 I'm Marcia Joyner, and we are navigating the journey. And today is Veterans Day, and I am a blue star family. So we are going to show you a brief, beautifully done tribute to the military. And then we'll get to talk with our guest, who is my Senator, Stanley Zhang. So join us, enjoy the video. The United States Army. In World War I, 4,057,101 soldiers serve valiantly on the field of battle. To all the men and women of the Army, out of our history, our salute. It's Navy. In World War II, war freedoms preservation. To the many generations of post-war veterans, our gratitude and our salute. Every member of the Marine Corps who served in every conflict, we salute you. I just had to salute all of those people since every generation of my family, from one of my great-great-grandfathers, up to my grandson, that's nine generations had been in the military. So we had to salute. And now my husband, who is retired, Submariner. And he's a disabled veteran. So, of course, this is a special day. Now, back to today. And let's meet again with our Senator, Stanley Zhang. And it is an absolute delight to have you, Stanley. And when I say my Senator, of course I'm very possessive, but all of you know that. My Senator is East Honolulu. So Stanley, welcome. Marsha, I did not know that nine generations of your family have served our nation in the armed forces. What an honor to be able to appear on your program today. And thank you so much for your sacrifice on the home front and for your family's sacrifice all over the world, keeping our nation safe and keeping the world safe for democracy. I'm very proud of them, of course, of course. But now tell us about Stanley and about East Honolulu. Where is your district? Our district runs from Diamond Head to Hawaii Kai. It includes about two thirds of Hawaii Kai. And that's the district that I've represented since 2016. Two thirds. Oh, that means that that other part is now Chris Lee, right? That's right. Portlock, the Kaiser High School area. That's part of the district that includes Waimanalo as well. That's the 25, District 25. Okay, so now you've been with us. It seems longer than that. What were you before you were a Senator? So from 2011 to 2015, I served as a member of the Honolulu City Council representing the Alamoana to Hawaii Kai district. I was gonna say it seemed to me that you've been with us longer than but anyway, so in that district, that's a very, it's a huge district. And I remember the last time we talked with years ago that you had walked every door in that district. But of course this time because of the virus, you didn't get to walk. But that was, I went four years ago. Is your term four years? Right, so I knocked on 16,000 doors back in 2016 and a further 19,000 doors in that city council race in 2010. So a total of 35,000 homes in the East Honolulu area. Dear, did you lose any weight? I did. An average of 25 pounds per election and worth through a lot of shoes and put on a lot of sunscreen. So you know how that goes. Yes, well, listen, now let's get up to today. This time, Senator Chang sent everybody a flier. I guess you can call this a flier but it's absolutely wonderful. And I got one of these every day and it told exactly what he was doing. And that was just absolutely wonderful. We would know because there's a lot of detail in everything he did. And I think probably the one thing that we all know is what he did for the schools in East Honolulu. And the flood, the 2018 flood and it's a $25 million flood relief package. Did I get that right? That flood was awful. You know, yards and down in Ina Hina where the water runs through Ina Hina, all of that was flooded. And so he got $25 million flood package relief for that part of where the flood was. And I am just so proud of you, my dear. Now, of course, what I want to talk about is, because I think this is just fabulous. And that's Neu Valley, we do have a picture of Neu Valley and it's Neu Valley School at Neu Valley Middle School World Language. I think that is just wonderful. So tell us about this project because I think this is the best thing I've heard of. Thanks for bringing that up, Marcia. You know, one of the crown jewels of the entire State Department of Education is the Kaiser Complex. And what a lot of people don't know is that the Kaiser Complex offers a program called the International Baccalaureate or IB program. This is a very famous program around the world. In fact, it's the same program that you will enroll in if you spend the big bucks to attend one of the famous boarding schools in Switzerland and France. It's one of the most advanced and rigorous programs available today anywhere in the world. And the leadership of the Kaiser Complex has long believed that their competition is not just other public schools, but indeed the private schools like the Iolani's and the Punahos. So they've offered this product as a way for our East Honolulu families to receive a truly world-class education for the free cost of public school attendance. And one of the integral components of the IB program is learning a world language. It's a very internationally focused program. And so New Valley Middle School requires all of its students to learn a foreign language. That required a new classroom facility to house these classrooms. And that's the building that is currently being built that we featured on our flyer. Yes, we have the groundbreaking picture. That's right. Yeah. You see there that First Lady Don Amano Ige was there to participate in the groundbreaking. It's a really world-class facility for a few reasons. First of all, it's designed to take advantage of the natural breezes in the area so that it doesn't require air conditioning. And that's something that we're all very aware of now that we're in the age of climate change. And it's also designed to provide the most innovative learning environment in a real indoor outdoor way for learning languages. It's going to have state-of-the-art connectivity so that the students there can interact with students from around the world. And I should also note that the passive cooling system which allows for a lot of ventilation throughout the building is more important than ever now in the era of the pandemic when we know that crowded indoor spaces that are poorly ventilated cause transmission of the pandemic. So it's really a first-class, world-class facility that we can all be proud of in East Tunnelulu. So now we built a special building separate from the rest of the buildings. Well, so that it's new, it's modern, and it's built for tomorrow's climate. Is that what we're looking at? What is to come? In terms of- That's exactly right. Design, yeah, that's great. If you've been out to the site, you've seen that there are actually a number of portable temporary classrooms that have been there for decades now so they're not exactly temporary. And that's why it was so important to have a purpose-built classroom building that can take advantage of the cooling breezes of the nighttime air that's really well ventilated so that the students can stay cool even during the really hot summer months. And it's a really innovative state-of-the-art facility that we can all be proud of. We no longer have to be ashamed of our portables and our temporary classrooms. But we have a picture of Neu Valley for since we do have an audience that has no idea where Neu Valley is. Neu Valley is East Tunnelulu and it is a valley as such. And there's a whole lot of how many valleys from Wileye to Diamond Head. There's lots of separate valleys. And yes, as you come in, you can see in the picture down near the highway. All right, off the ocean, the breeze is wonderful, but as you go further back into the mountains, it changes. So, and in Hawaii, maybe you can do something about this, but kids go back to school in August and September are the hottest months of the year. So why don't they leave school so early? Why can't they stay? Because June is a wonderful month, comfortable month. And then go back to school after September, after this heat. You know, that's not a bad idea. And I think we definitely need to take a look at that, especially because we're all aware of the huge investment it would take to air condition all of the existing classrooms in the state. Neu Valley, as you pointed out, is a school built sort of in the back of the valley. So in some ways, we're very lucky that we can take advantage of the natural mountain breezes that are coming down from the ridge line at night. And so one of the really innovative features that the architect, Dean Sakamoto, incorporated was orienting the building and having a pitched roof line so that it can capture the nighttime breezes, which then will flush out the hot daytime air and that those cooling breezes will then be retained within the building during the day and the heat that is generated during the day will be flushed out again through this innovative roof line. So it should help to keep the building cool. In theory, again, there won't even need to be air conditioning. And that on top of the naturally cool location that Neu Valley Middle School occupies, hopefully we'll take care of the issue for the whole community. And the school sits as you're going back into the valley and as the mountains begin to rise, the school sits high above the high, what, the street, but above the street level, the school is high. So that should help with the circulation. That's exactly right. Yeah. So how much did all of this cost? Well, that's always the million dollar question. And in this case, it was... Where's the million dollars? Now we'll start there, yeah. It was several millions of dollars. And in fact, the cost was large enough that the building had to be separated into two phases. So the first phase was approved. I think it was about $3 million. And so under the first phase, you have one of the classrooms built, but the entire roof line built. So the first phase will include just those elements. And then the second phase is the $3.5 million that I worked on with Representative Mark Hashem to deliver this a couple of years ago to finish the remainder of the classrooms in the building. And unfortunately, the way that the system works, often building projects need to be phased and don't happen all at once, but we were able to eventually deliver the entire project over just a few more years than it would have otherwise taken. Well, now once it's created and the students begin, are the students doing this in the old classrooms or is this whole project waiting until the building is complete? Well, since groundbreaking was only just last year, I'm not 100% sure whether they'll be opening the building in phases or whether they'll just be undertaking everything in one go. But in the meantime, if you visit New Valley, you'll see how creatively the school community has incorporated language learning throughout the school. In fact, the whole school is something of a world language classroom. You'll see doorways, you'll see buildings, libraries and everything marked in Chinese as well as English to help the students incorporate the learning of the Chinese language into their everyday lives. And that's something that I think we can all be really proud of that they're offering such a fantastic product. Yes, and will they learn to write also? Exactly, exactly. So that's why the signage will be in the Chinese language. And as you walk around the school, Marsha, you'll be able to pick up a lot of phrases and words in Chinese yourself. That's great. Now, because we are so close with Japan and there's so many Japanese words that we use in Hawaii in ordering food and in slang and everything else. So that would be a little bit easier than the Chinese. I believe that those are the two languages, Japanese and Chinese, that are incorporated at New Valley Middle School. And one even more exciting thing that I understand about the building is that because it is a new build and because there's so much flexibility, there's input from the teachers in incorporating Japanese and Chinese elements into the interior decor of the classroom so that when the students enter the classrooms, they will experience the culture, the architecture, the design of those two ancient civilizations in their classrooms, which obviously enhances the learning experience by a lot. Do they get to communicate with other schools that are doing this world language? Do the students have that interaction with other schools and other countries in other cities? I believe they do. And I know that in my time as a state senator, I was on a delegation a couple of years ago to Hiroshima, Japan. And there were students from the district who were part of that delegation, students from across the state who were part of that delegation as part of an exchange program with students and faculty members from Hiroshima, Japan. So when you get to incorporate travel and firsthand experience with other cultures, you enhance the learning experience by orders of magnitude. And that's just something that, even though I went to Yolani and studied Chinese the whole time, I certainly never got to participate in a program like that. So it's just really exciting, the programs that are available to students nowadays. Now, will it be just Asian languages or European languages also? You know, I'm not sure. I know that they are planning to use Chinese and I think Japanese is the other language that they're focusing on. But I'm not sure if they're able to study other languages like Spanish or French or German. Well, here, you know, we can, most of us anyway, can tell the difference when you look at the language, oh, this is Korean. This is Japanese and Chinese, of course. Just because that's what we live with, you know, food and buildings and other people's churches and what have you. So you get to see and recognize the difference in the languages. And that's, but there's so many Asian languages. In Chinatown, in our Chinatown, we have seven different languages in that little three mile square. That's why I'm asking other than those two languages, what about the rest of those languages? And they're Asian languages, yeah. You're absolutely right. And that's why learning a language is a lifelong process. It's not something that you do and then you're done with. You really have to make a lifetime commitment to understanding the language, hopefully getting good enough to understand accents, then dialects. And of course, as part of the language learning process, there's also the process of learning the culture too, the etiquette, how you address people who are older than yourself, younger than yourself, how you hand a business card over. And that's why language learning is just one small part of helping to make our students global citizens. They can have a whole new range of careers that are open to them. They can be making a lot more money than they would otherwise if they only had access to the English language. And that's why it's so exciting that we have opportunities like this in our public school system today. Well, now we are almost out of time. So real quick, tell us what other projects you've got going before we have to leave. Thanks, Marcia. We have a big plan to end the housing shortage in Hawaii, which we all know is one of the top issues facing our state. It's called Aloha Homes for affordable locally-owned homes for all to build high-density 99-year leasehold condominiums on state-owned lands near the rail station. And we're really hoping that in this pandemic crisis, there is an opportunity to move our state forward by greatly expanding the construction of these homes and ensuring that every generation here in Hawaii will have the opportunity to have a good life here, that one job will be enough. Hey, that's a good idea. Well, Stanley, it's a pleasure spending this time with you and all the years we've known you. Keep in touch, but I promised your office we would leave on time so you could get to your next appointment. So thank you, Stanley. Thank you for all you've done for the community and keep in touch. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It was a real pleasure today, Marcia.