 Aloha, and welcome to Talk Story with John Wahee. We are following up on our last show where we had a Mr. Stanley Lau, and our discussion was about the Constitutional Amendment, which will be on the ballot this November, which will allow the state-to-tax investment property for education. Mr. Lau presented the view opposing the amendment. This morning I thought it would be only fair to have someone who was in favor of the Constitutional Amendment. And so we have a special guest, Mr. Corey Rosen Lee, and he is the president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, which represents all of the hard-working people in our schools. So Corey, welcome. Thank you. Before we go any further, I have to declare, in terms of total disclosure, that I am not necessarily in favor of this, but I do believe in what you're trying to do. And so I guess why don't you maybe start off by explaining the amendment as you said, and I really want to know why you think it's needed. So I saw the show, and one of the important things is I heard your opinion at the time. And one of the things is I find that if we can have a five-minute conversation with people usually about this and why it's needed, that most people do support it. And that's what we're trying to do, is we just feel like if we can cut through all the clutter and a lot of the fear that's being used around it, I think at the end of the day we get a lot of support. Yeah, because I want to talk really about why we have it and not just about how terrible it would be to see property taxes raised. So let's, you know, what does it do? So let's start off with the problem, okay? And what we're trying to solve. And let's, I'd like to, someone in this conversation today, talk about the problem in Hawaii, but specifically for Native Hawaiian children. Okay, great. Because I think that it's very important that, you know, I think that Native Hawaiians should be one of the biggest proponents of this bill. But the first problem is this. So the question is what's going on currently in our schools? And what we've seen right now is the most important factor in how a student does in the classroom is the teacher. Right. Absolutely. We've seen over the last six years that the amount of teachers leaving Hawaii to go teach on the mainland has increased by, I think, nearly over 80%. And what's the main cause for that, if you don't mind me asking? There's no one cause, okay? You cannot solve this through one bullet here. One of the biggest problems we have, of course, is funding. Right. When you adjust for cost of living, our teachers are the lowest paid in the nation. There is a study that came out today from Wallet Hub that says Hawaii is the worst state to teach in the nation. Because of the cost of living? Cost of living and, yes, primarily. So you and Stanley are actually on the same side when it comes to cost of living. Both of you. But a lot of people in this argument are trying to say, no, don't adjust for cost of living. And that's a ridiculous thing because everything in Hawaii is adjusted for cost of living. So because of this, we have this over 1,000 classrooms that don't have a qualified teacher. And what that means is, and I've seen this firsthand, is these kids go to school and they can have an emergency hire or they have a substitute. Right. But the substitute does not have to know the content of that classroom. And so you will have it. So they just show up and babysit. Exactly. Yeah. What we've seen then is that, and so we have 1,000 classrooms and we want to think that, so we estimate that somewhere about a third of our students, a third of our public school students on a daily basis go to school and at least one of their teachers is not qualified. But the reality is this, some of our students probably go their entire career without having one substitute emergency hire. And some children, primarily those come from poor communities or rural commercial communities. Like native Hawaiian communities. Native Hawaiian communities. Or communities with a lot of immigrant children or the like, right? So they're more likely to have unqualified at a field and an experienced teacher. So there was a study done by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015. And they were looking to see was there specifically certain areas where you would have this problem and where there's certain ethnic groups that had it. And so one of the things they looked at was the Nanakuli Waianae area. Where it's 81% title one or high poverty. 81%. 81%. And this is the part that's scary right now across the entire state is what we've seen in the last few years is now a majority of our students are now title one. Which means that we have totally created two school systems. Again, I mean, we've gone back to the whole idea of the democratic revolution was to end the idea. But we're going the opposite direction. We are now creating two school systems. One that's well funded, that does everything that education is supposed to do, and another school system that doesn't have teachers or 100-degree classrooms or broken desks. So it's not necessarily just about money. I mean, you need to also use it well. You need to attract teachers. But you need more money to get to those things. So back to the thing. So they looked at the Nanakuli Waianae area and they found that one out of every five teachers had less than one year of teaching experience. I think it was like 9% that were unqualified and another like 8% were out of field, which meant you may have an English teacher doing special education but doesn't know how to do special education. And what's so surprising to me is that despite that, teachers give an awful lot and they try to make the school the best they can. But can you really do that with the shortages that you're describing? Can you actually take a school that is under, I wouldn't say necessarily underfunded or less funded than someplace else, but under staffed or under, it's just not up to par. So we have great teachers at every school. It's not about that we're saying that we have bad teachers. Is that, look, when I first started teaching, teaching is hard. It takes time to learn the craft. When you constantly have these high turnover and it's constantly for the same group of students were basically denying them an education. So this 2015 equity report said that high minority, high native schools are more likely to have unqualified teachers out of field teachers and inexperienced teachers. So you mentioned to me that there was an additional study done on Native Hawaiian children by Kamehameha schools. What does that show? The question is this. If we were to increase funding for our schools, would that have a huge impact for our Native Hawaiian students inside of our public schools and for the Native Hawaiian community? And the answer is yes. And there's two reports that you can look at. One was a Kamehameha schools report and it showed that they looked at both Kamehameha school students and they looked at all Native Hawaiians. And the one thing to look at the all Native Hawaiians is that includes Native Kamehameha school students so the numbers would actually be less if it was public school versus Kamehameha schools. And the first one they said is reading at grade level or higher in grade three. So Kamehameha school students, schools was at 89 percent and the all Native Hawaiian learners was at 62. So there's still a gap. When they start off. Okay, but there's about a 27 percent gap. But then the real important number is to look at this one. Graduated from high school on time and prepared for the next step. That means you can go to college or vacation schools or have a better life, frankly. 92 percent of Kamehameha school students are ready for that next step. All Native Hawaiian students is 25 percent. So between. Wow. Third and twelfth grade, you're losing close to 40 percent of those. You start off under anyway, but what happens is that it actually starts to expand. The number of people that are left behind, I guess you would say. And so you have this large group of students that are either dropping out of school, not going on to college and therefore not having a lot of opportunity. I would assume that in addition to the native Hawaiian students, you might find something very similar happening in other with other ethnic groups or other groups in areas that are poverty stricken. We just don't have a Kamehameha schools to compare them to. But the interesting thing too is this is that we have a racial divide in Hawaii's public schools and Hawaii's schools, I should say, not public schools. Native Hawaiians have the largest percentage of public school students in the state. Really? Despite the fact that they have their own Kamehameha school system. So they're overrepresented in the public schools and underrepresented in the private schools. While Caucasians, Japanese, Chinese and Koreans are overrepresented in the private schools and underrepresented in the public schools. What about Filipinos? So Filipinos are the second largest ethnic group in our schools. Native Hawaiians and Filipinos make up about half of all of our students in our public schools. Just those two ethnic groups. I mean, those two ethnic groups ought to be furious with these statistics. They should absolutely be furious. This is systemic institutional racism and segregation that in order to provide. So you're getting my 60s blood all churning here. But this is the thing is, is that if we invest in some children and our private schools spend two to three times as much and we deny other children basic education. So I'll give you the statistic. So last year there were 19 openings for special education teachers in the Nanakuli Waena area. And they're only able to hire one qualified teacher. Wow. So over three years there were 65 openings and they're only able to five teachers. So imagine you are a native Hawaiian special education student, you know, going to the Nanakuli. You start off behind the eight ballers every single year. What every single year you're denied that qualified teacher. How do we expect them to do well? So native Hawaiian children that are special education at Waenae, 50% are chronically absent. Wow. Because by that time they've been denied an education or they're going to school and have someone that may not be trained. Why do we expect that they keep on going to school? Right, right. Absolutely not. But you know, I actually detected something, also something else, a little subtle. You know, because what we're comparing is the fact that these other groups have access and are in private schools. But it seems that you're also suggesting that within the public school system, they are schools that have, you know, have all the teachers that they need and get a better shake than places like Waenae Nanakuli. So it's not the fact that we're just saying, oh, public schools have these results and private schools have something else. You're also saying within the public school system, there are districts that apparently don't have teachers like Waenae Nanakuli or qualified teachers. Sure. So the lack of teachers is not uniform. But what we have seen is, it used to be, like for example, elementary education. There's the idea that you could never get a job if you wanted to be an elementary education teacher. Yeah, it was so... Now we have a huge shortage in elementary education teachers. Really? Yes. Wow. Everything across the field. I never thought they would have an emergency hire for a social studies teacher. We have emergency hires for social studies teachers now. There's no one aspect of our public schools that does not have a vacancy now. But there are some public schools that have better than others. People are cute, so it's better, but it's not like all of a sudden there's a panacea in other places. What we really notice is this, and again, our private schools is not like the teachers are better. A lot of them are actually from our public schools. It's the consistency. I was at Campbell High School, and for your period, we lost 100 teachers out of 200 teacher staff. You can't do that. I mean, how do you... You can't do that. You're staying there. We're going to be right back in a minute. We need to take a small break here. And when we come back, we want to discuss what's the solution, and why is the, in Cory's mind, this constitutional amendment at least something, at least a possible solution. Hi. I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of Contemporary Asian Affairs. There's so much to discuss, and the guests that we have are very, very well informed. Just think, we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China, remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about. Whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. Welcome back to Talk Story with John Wahee and our special guest, Cory Rosen Lee, who is the president of the Hawaii Teacher's Association. By the way, if you'd like to call in with a question for Cory, the number here is 808-374-2014. Cory, we were talking about the conditions in the public schools because of the, I guess you would say lack of funding. And how these conditions may have actually gotten worse since I was in office. Well, you're saying not only are special education teaching, teaching slots not, special education teachers not available, qualified, but in a whole number of categories. Is that pretty much the condition? So we know across the board, whether it's special education or English language learners, that a one across the board, our teachers are so frustrated with the current conditions. Just absolute lack of resources and help. That's why they're leaving. This is not a problem that happens everywhere. We have an American problem and then we specifically have a Hawaii problem within the American problem. And there has to be the urgency of now to do something about this. Because this is, everywhere around the world, the clear idea is you've got to invest in your kids. Right. It's basically just one of the smartest things a society can do. It improves the economy, it lowers social costs. And it just, this is- Well, you know, if you educate one child that comes from a dysfunctional background, you actually have turned the whole cycle around. Absolutely. And in the long run, it actually means less tax dollars being paid for a social net. Absolutely. And that's what we have to realize and that's what we have to do. Well, let me ask you, okay. So the proposal on the table, because obviously what you want and what you need is more funding or at least more committed funding. Absolutely. And so tell me about this particular amendment to the Constitution or how it came about and what is it supposed to do? So if we can agree, number one, we need to increase funding for our public schools and the only question is how do we do that? Right. Okay. And if you look at it, there are what we consider the four buckets. Okay. The four buckets that bring in enough revenue to actually make a dent in education. You have the general excise tax. Right. You have the income tax. You have the transient accommodation tax and you have the property tax. Right. Okay. If you look at those four, first of all, three years ago we tried the GET and that went nowhere in the last six years. So you say you tried the GET. We put up a bill. You tried increasing the GET. Yes. Our estimate is that we spend about $6,000 less per pupil than our comparative districts, which when you multiply times the amount of students we have is nearly a billion dollars. Wow. Yeah. So what are you trying to raise? I mean, since you don't know. Okay. So I would have loved to raise a billion dollars. No way to get there. Okay. So our first year what we tried was a 1% increase in the GET. Okay. And that would have brought in about $800 million. Additional funding. Additional funding. And that would have made a huge difference. And there was just no movement in the legislature to do that. Okay. It barely got through a couple committees and that was it. Now that's something, by the way, that the legislature has absolute authority over. Absolutely. I mean, they can do it. They can do it themselves. They don't need to go out for any kind of referendum. They need to show the same passion you showed when you talk about the needs of education. So when we were going around for that, the one conversation I had with a lot of legislators is they were talking about property taxes. And the reason why is Hawaii is the only state in the entire country that does not use property taxes to fund the schools. We have the lowest property tax rate in the entire country. And the third aspect is that our low property tax rates actually are hurting the economy in Hawaii. Okay. So how does that happen? So one third of all property taxes in Hawaii are actually paid by people that don't live in Hawaii. Because of their second home. Second homes. And so I'll give you the biggest examples of Maui right now. Last year about half of all homes, 52% of all homes and 60% of all town homes were bought by people that did not live in Hawaii. I didn't know that. Okay. So when you have all these outside investors coming in buying up that much property, then all the residents of Maui are fighting for the other 48% of the available real estate. And then the other thing is that foreign investors actually spend, I think the statistic was 50% more for the cost. So that's driving up the cost for everyone. So what you have is because the 40% or well a huge percentage of home owners are second home owners that they're actually decreasing the supply of housing on Maui. And because they're willing to pay more money for the homes, it's driving up the cost. So we have these two factors that are impacting housing. And so, and this goes back to last year, more people moved away from Hawaii than moved in. Okay. And same thing applies for native Hawaiians. Well, native Hawaiians don't like to move. They can help. But if you have these two things going on, okay, number one is we know that education is directly tied to income. And the more education you have, the higher your income you have. So when you're denying a group, systemically a quality education. That's a really good point, by the way, that this may be a little bit more than just a lack of funding. It's actually some kind of institutional classification going on. It absolutely is. And it appears, and you're suggesting anyway, that institutionalization of poverty also exists with the housing market as well as in the education market. So the question is, if you ask, why is Hawaii the only state not to use property taxes? Is this by some mistake or is this by design? Okay. And you go back a hundred years, it was done to discriminate. Okay. Okay. At the time you have relatively few wealthy landowners. You have the big five, the roots of the big five. Right. You have a few wealthy outpouring investors, same problem as we have today, that are buying up vast amounts of land. And they do not want, just like today, the wealthy do not want to share their wealth with the working class. Okay. They basically work with the legislature to make sure that they didn't tax property taxes as it was going on across the United States at the time. But what they did was, they wanted to tax the workers to pay for the schools. Okay. Okay. That's why we use the GET, primarily. All right. But they also said, if you educate them beyond the sixth grade, they become a menace. They knew that if the plantation workers' children got an education, they could leave the plantation, get better jobs, or demand higher wages, or start striking. So the best way to make sure you have a docile, cheap labor force, is to deny the education. You know, that was the cornerstone of the 1954 Democratic Revolution. I mean, if you're a Democrat sitting out there and you want to learn a little bit about your history, you just heard it. Because at one time, Hawaii, all the way up till the 1950s, really had a dual school system. We still have a dual school system. In effect, right? We have the highest rate of private school attendance in the nation. In Honolulu, close to 38% of children go to private school. Wow. There's nothing like that anywhere in the country. And there's nothing wrong. Private school, I mean, when we look for these big mystery, even a lot of public school teachers send their kids to private school, and it's not because they don't trust their front teachers, is that they don't, again, if you don't have, I might, might not... Well, how does that happen? Because these private schools need to be funded, and people that don't make a lot of money seem to be able to afford sending their kids to these schools. No. Well, it's a protocol, for example, spends about $30,000 per pupil. A regular education student in a public school costs $10,000. You mean, we spend one third? Exactly. Well, how do they afford to do $30,000? You have two groups. You have, first, you have, so, on the mainland, parents pick the communities, primarily if they have kids, based on how good the schools are, okay? And if they have good schools, they have high property taxes. Right. Here, they have low property taxes, so they don't have to pay that, so they can make sure that their own children get that quality education, but how about all the other kids? One of the arguments, and I understand the argument about the large landowners and the historical basis for that, but one of the arguments is that today Stanley made this actually very articulately the fact that, yes, you might be taxing a class that may mean very well need to have more higher property taxes, but in the process, you're going to end up making housing for, actually, in effect, more expensive, at least for the short term. So, the opponents of this argument are trying to make the argument that we're going to tax everyone, okay? And you, as a former legislator, know that if you tried to do that, you'd be out of office. Oh, yeah. Okay? Yes, of course. And so, they're just really, just like back then, we don't have the money to compete, so there's recently a Kaka'ako apartment, so the average apartment sold for $3.3 million. Yeah, ridiculous. For that $3.3 million, or one townhouse, they can buy out the media market for the next month, and they're going to use that to basically scare everyone, saying they're going to go after your rent, and that's not the truth. Well, let me ask you real quick, because we're running out of time, and I'm really interested in this, assuming that we can get, and I don't know why we wouldn't have consensus on the need for more money for education. If this constitutional amendment doesn't pass, what are some of the other alternatives? Because we really need to do something about funding education. And that's the thing is, is that 78% of people in Hawaii agree that we need to increase funding. Yeah, we ought to, why doesn't our legislature increase funding? Because the problem is, every single time we throw up one idea, there may be some people that support it, don't support it. This is the best chance we've had in decades to do something, and it's not multiple choice. Yeah, it's either yes or no. And if we vote no, then we'll wish back, why are we at 2,000 teachers that are leaving Hawaii now? Well, what's interesting to me is that with the excise tax, clearly a 40% of that's paid by tourists anyway, or 30-something percent. So if you're going to look for, well, I just can't see it. But the thing is this, it's not like if you vote on, it's not on the ballot, okay, vote yes for our schools in the Constitution Amendment, or you have a choice of doing the G.E.T., okay? If we vote no. We vote no, we go back to the time. We go back, and the question's current situation is, so bad that it caused urgency. And I think the interesting thing you were talking about before was, you actually agree that we should be taxing these outside investors, I had- I do, but you know what amazes me is that you actually don't need this Constitution Amendment, you don't need to, you don't need to classify it as a property tax. You can do like extractions, you can, we used to do, I used to do that when I was in office, you know, you want to get this, you want to build these buildings. I mean, why- Is that it? The conveyance tax doesn't bring in enough, okay, and the problem is the property tax really does, and again, you want to target it year after year, not a one-time fee. So this is- This is the best shot that you see right now. It really is. And it's time that people in Hawaii wake up to what the educational crisis may be. And this is why when I saw the show, okay, and I really hope, because there's going to be a lot of misinformation out there, but specifically, you know, we have the largest group of our children are Native Hawaiians. Native Hawaiians should be enraged by those statistics that you showed me, absolutely, absolutely. And also, you have these people that are driving up their cost of living, and it's sending Native Hawaiians to move outside of Hawaii, this is, this will be the chance that we have to really kill- Well, I hope that whatever happens that we end up funding education better than we have, and even if the amendment doesn't pass, the teachers need to be thankful bringing this issue up. Now, if it does pass, you're going to have your hands full working with the legislature doing it, but at least we'll be heading in the right direction. Exactly. All right. Okay, I would thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Absolutely. We just thought of time. I do appreciate you being here and giving us the other side of the story. Thank you. Aloha.