An unprecedented appropriation of $200 million
to create more public preschool facilities across
Hawaii, a bill devoting
$10 million to installing more air conditioning in public school classrooms, and other measures to help solve Hawaii’s doctor shortage were among a raft of
education-related bills signed into law Thursday by Gov. David Ige.
State House bill 2000 is “the largest state investment in prekindergarten education in Hawaii history,” Ige said during a bill-signing ceremony at the state Capitol. “It is our first big investment and first big opportunity to make progress in this area.”
The preschool funds may be used to construct new
facilities; renovate, improve and expand existing facilities; and other related costs. Ige called the project a “terrific first assignment and priority” for the new School Facilities Authority, an entity created by the Legislature to operate separately from the state Department of Education, to devise innovative and faster methods of school construction.
According to recent annual surveys by Kids Count, slightly fewer than half of Hawaii’s children ages 3 and 4 typically have enrolled in some kind of private or public preschool, nursery school or kindergarten, while the rest have not.
At the Legislature’s rounded estimate of $1 million to build a new preschool classroom or renovate an existing classroom, the $200 million could build or refurbish facilities for around 200 classrooms. But they would accommodate only about one-third of the state’s estimated 12,000 4-year-olds likely to use public preschools. House Finance Chair Sylvia Luke has estimated that building out preschool classrooms to also include younger children, serving about 20,000 children, by 2032 would cost about $2 billion by 2020 estimates, or another $200 million for each of the next
10 years.
Meanwhile, the latest round of air-conditioning funds would be an incremental step toward providing more heat relief to the schools.
The 2016 Legislature appropriated $100 million for the state Department of
Education’s heat abatement program. That funded heat abatement for more than 1,300 classrooms, but more than 5,000 classrooms still require improvements.
“With classroom temperatures continuing to escalate because of the impact of climate change on the state, providing heat abatement upgrades for overheated classrooms remains a high priority for Hawaii’s public school system,” the measure says.
Other public school measures signed into law Thursday by Ige:
>> Workforce readiness program: The DOE will be required to provide opportunities for students to earn associate degrees, workforce development diplomas, pre-apprenticeship certificates and other industry-recognized certificates. It requires the department to designate schools, including adult community schools, to participate in the program.
>> A new state coordinator position for summer learning, and a new state coordinator for school gardens plus related expenses, at $125,000 and $200,000, respectively.
State schools interim Superintendent Keith Hayashi said during the ceremony that amplifying summer learning opportunities is “more crucial than ever.” The DOE has included increased summer learning among its strategies to help students overcome learning loss and social-emotional difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The school garden coordinator is meant to support the DOE’s efforts to improve student health, develop an educated agricultural workforce and accelerate garden- and farm-based education, the measure said.
In a separate ceremony at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, Ige signed bills designed to address the physician shortage, especially on the neighbor islands.
The Hawai‘i Physician Workforce Assessment Project Report says the state is short 750 doctors, with the greatest shortage in primary care specialties. The problem is most severe on the neighbor islands; Maui and Hawaii county report physician shortages of at least 40%.
One measure appropriates $2.7 million for the medical school to increase medical residencies and training opportunities for medical students in counties with populations of 500,000 or less. It also gives the medical school $4 million for the expansion of medical residency and training opportunities in partnership with the U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs.
A separate measure appropriates $500,000 to fund a state program administered through the school of medicine to provide loan repayment for health care professionals who agree to work in federally designated health professional shortage areas.
