 of Hawaii on Think Tech today. And I'm your host, Stephanie Stowell Dalton. And welcome you to this program, which is looking at the topic of education in the state. I have a guest here to talk to us about the person who's informed to talk about the enormous amount of funding that is actually unprecedented for elementary and secondary education. In fact, it includes preschool. So this is the most ever distributed to all the states. And this all began about March of 2021, a year or so ago, when several laws started being signed by the president. And in total to date, we're more than $122 billion for preschool through 12th grade schools. So of these funds, and our expert guest will tell us a little more about this, Hawaii receives about 700 million. So the DOE is working the Hawaii Department of Education is working to distribute the funds and in equitably for the needs that post COVID, we along with all the other states have. And so those are of course, safety openings, regular in-person teaching back to that and learning in classrooms. And this is all to relieve the depredations and the destruction of COVID to a pandemic to our education and to our children's learning. So today, our guest is an education leader here in Hawaii, Sherri Nagamura. And she directs a nonprofit coalition for excellence in education. And so is Hey. And the website is H-E-M-N. We have the Hawaiian apostrophe E. So you can look that up to learn more. So welcome Sherri to ThinkTech. And thank you for participating in this conversation about funding from the federal government to Hawaii schools. Thank you, Stephanie. I'm so happy to be back again. It's really a pleasure to have you back on such a complicated topic. But I think the way you can talk about it will simplify it. I think that I'll just say there are three major bills that have passed. And they're called ESSER or elementary and secondary school emergency relief. And there's ESSER 1, 2, and 3. And in three bills, along with another one, the gear, the governor's bill. But in those bills, they are of different amounts and have come out at different times since March of 21. So if you could just, if you just can work with that structure, we don't have to get so complicated about the specific names of the bills. But they all add up to that enormous number I mentioned before, about $122 billion for the country, the whole country, all the states in about $700 million for Hawaii. Now, is that about correct as you see it from your look at it? Yes, that's correct. Since I think it goes back to the beginning of the pandemic, actually, that some of the funds started to trickle in. And that would have been maybe April of 2020, as everybody may look back and see when the schools are closed because of COVID-19. And since then, according to my calculations, it's been about $688 million in various tranches that have come to Hawaii Department of Education. Some of it has come to the governor as well. And that's been allocated to our Hawaii DOE. And so from that time until about 2024, so the last tranche of SR3, and you're correct, there was SR1, 2, and 3. But SR3 was roughly $412 million, I think, that is able to be spent until 2024. So it is an enormous unprecedented amount of money for education in our country. And for Hawaii, it's certainly a large amount. It is. And I'm very happy to read that all of the states have submitted plans to the U.S. Department of Education through which this money flows and then out to the different states. And all of the states have been approved, all of their plans have been approved for spending. So everybody's ready to go. So I think, you know, having passed through that gate, there's no reason to think that Hawaii would have any more challenge getting through that gate than anybody else. But just that they've all managed to get it done and get it through and get it reviewed. Now, as we go ahead, can you tell us a little bit about what happens now that it's kind of like systems are go. So what are the functions that go on here? Maybe you can tell us a little bit why you know this, why you would be able to. Okay. Yeah. So as you mentioned earlier, I am a director of a community coalition called HEA. It stands for Hawaii for Excellence in Education. And we're made up of nonprofit representatives who are very concerned and wanting to improve our public education system here in Hawaii. I follow a lot of the policy making that goes on at the Board of Education as well as the Hawaii State Legislature. And we provide a community voice for education policy. So that's why I know so much about the details of these funds and also about the strategic plan and the plans that the DOE presents to the Board of Education and the discussions that go back and forth. So you're correct. All of the states, I believe, have been approved. You can imagine the federal government was quite liberal with getting the funds to the states because of our pandemic, because of the effects of the pandemic. We know that kids couldn't go to school for a while. They had this hybrid learning where it was partially distanced, partially in-person for a while. And we've had a lot of disruption in our school system. So Hawaii did submit a plan. It was rather broad. In other words, they looked at certain categories, you know, health and safety, maybe addressing academics or well-being and submitted it to the US DOE and got approval pretty readily. So since then, there have been more detailed discussions at the Board of Education. And I've been able to follow them and also provide comment to the Board and the Department. Well, you've had quite a bit of access, and I'm very pleased that you have. And others too are there. So would you say that the process is rather open to input? Yes, it is actually. The hard part is sort of navigating the process and understanding how the Board of Education holds its meetings, the agenda items. There are certain protocols. For example, you cannot comment unless an item is on the agenda. And so because I follow the Board of Education meetings pretty closely, I'm in tune with how the community can comment. But for somebody who is not following regularly, it could be very, very confusing. But my group, I'm happy to welcome any community member who would like to learn about the process. Once you learn about it, it is quite accessible. You can provide comment and get your voice heard. Well, when it gets down to the actual writing of the plan, who's doing that? Is that the DOE and their committees? Who's actually doing the plan and the budgeting for this? Yes. So because the federal funds went direct, a lot of it, or most of it, went directly to the Department of Education. It's the leadership, the staff at the DOE, Hawaii DOE, that came up with the plan and is implementing it as we speak. I guess when you asked about how open or how transparent everything is, the DOE is very good at sort of giving a big overview of how the monies shall be allocated. But what is difficult to find out is specifically how schools are utilizing these funds. Because there's not a sort of real-time process on understanding the programs or initiatives or how each school is spending their funds. The only time we can understand what a school is doing is maybe every year they have to submit an academic and financial plan. And that is public. So we can see that. Usually it's posted once a year and we can go look at it. But these federal funds are unusual in that it's come sort of at different times. And the funds have been allocated. And so it's hard to really know how each school is using these supplemental funds. So that part is a little bit difficult to get a handle on. Well, in looking at the federal guidelines, I did find the sheet, which was a little different from previously. It wasn't as stringently explained or as clearly and specifically explained about what the requirements were. But then there's a new secretary plus the whole notion of this allocation is to make things happen and make them happen fast. And I think there's probably a lot of generosity for how it is that it's actually going to happen in the various districts and states. But I did notice that, and anybody can go to the US Department of Education's website and win their way through those wickets on that website to find out what the allowable uses are for the. So that I just wanted to say in general, I thought it was interesting to know that like for S or one, which was the first tranche, as you mentioned, there are 12 allowable uses. So there's guidance coming from the feds. So I mean, I mean, this is for all the state. So everybody's dealing with this. And I suppose there would be more discussion and publicity if there were some issues. But then for S or two, there's 15 allowable uses just to show that, you know, they're they're following all the same thing with S or three. They also they must spend 20% of the money on addressing the impact of lost instructional time. Thank you. So there is a framework around which people are working. Do you see the do you hear anything about this in the discussions of those working on this budget about what the feds to do as? Yes, I think the federal guidance, even though there may be 12 requirements is still very broad. And yes, I think basically I I interpreted it as perhaps two large buckets, really addressing health and safety. And then addressing addressing what they refer to as learning loss. Some school districts refer to they don't really want to refer to it as learning loss, but rather learning acceleration because due to the effects of the pandemic. The truth is a learning loss did occur because there wasn't enough or there wasn't as many instructional hours, kids had to be online. And so the government, a federal government wants each state to be able to supplement their the schools so that you know, we can regain sort of this instructional time used effective instructional strategies to get kids back on track because there was quite a bit of of of slippage in perhaps, you know, academic performance because there was more absenteeism or kids were affected emotionally, socially and emotionally by the pandemic. So the supplemental funds are really to address this category of learning loss or learning acceleration. So it's health and safety because we are still going through the pandemic. So we want to make sure our schools are as safe as possible, as well as addressing maybe the social emotional needs of students as well as the academic needs. So I really see it as two big buckets, even though there may be, you know, more criteria that has been defined by the federal government. Well, I noticed that there was a survey of 600 school superintendents that showed that those school leaders were using this funds for students mental health and development needs. That looks like it's a big priority. And another survey, they're starting to do more of them now, but these are just two examples. Another survey showed 82% of the district plan uses four social, emotional, mental and physical and health development. Because this is like children of war, you know, who have really been deprived of these services. So that the effects of that are can be, you know, can vary widely. Correct. So I, as a matter of fact, I did speak to a superintendent on the mainland who did a needs analysis of his district. And they really found that, you know, the pandemic caused a lot of emotional stress on students, even the high-performing students, because they weren't able to go to school at first. He mentioned that, you know, they sort of lost the will to try hard, to study hard. They kind of, some of them, you know, sort of dropped out or checked out of the whole of thinking of school or what they wanted out of school. But you can imagine kids who are perhaps in economically disadvantaged areas, I think the factors are, were, you know, overwhelming, because now you weren't able to go to school and you had to use computers and do distance learning. So I think the mental health of students really was affected by the pandemic. So I'm not surprised that many districts did use the federal funds to address the mental health needs of our students. Well, it seems that from the year before the pandemic, as I recall, we were really in the whole. I mean, everybody at the budget was really kind of a crisis about what was going to happen, the economy of Hawaii and all of that. And then, of course, then the pandemic and then now with this enormous benefit. What are you, are people excited about? Can you tell us a little bit about the affect of that? Or is there any? Or is it, oh, it's for work? I mean, where we're people coming from? Is it scaring them or they're making them happy? Well, I think at the school level, you can imagine any additional resources would be welcomed and it is welcomed. At the same time, though, the effects of the pandemic have been so overwhelming that even with more resources, I think schools feel very stressed to try to get back to some kind of normalcy. So it's mixed feelings. Of course, if we didn't have the supplemental funds, it would be that much more of a heavy weight on everyone's shoulders. But the fact that we have extra funds, I think at least we are able to provide more resources so that we can slowly get our schools and our students back on track. I think one of the questions, and one of the questions I had was what changes might come out of this? You as a long-term observer and participant in these processes of trying to improve what Hawaii does for its public schools, do you see this experience making a difference for Hawaii schools? What might be the outcomes in addition to better things they can do because of all the money, more computers and roofs that don't leak, etc.? I think that it is a tremendous opportunity to try to use the supplemental funds to really understand what's working and what's not working. Or maybe you try to find exemplary schools. Even during the pandemic in Hawaii, there were some schools that academic performance didn't slip as much as others. Maybe that was because there was a really effective or mix of distance learning and in-person learning that they were able to optimize to really make sure that kids stayed on track as much as possible. I would hope that some of these funds are used to try to analyze and study some of these exemplary so that we can have them as best practices going forward. Unfortunately, though, I believe the pandemic has really made things so difficult. I think just for example, when the Omicron variant hit, we had many more infections happening and schools had to deal with kids being absent because they had to quarantine and then you had the testing issue. There was a lot of disruption going on at the school level. That's why it's really hard, I think, for the system to try to do some of these analyses that could really help with the extra resources because they're just trying to deal with the day-to-day of battling what's going on with COVID. Hopefully, although I don't think anybody's really sure Omicron has passed, hopefully we'll have some stability in our system so that we can do some of these analyses and really identify some best practices so that we can be able to share them across the state. That's what I'm hoping, but I think the situation is so uncertain that it's difficult to know whether or not that kind of thing could even happen. Well, you know, there's an element of, I guess, it's not so much competition, but maybe comparability that's introduced in this process, Sherry, isn't it? Because all of the states are getting all of these funds and there's going to be a tremendous interest in assessing their progress and seeing what these outcomes are and seeing which ones are doing what and who's getting where. So how do you feel Hawaii will fare in that sense of it? Well, I did want to bring up something that I found, which was found in Hawaii that wasn't really a big significant factor in other districts. So, on the mainland, I should mention that most states have districts and some states have many districts and the funding is by property tax for that particular district. Hawaii is very unique in that we have only one district, it's the state. And so even though we have different islands, we are one state system and we are one district and our funding is determined by the state legislature. So it's the state general funds that fund education, not property tax. So we're different. I think there is an element of greater stability on the mainland with property taxes funding education because in Hawaii, I'll just take 2008 as an example when we had the great financial recession, our state funds shrunk and we weren't able to fund education fully and that's why we had furlough Fridays. We had to actually close schools because we didn't have enough funding to pay the staff to open schools. Similarly with the pandemic, tourism shut down so our state funds decreased and so did our budgets or so did our monies for public education. Thankfully though, we did have the supplemental funds come in and that's really helping. So in Hawaii, part of our ESSER funds, actually it was pretty significant amount of funds, was used to sort of plug up the budget deficits. And in other states where they had more stable funding, they didn't have to use the federal funds to sort of smooth out the financial situation. They could actually just directly use it for addressing health and safety and also for accelerated learning or learning loss. But Hawaii quite a bit of a large chunk had to be allocated towards sort of stabilizing the financial situation, plugging up budget deficits. And so that unfortunately is something that we had to deal with that other districts did not. There may be other reasons for districts in the many states to have funding problems too, but Hawaii is susceptible because of the economy and the fact that they have to be funded by the state budget. Yes, I think that on the mainland with property tax, it's a little more stable. You don't get these wide swings and property values as you would do with our state revenues. Our revenues are heavily driven by the tourist industry. And when tourists don't come, everything goes down and education is a large portion of our state budget. So there's some of that. But back to your question about whether or not you know, Hawaii is going to benefit or be back on track as quickly as other states. I mean, it's going to be hard to know immediately. We are a very large state district. There's 170,000 students. We have a $2 billion budget. It is a very large organization. So to get things going and moving in a way that you know, where changes can be made progressively is very difficult. If you're in a district on the mainland where there's only 10,000 students, you're much more nimble. And with these extra funds, you could probably initiate some strategies more quickly. And so we have that disadvantage in that although we are one state, one district, we're very large. So it might be harder to move quickly. I think the other issue going along with that, I mean, if you've got skin in the game, I mean, we're all paying taxes in Hawaii, right? So we've got skin in the game. But it's not so specifically as the money that's going to our district through our county taxes and our city taxes and the local school board and all of that. So do you think this might be a time when people are going to be more involved in what happens in the school? I mean, as this as more publicity comes out on what we're doing with this money and how it's affecting the different schools, I was wondering if you would see that people would pay more and certainly with programs like this one, people would pay more attention to how things are apply, how this budget is developed and how it's going to be deployed. Right. Well, that's a hope of my coalition really to get the public more engaged in what's happening at public education. But I think parents who have children in our schools, our public schools, they're very focused on what's happening at the school level with their child or with their children. So I would imagine that a lot of parents don't even know that there's a tremendous amount of funding that's going to the school. You're not going to really see the effects of this funding immediately. I think parents are generally concerned about COVID still. And if academic performance or social emotional mental health and well-being has been compromised or their children have been affected by it, I think they are probably more focused on what can we do to help or what can the school system do or what can they do together to help their children get back on track to pre-pandemic levels. So I don't think there is a general awareness that this tremendous amount of money has gone to the system. But I think it is important and I know that my coalition members feel it's very important to understand how the department is allocating these funds, what their goals are, how they intend to meet these goals and objectives. I believe it is a one-time unprecedented opportunity and hopefully we can use these funds to do some of the things that I mentioned before, try to do an analysis or analysis on exemplary schools so that we can learn from these best practices and these effective strategies that schools are using. So I'm hoping that it will spark a change, but right now it seems like parents and even community members is more focused on what's happening with their children if their children are attending public school. Just to clarify on the differences between Hawaii and other states, ways of funding schools, but there are as many people that can help with like many of the states are ramping up the tutoring of course, right? So they're ramping up tutoring to help close these gaps during the summer and even during school. But local schools can do those sorts of things. There's nothing about this system that prohibits parents from doing things or does it tend to be more coming from the bureaucracy down rather than the parent. So in Hawaii right now in our school system, we have a distributive leadership system where schools have a lot of flexibility and so schools can choose to implement a tutoring program if they would like. The supplemental funds could certainly be used for that and if they feel that that's going to help their students in their community, they can certainly execute on a program like that. I think what's difficult is the actual planning and getting it going because if you think about it, there's 256 public schools and there's more charter schools. If every school had to go and figure out a program on their own, on top of all of the things that are happening at the school every day, it's a big lift. So what I'm sensing is on the mainland, maybe their district, so the district office is more, how should I say, unified to be able to coordinate that for the school. So maybe a district would select a tutoring company or a tutoring consultant and maybe provide a menu for the school so that they could implement this program sort of district-wide. In Hawaii, even though we are one state and one district, in theory, we could do that for the whole state, but because of this distributive model, we're not set up to do that. So the schools will do it if they feel that it's important for their students and community, but you can imagine just getting the coordination and executing it is not very easy. Well, it sounds like to me that there will be interesting developments as we're going forward and what my hope is that we can increase the awareness of this wonderful benefit for this state as well as all the others and how the whole country can afford this is another question. And it's in hand. So let's see what happens as we get more publicity. We hear more from the department about what's going on and what their challenges are. Hopefully they'll be sharing more about that. And then things that you and your community you're trying to do and having success are challenged by. Let's talk more about that and continue to raise awareness about Hawaii schools and their enormous opportunity in this situation to have things happen to them that might not have happened before and for the children to get to be as to reach their potential as they can. Yes, I would love to have the community more engaged in understanding what goes on at our public school system. I think the more people that are engaged, the more we can cooperate and help the department in areas where they couldn't without the community. So I'm eager to help do that. Really good. All right. I think we'll say it's a low hot. I mean it is a low hot time now for this show and I'm your host Stephanie Stoll Dalton for the state of the state of Hawaii and our guest is Sherry Nakamura, the director of, you said Huey a little differently than I do, Huey for excellence in education and please take a look at the website and let's stay in touch with the news and we'll be back talking about education as a state agency and function of the state of Hawaii again soon. Thank you and aloha everybody.