 This is the State of the State of Hawaii on Think Tech Hawaii. And I'm your host for the show, Stephanie Stoll Dalton. Our topic today is Hawaii's Department of Education, an agency of the state, and it's planned for budgeting almost half a billion, I said billion dollars in federal funds to support all of Hawaii's school's safe reopening and to resume a regular teaching and learning in classrooms after the interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, we have a guest, an expert education leader to talk about this. And this is Sherri Nakamura. I'd like to introduce. And she is director of a nonprofit coalition for excellence in education. So welcome, Sherri. Aloha, Stephanie. I'm so happy to be here. It's a pleasure to have you and you've been on Think Tech previously. And we know that we can draw people's attention to if they want to know the information that you shared in that one, too. Well, I really thank you for the participation in the conversation about funding Hawaii's schools. I think it's a little bit not in the popular pages and we kind of have to search for it, but it's such a massive amount of federal funding that is so good for the state as it is for every other state that received similar funding. But I understand that the HEI coalition follows and reports on Hawaii's Department of Education for how it makes policy and budgets and guides White Islands schools. So can you tell us a little bit about how that works? I know it's very complicated, but just give us an introduction into what it is you at HEI do to get at that information and see that process. Sure, sure. Happy to. HEI was founded back in 2010 after Furlough Fridays, and it is a group that wants to provide a community voice for education policy. So consequently, I'm the representative and I've been following the Board of Education for the past 11 years and also the Hawaii State Legislature when they meet to discuss education bills and also funding bills. So I'm pretty up to date on the current state of affairs in terms of the federal funding, and I'm certainly happy to explain our view and sort of our positions on some of these spending initiatives. Well, that would be most informative, Sherry, if you would tell us a little bit more about your HEI's view and thinking about what this process is to be. Sure. So as we all know, COVID-19 has made a tremendous impact on our state economy. And of course, it has affected our public schools. Because of that, the federal government has been extremely generous in providing federal funding to help address really two things regarding COVID. Health and safety, making sure that our schools are as safe as possible and our children are as healthy as possible, and also to address what they call learning loss. Now, we all know at the beginning of COVID, schools had to shut down. Nobody was prepared for shutting down and doing distance learning. There was a lot of instructional time lost. And even the 2020-2021 year, it was a year of hybrid learning where kids came to school only part of the time and part of the time they had distance learning. So it was a big transition for families and students. And consequently, some students sort of fell behind because it wasn't the regular situation. So the federal government has given, as you mentioned, it's actually over half a billion dollars. My calculation, it's about $700 million over the past two years. And so we've been following how the department has planned to allocate these funds. I mean, some of them are already spent and we've provided our comment. Generally speaking, we have a position of really wanting to get the funds down to the school level, because that's where teaching and learning occurs. Of course, we are supportive of sort of extracurricular activities like tutoring and afterschool and summer school. But really, a lot of our students, especially our struggling students, often don't choose to participate in those programs. So we really feel like the focus should be teaching and learning at school, making sure that their resources are at school with staff. I mean, if it means hiring more staff at the school level, that's really been our focus of our comments to the department. Well, Sherry, you're absolutely right. There is, of course, a larger amount that has been funded to the state. And I don't want to spend time on this. I just wanted to say, since you brought that up, to clarify that, you know, and correct me if this is wrong, but we've got a total here that involves $120 million about for operating budget, right? And then we've got this $412 million or approximately as new aid from the American Rescue Plan. And then we've got the CARES Act, which we received earlier, which was $227 million. So you're talking about almost three-quarters of a billion dollars in total for operating, right? Plus, Governor E. Gay, before we received the generous, also given I think he passed over 500, about 51 million. Yes, there's been a lot of money allocated to the Department of Education and, you know, deservedly so. We want to make sure that our students are being addressed in this pandemic. And, you know, it's really up to the DOE to be able to utilize those funds as efficiently and effectively as possible. And we are continuously providing our comments, you know, because my group has parent groups and other community organizations that are focused on families and education. So generally speaking, our comment has been, you know, we want to get resources down to the schools. So you talk about your membership and those stakeholders, parents, community members. How do you find they think about the way the Department of Education goes about budgeting large amounts like this and then maybe contrast it with what really happens? Or maybe they're overlapped. What's the degree of overlap? Well, it's very difficult to understand the budget, first of all. DOE does spend a large, or I think it's, I want to say, 90% or maybe 80%. A large portion of their funds actually do go down to the schools. But then there's other support services like, you know, meal, food, transportation, electricity, IT, human resources. There's a state office and then there are complex areas, which is sort of the regional offices, and then there are the schools. So most of the money does go down to the school level in terms of a per pupil funding called weighted student formula. But it's difficult to understand because our system is so large, you know, the DOE will put out these reports and it will just have these huge lump sums of categorical funding. And so, you know, we can understand the categories, but we don't really understand how the money is being utilized and whether or not it's being utilized effectively. So I guess our comment would be, we would like to understand better or have more transparency on how these funds are being used, especially in terms of, you know, effectiveness, you know, is it really improving outcomes or if it's, you know, electricity or are we, you know, economizing or trying to find ways to use monies a little bit more efficiently? We're a little lacking in that kind of information. So the department is a good job of presenting the macro budget, but we're not sure of the sort of micro level and whether or not funds are being spent well or not. Well, I know that I saw in one of the fact sheets on the on the ESSER they're calling it the ESSER, which is the ESSER 3, the 400 million secondary school emergency relief plan. But the question I had was the plan required the fact sheet that I had required that there be input from every public school in the in the state. And so then after that, not too long after that, I saw that the department put out a survey online and invited all of the parents, stakeholders and anyone associated with schoolwork to comment on it. So they reported that they received considerable thousands of responses on that line, but I wanted to know if any, if you all were aware of that with the other people that you work with, were they aware that that opportunity there to input was was available? Well, yes. In fact, it was invited by the DOE to provide comment and we did. And we're very thankful for that opportunity. The thing that was a little odd was the department was directed by the Board of Education to create a more structured plan. So there had been previous attempts by the department to show the board how they plan to spend the federal funds. But the explanation was not really that sufficient or coherent enough. So the board actually directed the department to create a plan. So then the department created a plan and then they went out to the field and the stakeholders to say, what do you think of this plan? Actually, though, what should have happened is the input from the stakeholders in the field should have occurred before the plan was made. Because then you would be making the plan based on the information gathered by the teachers and the principals and the students, as well as the parents in the community. Instead, it was almost reversed. They created a plan and then they went out to say, what do you think about this? So again, we were appreciative of that opportunity. But thinking back on the process, perhaps it would have been more efficient if they got this input first and then created a plan and then came back and maybe, you know, a cursory view the next time to the people who participated originally to say, we took your input and we got this plan and what do you think about it? Instead of, oh, we put this plan together and now we want your input. So I kind of view it like a process that was maybe a little bit out of order. Well, aside from saying things on shows like this, you're a coalition, you're a coalition. Would you be giving feedback to the department like that? I mean, this gets down to exactly what are you doing? You don't have to reveal everything. But I'm just how do you work with this information, this precious information that you get right from the community and can see it right there at the interface? Well, how we so how we comment, you know, we follow the Board of Education meetings and the agenda items will relate to the initiatives the departments are proposing, or if it's money from the federal government, you know, it will discuss how the department plans to utilize the money. So as a community group, we consistently comment on these items. And that's how I am able to take these plans and proposals that are proposed back to my community members, get input, and then we provide it to the Board of Education. So it has been an effective way of getting our voice in because the board ultimately creates or approves or, you know, discusses these policies. So it is a way to get, you know, the community feedback to the policymakers for the for this particular plan, however, because it was such a large amount of funds and it was important for the board to have a plan that sort of where you could understand the rationale of how they were going to spend the money, what the goals were, how they were planning to, you know, use these funds and have a way of monitoring. I'm just saying it would have it might have been more effective if the department had a mechanism by which they went to the community ahead of time to gather this information instead of having the plan and then asking the, you know, stakeholders, what do you think about it? Yeah, I think that that's such a good point, Sherry. So when when you were talking, you also mentioned the importance of goals. So by by giving giving you more information that you would respond to, like the goals, did they give you any information about what the goals were? Are you saying that with this massive amount of money? They they really are they are they experienced in dealing with this larger budget, Sherry? What do you think about how they're going about it? And are they but getting in more staff or how are they building their capacity? What do they need to and maybe they've done this all? I mean, they've had the race of the top grants and big, big chunks like this from the department. Well, I think, yes, I think the department, you know, it's a large it's a large entity and they they I think that the budget is two billion dollars. So it's not like they haven't dealt with a large amounts of money. That said, the federal moneys is an unprecedented amount for this time. It is it is a lot of money. And I think that. What is needed in trying to use this money in the best way possible is an effective plan with goals and a logical process by which, you know, you're going to try to achieve these goals and monitor along the way. So it was a bit disappointing for us to hear because in a particular Board of Education meeting, the superintendent was asked, you know, do you have any goals for the use of this fund? And the superintendent answered that there wasn't a specific goal. It was just progress. But if you don't have sort of a specific target or even an idea of a target, it's hard to know what kind of progress you want. So I just spoke with a superintendent of a district in Oregon this past weekend, and I asked about that. And he said that, you know, his board of education, he and his board of education are working on specific goals. It is going to take two years for them to get students to back to where they were pre-COVID, but they have a near term and a long term plan. Of course, it's going to have to be adjustable. But at least they have that goal to reach and they are taking steps, sort of having that goal and then working backwards and also doing really a complete needs assessment to understand, you know, what they're going to spend these precious federal dollars on so that they can attain those goals. So I think the department, you know, I mean, it's great that they want progress for students, but without sort of a tangible goal, it's hard to know if you're going in the right direction. Well, on the website of the Department of Education, which everybody can find on Google, it's white, departmentofeducation.gov. But they do cite, as all the other states had to cite, too, several goals for the use of the money, for the deployment of the money, the budgeting of it. And so they have three goals set up. I think one student student achievement and safe schools and mental and social and emotional health. And but they're just those three. However, they're not so different from what other states have listed, too. So they've they've got their stake in there on some goals. So do you see that that's a good start? And is it a good start? And where can they go? Well, I mean, I think maybe the goal. Yes, we want all of our students to have be be healthy and safe. We want academic achievement to to occur. And we also want maybe the well being of students to be addressed. But in terms of well being, for example, I mean, do we even know how many students have been suffering from mental health issues? Are we going to try to move the needle on saying, you know, if we have X amount of students that are suffering, that we're going to lift them up to improve so that more students are going to mean, what is the target? What is the goal? Same thing with academic achievement. Are we going to try to get kids back to grade level or where they were before covid? Is there is there a target for some kind of growth? Even the health and safety measures? Yes, the department is there has been very good about keeping track of covid-19 infections, but, you know, I would be more interested in the in the in the strategies. You know, do they have enough masks? Are we getting enough testing done? I think the department is looking at these things. But if we don't have a target for what we want, then it's hard to know if our progress is really making making a difference or not. So I think it's the department has goals, but we would like to see more specificity, more of targets so that we know that the monies are indeed being used to move the needle and and move to where we want to be as a system. Well, I think that you mentioned needs assessment, which would certainly be next steps. But this also will be multiple categories of interest. I mean, those three prongs that we we've already mentioned then you even brought up others that have to be included in that. So how is the department? What would you like to see the department do to get the best data on on where we were with those things and where we are now? And well, maybe maybe I can just to give the example of the district the superintendent, who I was speaking with over the weekend. So they identified that because of covid, there were a lot of students that suffered mental health setbacks both non high needs and high needs. So for the non high needs kids, you know, who often have the supports that they're they're they're not economically disadvantaged because they were isolated for so long when they went back to school, they felt the transition was too much for some students. So consequently, the district decided to spend some of their federal dollars on support for mental health. In addition, even for the high needs students, of course, that was a factor. But then you're bringing in other challenges for this demographic. And so, you know, it made sense for the district to use the federal funds, not only on some mental health supports, but maybe some more academic supports. And so it seemed like they were able to look at their whole system and assess that this was a common element or this was an element that they saw, you know, sort of district wide that they could lever to help students really get back on track. In another district, I looked at Houston because of learning loss, especially in the elementary grade levels, because elementary school kids probably didn't do as well on distance learning as the secondary kids. They decided to spend their federal funds on a literacy platform because reading, as we know, if students can't read, they're not going to be able to learn. So they spent their federal funds by looking at probably the academic performance of elementary school students to focus zero in zero in more on literacy. So it seems like other districts were able to use data looking across district wide. And in our case, it would be statewide to identify some of the specific levers, I would say, that they thought we're going to make a difference so that these federal funds, these supplemental funds could be used to address those specific issues. I sense that the department, our department has a hard time doing that because we are in a school empowerment model where every school is doing has a lot of discretion. And while that is great for flexibility, maybe it's not as easy to gather the information statewide to be able to identify what these specific levers are. So that might be a challenge that the department is facing because of our of the structure of the organization. I was I was going to ask you to talk a little bit about what we talked about earlier on the distributed leadership that all of the schools in Hawaii work under. So and then but what you're saying is if the state has identified levers, there's certainly ways to work with those across these different levels of distribution of leadership. But you've seen that as a challenge. How can it be an advantage? Well, I think really in in good times, it's probably easier to have this distributed model because you're giving ultimate flexibility to the to the principles in the schools. However, in a pandemic, for example, you know, I think you want to have some health and safety guidance that sort of standard across the system. This way, parents can understand the teachers can understand. Everybody can understand what the protocols are and its uniform. Unfortunately, because of this distributive model and because of the way leadership wanted to handle some of these things, a lot of times the principles are have to make the decision themselves. So it's not consistent. One principle might interpret something one way and another principle might interpret something the other way. So you create you create some inconsistencies where people can say, well, how come that's doing school is doing it this way and that school is doing it another way? So but my feeling is even if you're in good times or in bad times, you need a balance of both. You need some things that are centralized and standardized and uniform and you need some things that are flexible at the school level. The hard part is deciding on what that balance is. That is the art of leadership and the superintendent because. Yes, talk a little bit about then the superintendency, which is going to be in a search soon. Yes. So actually, right now, the board of education is engaging in a process of finding a permanent superintendent. So we have an interim superintendent, but the board is embarking on a permanent superintendent search. And I really believe that it is sort of finding a superintendent who can manage this large organization. You know, you are going to have to have some central office functions to support schools, but not only that, also to establish maybe some uniform policies in certain areas where they make sense. And then you're going to want to allow flexibility at the schools. Now, I think that in order to have a successful system like that, you are going to have to have a mechanism of effective communication whereby you get the input from the field, an accurate input from the field as to what things they want to be flexible and what things they would like to have centralized. And that includes the supports. So it really I mean, it's a very challenging, challenging situation because we're such a large district. I think we're the 12th largest district in the nation, plus our islands are, you know, all separate and communities are different. But I think it's important to have a leader who is going to be able to, you know, manage this large organization in a way that's going to be most effective for our students. Well, I think that you've made very interesting and potentially very effective recommendations. And I know that I did find that the numbers recorded for response to the online survey, which lasted from May 21st to June the fourth last year about the plan that you've already mentioned, was four thousand three hundred and thirty eight response. So I think maybe that can get pumped up a little bit and get more people involved. It's one way to begin to address some of these communication issues. But I think you're you're talking about the distributive leadership framework that this state is in. And I'm not sure, but I know you're looking around the country all the time for comparisons and contrast. Have you found anybody else that's doing it that way? And there's kind of large like we are like Hawaii is. I've spoken to, you know, smaller districts more. They it's funny, they say that they go back and forth. Maybe 10 years ago, it was more of a centralized approach. But then it became a more distributive approach. And then it went back to a centralized approach. I really think that it's not just limited to education. I think this kind of thing happens everywhere. And really, it is a balance. It's a balance of because I think you need both you need. And I do believe my coalition members will agree on me because we have been talking about this. It's difficult to know, however, what things need to be centralized and what things need to be distributed. In our situation right now, I really feel like it's important because it's this distributed model, you really need the state office and the complex areas to support effectively the schools, especially during this really, really challenging time. We're still in a pandemic. We know that Omicron is subsiding, but we don't know if there's another variant that will appear. I really hope that the department is thinking of a contingency in case another kind of variant appears because, you know, the only way to try to come back sort of these shocks is if you have a plan. And I really want to encourage the department to before we're thinking, even though we have seemed to have gotten out of this Omicron, I think the effects of it are really going to be challenging for schools now and the effects going forward. Careful and not jump the gun here. That's for sure. We're pretty much out of time. Is there anything you would like to say, Sherry, on behalf of HEA or to encourage people to pay attention to your work? Yeah, Stephanie, I think you made a great point. You know, HEA is very involved. We keep in touch with what's going on at the DOE, at the BOE and the legislature. We would love to have more input. I really hope that more community members will get engaged and will, you know, lend their voice because, you know, we all want what's best for our kids. And, you know, we're still a small organization, but I feel like we provide a vehicle or mechanism by which community organizations can engage. And so I hope that, you know, we continue to build this sort of platform because I think the more people who are involved, the more we can we can try to do what's best for kids. Yes, the power of the parents and stakeholders. Thank you, Sherry, very much. I'm Stephanie Stolldahlton. I'm your host for the state of the state of Hawaii. Our conversation here has been about the DOE's plan for making the best use of generous federal funding to overcome the effects of COVID-19 for our state as it has done for other states as well. So I'll see you again in two weeks and Mahalo for your attention, everyone.