harvesting and preparing produce, such as requiring students to sanitize their hands and thoroughly wash their fruits and vegetables, said Debbie Millikan, a member of the Hawaii Farm to School Network and director of sustainability at Punahou School. But when it comes to growing food for school meals, campuses need to comply with additional state and federal guidelines like testing their water for E. coli every year and tracking the exact location where students harvest produce.

If students get sick from school meals, Millikan said, it’s important for schools to identify the source of the problem and know where their ingredients originate.

“Food safety and garden safety is absolutely critical, no matter whether you’re growing it at home or growing in a school garden,” Millikan said. “The record-keeping part is really critical because you’re serving a large group of students a large amount of food.”

In 2018, DOE started a Garden to Cafeteria pilot program to adopt federal regulations around food safety and apply them to schools. Participating campuses were required to document their compliance with water, soil and food safety requirements in order to incorporate fruits and vegetables from their gardens into meals.

A dozen schools participated in the three-year pilot, but frequent turnover in DOE’s food services branch put the program on pause as schools reopened during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Dennis Chase, program manager at the Hawaii Public Health Institute. Most schools, including past participants in the pilot, haven’t been able to serve food from their gardens since.

McKinney at the Kokua Hawaii Foundation said she’s hopeful DOE will revive the program. Schools are unlikely to grow at the scale they need to produce all their own food, she added, but it’s important to incorporate more local produce in school meals so students will be more receptive to trying new fruits and vegetables in the future.

Other Ways To Meet School Food Needs

Numerous schools on the mainland — and a few in Hawaii — have been able to tackle food safety issues to grow food for their lunch programs, proving that the challenge is not insurmountable.

San Diego launched a program 10 years ago to train teachers and garden coordinators on how to safely plant and harvest food for school lunches, said Janelle Manzano, the district’s farm-to-school program specialist. Before the pandemic, she added, 10 to 15 schools participated in the program, although the number dropped to five last year.

It’s been difficult for some campuses to revive their gardens after the pandemic, Manzano said, but she’s hopeful more schools will start growing their own produce in the coming year.

At Leilehua High School, Freitas was undeterred when DOE’s Garden to Cafeteria pilot ended. Last year, Freitas received a Good Agricultural Practices certification from the United States Department of Agriculture for the school’s hydroponic greenhouse. The greenhouse is subject to audits twice a year to make sure students are following safety requirements for harvesting produce and tracking their cleaning and sanitation schedules.

The certification means Leilehua’s greenhouse is held to the same standards as commercial farms and can supply produce to the cafeteria like any other vendor, Freitas said. While the garden’s safety procedures have not changed much, she added, students are now required to keep a more detailed record of when they clean their tools and harvest produce.

Freitas said her students are still working with cafeteria staff to determine how the produce can fit into the school’s meal plan, but she’s hoping the process will help them understand how they can contribute to food production in Hawaii and take pride in their work.

“It can be done,” Freitas said.

This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat. 

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

“Hawaii Grown” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.

After years of trying to keep students from using their phones during the school day, Kihei Charter School has invested roughly $9,000 in what administrators hope will be a foolproof way to keep mobile devices out of classrooms. 

The Maui school purchased 300 pouches this year that magnetically lock when students place their phones inside, said Head of School Michael Stubbs. High school students put their phones in the pouches at the start of the day and can only open them in the afternoon using a special unlocking station teachers store in their rooms.

So far the effort appears to be working. Teachers are reporting fewer distractions in class this year and more social interactions among students, Stubbs said. The school also purchased games like Connect 4 and Jenga for students to play during their free time.

“There’s less isolation,” he said.

Many schools in Hawaii are grappling with how to reduce students’ reliance on cell phones, citing concerns about unnecessary distractions in class and the toll social media can take on teenagers’ mental health.

 have passed laws restricting cell phone use during class time, and another 12 have introduced legislation to curb phone use on campuses. In Hawaii, guidelines from the  state that students can only use electronic devices with teacher approval.

Principals have the freedom to create policies around cell phone use and can empower teachers to decide how students use personal electronics during class. Often schools resort to confiscating phones and holding parent conferences when students repeatedly ignore their teacher’s rules.

In 2005, the Hawaii Board of Education debated banning cell phones in public schools statewide but opted not to after members voiced concern about students being able to access phones during an emergency. The board has not discussed any similar proposals since.

Teachers and administrators say restricting cell phone use during the day can reduce students’ attachment to their devices and help them develop healthier habits. But many agree that cell phone bans can only go so far, and schools and families need to do more to teach students how to use technology and social media responsibly when they are off-campus.  

“Policy can help,” said Ilima Intermediate School teacher Sarah Milianta-Laffin. “But we also need to teach kids how to use these devices.”  

Piloting New Cell Phone Policies

At Nanakuli High and Intermediate School, students started the year with a new rule: no phones out during class. Cell phone policies previously varied by classroom, said teacher Chloe Kitsu, who allowed students to keep their phones face down on their desks or use their devices once they finished assignments.

Kitsu initially worried that she would have to constantly remind students to put away their devices or ask administrators to come and confiscate phones from her classroom. But most students have respected the new rules so far, Kitsu said, especially since they are still allowed to use their phones during lunch and passing periods.

“I think if you told me one year ago that I wouldn’t have as many problems with cell phones and getting them to put it away, I don’t know if I would believe you,” Kitsu said. “But really, I’ve had nothing but positive experiences from it.”

Even at the elementary school level, many students are comfortable using cell phones and sharing their devices with friends, said Kaiulani Elementary School Principal Bebi Davis. She makes students keep phones in their backpacks and will confiscate devices if kids repeatedly ignore their teachers’ warnings. 

Sometimes, parents and students are frustrated that they can’t text each other during the school day, Davis added, but she reassures families that they can communicate with their children by calling the front office.

Iolani School, a private school in Honolulu, is also strengthening its policies around cell phones for older students. For the first time this year, seventh through ninth graders are required to keep phones in their bags or lockers until the final bell, although students in grades 10 through 12 are still allowed to use their personal devices throughout the day.   

The school already made students in grades kindergarten through six put their phones away during the day, said Head of School Timothy Cottrell.

Cottrell said student mental health was one of the greatest factors driving the school’s new policy this year. Students often spend less time interacting with friends and more time comparing themselves to others while they’re on their phones and using social media, he added. 

 has found that excessive use of social media and cell phones can negatively affect students’ physical and mental health, contributing to sleep deprivation and poor self-esteem.

The school can’t regulate how students use their phones off-campus, but he hopes the new policy will help teens understand how they can use electronics while also prioritizing in-person interactions and physical activities in their daily lives. 

“It’s introducing moderation to help them have a healthy relationship with the device,” Cottrell said.

Education May Be Needed More Than Bans

While many schools are cracking down on cell phone use, others are loosening cell phone restrictions in response to student feedback and staff frustration. 

In past years, students at Ilima Intermediate weren’t allowed to use their phones in common spaces like the library or cafeteria, said Milianta-Laffin. The school’s security team spent a lot of time confiscating phones, the teacher said, and some students were still checking notifications during class.

The school is now letting students use their phones during lunch and recess with the hope that they’ll keep their devices away during class. 

The new policy has helped, but some kids still try to hide their phones behind their bags or under their desks during class, Milianta-Laffin said. Administrators will occasionally confiscate devices at teachers’ requests, but it’s hard to break students of a bad habit.

“It is a lot like Whac-A-Mole sometimes,” Milianta-Laffin said. 

During a recent family event on cell phones at Punahou School, parents grappled with a series of questions about how to monitor social media use and set family rules around using phones at home.

Most parents supported the school’s decision this year to ban phone high schoolers from using their phones during class, said President Michael Latham. But the school is also working with families to teach kids about the impact of social media on their mental health and how to use their phones responsibly outside of campus, Latham added. 

“Even if you do an outright ban, you have no ability to control what happens once the school day is over,” Latham said. “If you don’t take the time to actually teach these social and emotional impacts and ways to regulate your own use and behavior, then I don’t think we’re serving the students very well.”

Deborah Bond-Upson, president of and interim director of the Hui for Excellence in Education, said she would support a statewide policy preventing students from using cell phones during class time. But, she said, teachers would need more support to implement this ban, and schools need to pair these rules with more lessons about how students can use devices for learning, instead of harm. 

“We need to think smarter about technology,” she said.

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

Over the last three years, Maui Waena Intermediate has invested nearly $300,000 in Covid-19 relief funds in its after-school program, hiring more staff and adding new programs to help students recover academically and socially from the pandemic.

The Valley Isle school’s extracurricular offerings have been a big draw for students, and class attendance has been steadily improving.

“They’re more connected and they want to come to school,” said Jennifer Suzuki, Maui Waena’s media teacher and after-school coordinator.

But while the increased after-school offerings may be drawing more kids to campus, the infusion of pandemic-era funding hasn’t achieved its primary goal: improving academic achievement. Only 26% of students at the school were proficient in math in the 2023-24 school year — the same as the year before, and a slight dip from the year before that.

Maui Waena’s struggles are reflective of a broader challenge in the state. Academic test scores in Hawaii have essentially flatlined for the last three years, despite an infusion of over $600 million in federal support to help schools address pandemic-era challenges, including learning loss.

Test scores released last month showed that 52% of Hawaii students were proficient in language arts last year, compared to 54% in the 2018-19 school year. Approximately 40% of students were proficient in math, down from 43% before the pandemic.

Advocates have been calling for years for the Hawaii Department of Education to provide greater detail about how schools are spending Covid relief funds. With funding ending this fall, a bigger concern is emerging over the lack of information about what the federal investment has achieved.

Principals say federal funds have supported student learning by enabling schools to purchase new curricula, hire more staff and expand access to tutoring and after-school programs. But there’s little information on what initiatives have resulted in the greatest student improvements, even though school leaders will likely need to convince lawmakers next year that the state should spend its own money to continue pandemic-era programs.

The DOE said in 2021 that it would fund a  to assess how different strategies helped middle school students recover from the pandemic, but spokesperson Nanea Ching said the initiative hasn’t been started. She did not say if the department still plans to move forward with the study.

In some cases, it’s too early to tell which federal investments drove the greatest gains in student learning during the pandemic, said Ash Dhammani, a policy data analyst at the . The long-term effects of programs from the pandemic may also depend on whether schools can use state funding to replace federal funds, he added. 

“It’s really important to highlight now, are we doing right by our students,” Dhammani said, “and did we do enough with this one-time money?” 

Covid Funds Spent On Variety Of School Needs

Hawaii schools experienced a smaller drop in student achievement during the pandemic than most states, but it’s concerning that progress has stalled in recent years, said David Sun-Miyashiro, executive director of HawaiiKidsCAN.

Improving student achievement was already a major issue in Hawaii before the pandemic. In early 2020, former superintendent Christina Kishimoto  of Hawaii students to achieve proficiency in math and reading by the end of the decade. Some educational advocates deemed her plan as overly ambitious but recognized that schools needed to progress at a faster rate.

A revised DOE plan calls for 65% of Hawaii students to achieve proficiency in reading and 50% in math by 2029.

In a Board of Education meeting last month, DOE Assistant Superintendent Elizabeth Higashi said Hawaii is following a national pattern of states seeing small to no improvements in academics. Attendance remains a challenge for some Hawaii schools, she said, which also reduces students’ learning time. Roughly a quarter of students were chronically absent from school last year.

In the final round of federal Covid relief funding, DOE received over $412 million to spend between 2021 and 2024. The DOE had to spend at least a quarter of the funds to address learning loss and support after-school and summer programs, but school leaders received a large degree of freedom on how to spend the remaining dollars.

Compared to other states, Dhammani said, Hawaii has done a good job of publishing  on the status of its federal funds, although the spending categories referenced in the monthly reports could be more detailed.

Some federal funds supported statewide initiatives, like free summer school classes, professional development for teachers and tutoring for middle school students. Complex areas also received nearly $170 million for individual school efforts to improve attendance and support academic and mental health needs.

For example, Kaneohe Elementary hired a social worker to support struggling families, while Keelikolani Middle School created an attendance arcade where students could play games before school and receive rewards for coming to class on time. 

“The funds were like a godsend,” said Keelikolani Middle School Principal Joe Passantino. Since 2021, the school has surpassed its pre-pandemic state test scores in both math and reading.

But while principals say federal funds helped students recover from the effects of online learning, it’s been harder to track which strategies were most effective, especially when statewide academic progress has slowed in recent years.

For example, Sun-Miyashiro is interested in how the department funded tutoring programs during the pandemic and if schools were able to reach students who were struggling the most.

“It would be great to have data linked with activities and then be able to show how that had a meaningful impact,” Sun-Miyashiro said.

With so many different uses for federal relief funds, it’s hard to determine which programs have resulted in the greatest success, Deputy Superintendent of Academics Heidi Armstrong said. In some cases, she added, investments in initiatives like new reading curriculum or regular screeners for students’ academics and mental health can benefit schools even after the federal funds expire.

“It’s very difficult to separate each one of those to say, this is what got us back to pre-pandemic levels, because there’s so many factors involved,” Armstrong said. “We are working very diligently to ensure that we continue on this trajectory.” 

What Happens When Pandmic Funds Run Out?

While tracking the impact of federal dollars has been difficult, school administrators say the funding has been critical in connecting students with additional staff and resources that didn’t exist before the pandemic. Some are now worried that they won’t be able to sustain vital programs unless the state steps in with additional support.

At Lanakila Elementary, math and reading scores have met or surpassed their pre-pandemic levels. Using federal relief funds, principal Kerry Higa hired five additional teachers who could provide more individualized support to students by working with them in small groups.

The additional staff positions alone can’t account for the improved scores, Higa said, but having more quality teachers on campus has gone a long way, especially as students struggled to communicate and express themselves as they returned to in-person learning.

But as federal funds expire this year, the school has been unable to keep one of its teachers on staff, Higa said. He’s worried that other statewide programs, like free summer school, could also come to an end and provide fewer opportunities for his students to learn outside of class.

DOE received just over $20 million from the Legislature to replace federal funds and  in 2025 but will need to request more money to sustain the program in the future. Over the past three years, DOE spent roughly $40 million in federal funding on summer programs.

The state may be able to fill in some funding gaps for programs like summer school and tutoring, Sun-Miyashiro said, but the department will need to make a strong case for continuing these initiatives during the 2025 legislative session.

Deborah Bond-Upson, president of Parents for Public Schools of Hawaii and interim director of the Hui for Excellence in Education, said she’s worried about what the end of federal funding could mean for students. But she’s interested in tracking how the pandemic-era investments in professional development and technology for schools will serve students in the coming years.

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

Civil Beat’s community health coverage is supported by , Swayne Family Fund of Hawaii Community Foundation, the Cooke Foundation and .