Just 15 hours after his new appointment as permanent state superintendent of Hawaii’s mammoth public school system late Thursday night, Keith Hayashi was rushing to board a plane Friday morning. True to his supporters’ depiction of him as a “boots on the ground” leader, he was heading out to Kauai for the first of no fewer than five graduation ceremonies he would attend on three islands over four days.
Getting face to face with students and teachers statewide has become one of Hayashi’s signature strategies in managing Hawaii’s 294-campus public school system, the nation’s 10th- largest school district. In his first nine and a half months as interim superintendent, Hayashi reportedly visited 80 schools, and after he transitions into the permanent head of schools July 1, he says, he’ll keep going.
In fact, in a brief interview Friday to discuss his immediate next steps, Hayashi said one of his top priorities — and challenges — will be to pull Hawaii’s disparate community together to gain input and build support as he and the state Board of Education launch almost immediately into devising a new strategic plan for the public schools and accelerate work to help students recover from pandemic learning loss and social- emotional “trauma.”
“We are in a critical transition period in public education,” Hayashi told the board during his public presentation and interview Thursday. “We’ve lived through COVID, we’ve learned from it, and we will continue to lead from this shared experience.”
While the former Waipahu High School principal declined to compare and contrast himself with his predecessor, Christina Kishimoto, a New York native who led school systems in Arizona and Connecticut before becoming Hawaii superintendent, Hayashi’s ability to connect with the local community and sensibility is a major reason the board narrowly appointed him to the job.
With his slight “local” accent that telegraphs his Kaimuki High School and University of Hawaii roots, effusive enthusiasm when speaking conversationally, and his 33 years in education that include eight years in the trenches that are the classroom, for Hayashi, 57, gaining trust with leaders in the state Department of Education, the Legislature and much of the broader community is an area in which supporters say he excels.
The board expects Hayashi’s skill and connections to help him to hit the ground running.
Hawaii’s public schools have been without an up-to-date strategic plan for about two years, and the superintendent’s job will be to help the BOE create it, then to execute it. The last strategic plan was meant to cover 2017-20; creation of a new one was delayed by the pandemic and rifts between the board and Kishimoto.
Hayashi said the challenge will be not only uniting the state-level DOE, area complexes and schools behind the plan-making effort, but making sure to include “other stakeholders outside the department … as many people as possible, different role groups, to hear their voices on what they would like to see, feel and hear as they walk into classrooms and talk to students in our public schools.”
Even more urgent, some board members and community members say, is the need for the schools to get more aggressive in helping students catch up with problems caused by extended distance learning and the stress and chaos of the pandemic.
Some of the urgency comes from the latest data indicating continued pandemic damage to student math and English competency, attendance and mental health. Some of the pressure comes from deadlines over the next two and a half years to effectively spend $639.5 million in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds; so far Hawaii has spent only 27.1%.
“We use that term ‘struggling students,’ but you know, that doesn’t even come close to describing the situation that we are in,” BOE member Bruce Voss, one of Hayashi’s most vocal supporters during the board’s deliberations, said Thursday.
“Let’s be real here: We have at least a third, maybe more, of our students that we are in danger of losing … as lifelong learners. … I think we cannot waste another minute,” Voss told fellow board members. “And to me, I think we need to choose the candidate, someone said this, who can hit the ground running, who can make the best use of our best resources, which is our teachers, and then the money we have from our federal government and other places, and I think that person is Keith Hayashi.”
Voss noted that the board has felt frustrated at times over communication gaps and other issues with Hayashi during his time as interim superintendent. “But he has the background, he has the love of students, he has the support of principals and the depth of knowledge to take immediate action to save those students,” he said.
Occasionally, vitriolic public testimony during Thursday’s daylong selection process illustrated the difficulty Hayashi faces in gaining support from those who are fatigued from the pandemic and opposed to his following the state Department of Health’s recommendations to continue indoor masking and other pandemic measures.
Hayashi says he stands by those measures as necessary to keep schools open and keep more students in in-person learning.
He prevailed in the selection over California education consultant Caprice Young. Longtime Hawaii educator Darrel Galera also was a finalist but was eliminated from contention early in the board’s public deliberations.
Young’s broader experience leading large school systems such as Los Angeles Unified initially won over some board members, and a long length of the BOE’s debate centered on whether promoting Hayashi from within the DOE would mean more of the “same old same old,” as board member Kili Namau‘u phrased it.
In the end, all board members except Vice Chairperson Kenneth Uemura cast their roll-call votes for Hayashi in a show of solidarity.
Hayashi said Friday that he is grateful for the appointment and believes that as he shepherds the 171,000 students and 42,600 employees in 257 regular public schools and 37 charter schools, with an operating budget of more than $2 billion, he’ll bring progress and not the status quo.
Hayashi, who has been called a pioneer in career academies and early-college classes during his tenure at Waipahu, said he hopes to usher in sharper department focus on connecting every level of Hawaii’s education, from preschool through graduation, so students are better prepared for higher education and work.
He contends that in his work, “it was never a ‘same old same old.’ It was about what can we do to better support our students to get them ready for the workforce, but also what do we do for our students to help them become better people? To give back to others, to have that sense of service, that sense of responsibility, that sense of aloha spirit. … It’s about continuing to develop heart in our kids.”
