 Aloha, welcome to another episode of Think Tech Hawaii's Education Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Many people believe that education can be the silver bullet or the linchpin that can help solve problems like homelessness, drug addiction, social division, and income inequality. And in Hawaii, where many intertwined cultures cherish our keiki and do all we can to open doors for their successes, we assume that a high priority is placed on having a world-class educational system. But is it? On this show, we talk about the programs available to our keiki, the quality of our facilities and infrastructure, addressing deferred maintenance, increasing the number of cool rooms for our keiki and teachers, a more comprehensive curriculum approach, as well as appropriately recognizing and valuing our teachers and administrative staff. And perhaps most importantly, what life and career opportunities are we providing for our keiki to thrive today and into the future? Today, I'm excited to have Senator Michelle Kidami, chair of the Senate Committee on Education, as well as a member of the Committee on Higher Education and Arts. We will be learning to some extent the results of a 2016 legislative session, as well as current preview perhaps of the upcoming 2017 legislative session agenda. We'll see what we can learn. Welcome to the show. And Senator, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Hello, Carl. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So one of the things I like to start the show with a little bit is what has driven your interest in being involved with education? Well, certainly, as you stated earlier, I think many of us believe that education is a very big priority. You will see that in the Senate we've had a few changes in education chairs over this last decade. In the House, we've had Representative Takumi at the helm of the House Education Committee for probably, I don't know, maybe 20 years. So he's got to jump start on me as to how much he's delved into it. And certainly, it's mind-boggling. There are so many things that make up educational issues here and how we go about it. Certainly federal mandates are one of the biggest things. And very many people are really happy that late last year, President Obama signed into law the new Federal Education Act, which is called Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. So that was a big start for us coming into session this year. Now the question is, where do we go with that? Exactly. Exactly. You know, everybody wanted less input from the federal government. They wanted them to be there to give us the resources and some guidance on things that are for equity, et cetera, and fairness. But the actual presentation of the education package at home was something that most states felt should be left to the states. Exactly. And that has been a big roadblock for many of us. And I'm not an educator. So I have to look to the Department of Education and various organizations as well as the Board of Education and others who are interested in education for some of the answers. And they're not all on the same page. Surprise. Yeah. They never have been. So you have to sometimes scratch your head and say, you know, can we all just remember that the end game is to give the best education possible to our students? Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. We were lucky enough to have Mr. Joe Galera a couple of months ago. Darrell's excellent. I think he's amazing. One of the things that he told us that the governor gave him a direction to go Tawarasa, to go blank slate, and what should it look like? I think that's an exciting thing. Because specifically as we look as a state in Hawaii when we see the challenges, as you might be aware, I don't know, I've had the fortune of being able to have a daughter in charter school, a son in private school, Kamehameha schools, and a daughter in public school. So I've actually been able to see the differences. And I get to see what's happening in each location and what some of the challenges are. And recognizing that, you know what, that isn't the only difference. You've got schools, some schools that seem to benefit more than others from some programs or their proximity to military bases to a certain extent as well. So some schools seem to have more funding and more attention than others. And would you say that some of that, this is, I don't want to put you on the spot too much here, but would you say that some of that is subject to the effectiveness of the legislators in those districts, or is it, or how would you suggest that works? Well, if you're talking programming, Carl, no, it's not. It's the Board of Education and the Department of Education that dictates what happens outside of federal mandates. Now that we're going to have the no child left behind gone and our ESSA, you know, comes on board, we expect less federal mandates. But how you deliver in the classroom is really up to the BOE and DOE. And that's where we all need to get on the same page. Because even in Hawaii, and by the way, let me make this point, Hawaii is the only state in the nation that is only a state educational agency. We don't have a local educational agency. We're the only state in the nation that fully pays for public education. All the other states in the nation, the counties are responsible, and they pay for education through real property taxes. So if you go to the mainland, you find that the property taxes are higher. That's because it includes the educational costs, where we don't have that here. And our real property taxes here are quite, quite low actually. And that's because they don't have the cost of education. So given that, we do still have much differences in our schools. Certainly rural schools and schools that have more needs because you have more homeless, you have more English learners, and you have teachers that are substitute teachers and really not certified to be in the classroom. Yes, about a thousand of them every year at the moment. That's right. So what are we doing? What are we doing? Yeah. Well, I'd like to know the answer to that too. One of the things I'll tell you that I'm doing is that I have been pushing the university and just recently met with the university of West O'ahu to look at providing more programs so we can certify teachers. We have lots of educational assistants who have been doing this job for years. And they won't go and get their teaching degree because they can't afford to quit being an EA. And then, and these are normally in the high turnover schools where the teachers every year you lose 40% of your teachers or the ones that we lose come from the same area every year. I've been tracking this. Wow. Okay. So we were close, Central O'ahu, West O'ahu, about 40% turnover. So when we get new teachers, I don't think you want to put brand new teachers in these hard to fill areas. I think there's truth there. I think there's truth there. But do we have, have we been able to discern why there's such a high turnover in those areas? Well, number one, again, they have to bring in a lot of teachers from the mainland. And I'm not saying they're not qualified. I think that it's culture shock. And we know even at the top levels of the University of Hawaii, when you bring people in from the mainland at the helm, they have a hard time adjusting. Absolutely. And understanding... So it's the same thing with teachers. Exactly. And you need to understand until you've been here a while, at least a few years, to really know how things work. So if you add to that the issue that maybe we're not mentoring the teachers as well as we should be, we're not giving the teachers the incentives that we should give them. The cost of living, cost of housing is so expensive. So at the state level, we need to be doing more. We need to build dormitories. And I am pushing for funding to build not just student, but faculty and teacher dormitories. U.H. needs a lot of help there. West Oahu has a lot of room on the campus. But that would help with some of the culture shock and the living expense types. But at the very bottom of the rung is how we pay our teachers and how we look at them as a priority. And more recently in the news was that the Department of Education was asking for a four and a half percent raise for some of their upper echelon administrators. And the board put it on hold until they could get a better view of it because one of the very newest board members, Kenneth Uemura, who happens to be a classmate of mine, questioned what's the rationale of doing and across the board shouldn't be based on merit. Well, it's the same thing with the teachers. While we don't have the funding now, we have to find a way to find the funding. We have to find a way to continue to give incentives for our teachers. And we did that last year and the year before by putting money in the budget to give them additional funding if they were in a hard to fill school, if they took and kept their national certification and those things. And then once the school becomes, you know, in their commits to their AYP, don't yank the teacher and stop paying them because they are what brought that school up to standard. Right, right, right. AYP. What's AYP? It's annual yearly progression. It's performance to see that they are meeting all the goals. So those were some of the things that kind of bugged me is that you get a teacher in there, you pay them extra and as soon as the school is performing, then you stop, you know, giving them the incentive so, you know, the school goes back down. Exactly, exactly. Then you start the problem all over again. One of the things that you stated is, yes, we are the only state that actually has a centralized management system for the entire school system. That would suggest that there's opportunity to have an equal balance. So where's the disconnect between having a standard equal balance and knowing that schools next to each other are very different in what is available to them? You know, if you look at some of the mainland schools and I don't see that more money always equals better performance because it still comes down to the classroom and the administrators and do if they have the heart for the job. But given that, you do have to give them the tools to work with. And a lot of them are screaming for professional development, mentoring, and I'm not seeing that happen. And in fact, you know, when I look at some of the teachers who have done really well, Juan Milken awards, et cetera, they soon go and they do other things and they're not in teaching anymore. And I really would love to see them stay in the classrooms and mentor the other teachers. I think those are some of the things that I feel is important. And so our students can connect. And I think one of the things, especially on the leeward coast, is that students don't seem to be connecting to their teachers because they don't know if they'll be there next year. That's an important continuity, so it's already time for that break. So we're already ready for a quick break. So OK, let me say thank you again for joining us. I'm your host, Carl Campania. This is Think Tech Hawaii's education movers, shakers, and reformers. Let me say again thank you to Senator Michelle Kedani for joining us today. And we'll be back in one minute. Thank you. I'm Jay Fidel, and I'm here with Pete McGinnis-Mark to talk about HIGP and research in Manoa. What about that show, Pete? I think it's great, Jay. Research at Manoa really provides faculty members of the University of Hawaii with an easy way of explaining some of the research activities we're conducting on the campus. For example, I do a lot of space research, whether it's the moon and Mars, but many of my other colleagues do other interesting kinds of work, whether it's exploring the ocean floor in submarines, studying earthquakes and tsunamis, or other activities. So research at Manoa really provides us with a way of telling the general public some of the activities which we're involved in, as well as communicating to our colleagues and students. This is a fun science, and we really appreciate the activities which research at Manoa enable us to talk about. I love research at Manoa. Come around, join us. It's Monday, one o'clock p.m., every single Monday. Be there. We'll be square. All right. Thank you for coming back. Again, my name is Carl Campani. I'm your host. I think Tech Hawaii's Education Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. And yes, we have Senator Michelle Kedani chair of the Education Committee here with us today. So again, thank you for joining us. So let's jump in a little bit back into the funding thing, as we were just mentioning. There's different schools have different funding levels for different reasons. So just as we were off air, you were mentioning several different categories. So run through those again if you would. Well, the weighted student formula is really based on a baseline amount for each school. If you're elementary, if you're middle school, or if you're high school, you get a different amount, baseline. Now you take the number of students, and each student gets a number. So the more students you have in the school, the more funding you're going to get because that number is tied to the student. So roughly maybe the average is 6,000 something per student. But if you are in a community that has a high low income population, you'll get additional funds. If you're in a community where you have many immigrants or English learners, you get an additional bite of the pie, so to speak. In addition to special education. If you have special education students, that's another bite of the pie. I think it's interesting to note that maybe 11% of our student population are special ed with disabilities. And fortunately, we're in a democracy that we try to provide as much education and as equal education as we can for those students. But because of the cost of it, it takes almost 25% of the Department of Education's budget for that 11% of the students. So their needs cost is almost twice as much as the other students. And at that, we don't have enough teachers that are qualified to teach that. That's correct. As well. I mean, talk about... We don't have enough qualified teachers, period. Not a qualified teachers, period. And then especially in some of the specialty areas, such as special education. And then that opens the door to other questions such as, well, why is it that some schools, some public schools, still have art and music programs and others don't? Who makes that determination? That determination is made by the principal. They still do have some say in what happens at their schools. So you may have a... And art and sciences are all very important things. The new ESSA legislation does put more weight on that, and they encourage that. They do have more funding for that. A comprehensive approach. Correct. And when I was going to school and elementary school, I remember my teacher also played the piano. And it starts giving you a love for music, other things. And I think it's really important at a young age for students to have other interests. Absolutely. Other areas that aren't really covered that I think have been in the past, or at least there's been discussions on, include vocational education and when we would start more vocational education at what age, how we can bring that back in. One of the thoughts that I had was, and actually one of the bills that I actually sent your way, or at least an idea was, can we get some of our veterans to get through and be certified teachers, a program to create certified teachers for our veterans to teach some of these vocational classes? Because some of them are here and they're very qualified. So how can we do that? Well, actually the Department of Education always, you know, they have partnered and they still do. And it's just a matter of whether or not you're qualified to teach the class. We do have substitute teachers. They can come in as a substitute if they would like to do that. But I do encourage them to do so, because they do bring value just as many of our teachers who have retired if they want to come back and substitute. You know, we do welcome that. I have one of the bills that we passed this session, you know, looked at the SPED students and, you know, we had passed an act before, but we never funded it. So at least now we will fund a position, you know, and have ways that we can monitor and we can include resource training for the teachers who are in SPED classrooms so that they have a better idea of how to handle some of these things. We have, you know, different needs. And that's part of the cost is that we also have liabilities because teachers don't know how to handle certain things. And it's not their fault. They have not been trained. Well, and that's what has come up on this show time and time again is how much we put on our teachers. How much we expect out of our teachers. Going from being able to identify an epileptic seizure to potential drug use, really the full, whether their eyesight is really working very well. And if they are able to notice that maybe this person needs an eye assessment, all of these extra things, in addition to, by the way, keep those children engaged, keep them moving forward. So much that we put on our teachers for the relative little amount that we pay them. I totally agree with you. It's not really fair when you put that. When we put so much pressure on our teachers and then blame them at the same time when it's not really in their control. And that's one of the things that really we think, okay, it's every student succeeds act that we believe that that can open the door to making a change. We can, but you know, and this is why the governor put together the ESSA task force, which Daryl Galera probably talked about. And I think there's 19 of us on the task force. And I am also on the task force. And there is just so much to learn. But that's why we're doing this to get everybody's input and try to be on the same page as much as possible because DOE, BOE, and certainly the legislators have different ideas of how we're going to spend the money. Right, and where. Right, and where. And this goes even to the bill that we passed for the $100 million for Coova schools. Yeah, yeah. We thought we had an estimate that was going to work for us. And when it finally went out to bid, it came in four times higher than what we expected. See, that's one of the questions that I would also have. I have significant years of experience doing construction and project management. And I have been curious about- Not at the government level. Not at the government level. But I have actually, I've worked on federal and state procurement projects. So I've seen some of the, I guess, challenges that exist there. And there are, there seem to be inconsistencies sometime in the procurement aspect, whether it's the contracting of the contractors and those contracts themselves and how they're somewhat inconsistent. And then there's the actual procurement portion of materials and how that gets done and where that gets done. There are challenges and inconsistencies there. And then there's the permitting. The permitting process seems to also be very inconsistent based on what it is you're trying to accomplish. And sometimes based on who's reviewing the plans. So these are all areas that- I'm not a procurement specialist. So I won't pretend to tell you that I know what's going on. But I do know that that is a big issue. And I've seen it in other things. And sometimes because of our law, we have to, if someone cries foul, then everything stops and they sometimes have to start again, which drags the project out. And as we are seeing now, we're in a big construction boom. So the contractors will bid higher because the time and the manpower is at a premium right now. A couple of years ago, four years ago, when I was doing the CIP budget for the Senate, we did hundreds of millions of dollars in projects that some of them are only now starting up. But had we done it back then and been able to rush through this, we would have had it at a cheaper cost because everybody wanted work. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Now everybody has work and they really don't need your project. Do we need to not have easy opt-out clauses in these contracts as well? I don't know exactly what we need, but I think we need an overhaul of our procurement. Agreed. Agreed. I had the fortune of being able to spend some time in the Farm to School Plus working group. And through that, I got to sit down at first and just listen. And we had Senator Chinooklin was there. Senator Ruderman was there at one point. There were a couple of representatives that I think, you know, House of Representatives, people that sent their people that they didn't show themselves, but they were all there. We had Department of Education. We had CETAR. We had Nutrition Program. We had USDA. We had Farmers Bureau. We had Farmers Union. All the people at the table. And I was sitting back, just, I'm not a farmer, but OK, I'll listen. And I found out in a hurry that no one at that table actually spoke the same language. And it was a language of procurement. And no one at that table, no one invited the State Procurement Office. And no one invited the State Procurement Specialist in DOE. And I found out why there wasn't one. Oh, I did not know that. The current person, I'm not sure if that's changed, but the person who was there at that time was acting and didn't actually do anything. And I asked for the most recent RFP. And they said, well, we haven't done one in three years. And it was an omnibus RFP, which, for those who don't know, that means you have to bid on everything 100% of it. So if you can't bid on 100% of it, you can't bid. So immediately, I'm like, OK. Well, certainly it is how you present the request for proposal, how you break it out, or don't break it out. The State Procurement Officer is very well informed, very versed. She's very intelligent. And I think, correct, Sarah Allen. And I think she can help us with maybe trying to revamp. And it's not that I think the DOE is perfect, because I have called them out on procurement issues, which the State Procurement Officer looked into for us. But there are many things that we should be taking a look at. Agreed, agreed. Well, I felt very happy that we were able to get Sarah Allen there. And she was able to lay out a few things. Yes, you can do this. Yes, you can do that. And I'm surprised we're not doing that already, kind of a thing. So that was actually very helpful. And that's what helped achieve, at that time, the bill that we were able to put out that past was the hiring of the Farm to School coordinator, who started the year and a half ago or so. That was a really good ad. Senator De La Cruz and I, Donovan De La Cruz, who's also very passionate about education, we took time when we were in Chicago last week at the National Legislative Conference to go visit two 21st century schools and to see how they did, how they built, et cetera. And it was really, really a good experience. So we, at that time, also looked at procurement issues and how they were able to do things. So that's something that we've got on the back burner, waiting for the right time to bring forward. And we are going to talk about it. Let me know how I can help that, because I would love to continue my help and my support. And as much as I can give, I would love to be a part of that. So we, unfortunately, are really close to the end. But what I wanted to do is we didn't get to everything. We didn't get to talk a bit more in-depth about ESSA. And we didn't get to talk about some of your thoughts a preview of next session's legislative agenda. So what I would like to do is close the show with what you would like us to know as far as ESSA next year's agenda, what you want to make sure that we are thinking about and we are focusing on from the general public's perspective. Well, the federal government has tasked us to have whatever we're going to do with our new rulings to have it ready for implementation at the next school year. So we have to make sure that all of us, the Board of Education, the Department of Education, and the state legislators, have some agreement as to how we want to move. And I think that is also for all stakeholders. That's the students and the parents. So certainly, if you are out there and you have not had a chance to give input, there are various task force meetings happening around the community. So please take the time to go. If you can't make it, at least send in a question, a comment, or something. It's your government. Take advantage of it. I agree with that completely. And the more engagement and involvement we have, the better we are in many cases. The next one that I'm aware of that I know that I'm attending is coming up in September. I believe it's September 14th. And it's at Mualua High School. So I encourage and invite everyone to come to that one, certainly who lives in that area. But then look for, and you can go online, I believe you can go on to the Department of Education website and find where we have more of these coming up for your communities. So I think that that's a huge piece. So involvement, engagement, be there. So thank you so much, Senator, for joining us. This was too short of a conversation. It went by quickly. It really did, it really did. So thank you for joining us as well. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Education Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Kampanya. Next week, we're hoping to have Mr. Matthew Lynch, the current sustainability coordinator for the University of Hawaii. We're looking to hear from him what he's trying to accomplish at the University. Thank you, and see you next week. Take care.