Hawaii has been my home for more than 15 years, but I’ll be flying to Maine soon to start college. Although I’ll revisit Hawaii periodically to catch up with family and friends, when I graduate from college four years from now, I hope to return to a Hawaii that has transformed for the better. This is my vision for a better, fairer Hawaii in 2024.

I hope to return to a Hawaii that gives its keiki the best education in the country. Universal preschool will be available to all 4-year-olds in Hawaii, whether rich or poor. All school classrooms will be air-conditioned. Special education and school counseling services will be better equipped to help students with behavioral problems. The school-to-prison pipeline, which disproportionately targets Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander students, will no longer exist.

Our schools will prepare a world-class workforce. A more ambitious STEM curriculum will be implemented to prepare students for high-growth and high-wage job sectors, such as IT and renewable energy. All public high school students will be required to fill out the FAFSA to qualify for federal college aid. In higher education, we will be nearing, or already at, our goal of 55% of Hawaii adults becoming college graduates by 2025.

While many of our STEM graduates may leave, some will stay and start businesses that form the pillars of Hawaii’s future economic growth. With our 100% renewable energy goal, high-wage and high-growth industries in renewable energy and tech are ripe for expansion. While tourism recovers from the pandemic, jobs generated by wind, solar, geothermal and other forms of clean power, especially through research and development, will lead us back to growth.

Building on the success of the all-mail primary election, automatic voter registration (AVR) will increase voter turnout, especially among underrepresented communities, to the point that politicians can no longer ignore them. The state government will seriously address the demands of kanaka maoli, who have been fighting for the right to practice their culture and preserve their land, from Hakipu‘u to Kahuku to Mauna Kea. The criminal justice system will shift from punitive practices toward diversion and rehabilitation alternatives, and oversight of the police will be increased.

The Hawaii that I return to in 2024 will finally be ending the generations-long housing shortage with state Sen. Stanley Chang’s ALOHA Homes program. Young people with starter salaries won’t have to live in their childhood bedrooms, because many will be able to buy one of the tens of thousands of $300,000 condos under construction on state-owned lands in urban Honolulu. The sudden availability of low-cost housing, the expansion of financial assistance programs for low-income households, and greater funding toward mental health services will drastically diminish our homeless problem.

Even as we struggle to contain one pandemic, Hawaii will have ended another that devastated previous generations: HIV/AIDS. With the help of local public health initiatives such as the University of Hawaii JABSOM’s “Hawaii 2 Zero” and widespread adoption of preventative medicines such as PrEP/Truvada, this may be the most realistic goal on this list.

By no means do I expect our issues to have quick and easy fixes. Current politicians have struggled to articulate a bold vision for our islands, and with COVID-19 consuming much of our political oxygen and public resources, it’ll be harder to effect the changes we wish to see in the next four years. My final hope for 2024 is that my peers — other recent Hawaii high school graduates — will return with me to help renew our island community, and bring this vision for a fairer, better Hawaii to fruition.

Ray Sakamoto is entering his freshman year at Bowdoin College.