A seven-year federal grant awarded in 2018 to support college and career readiness in 25 public high schools and 35 public middle schools across Hawaii is set to expire — and education officials are concerned it might not be renewed.
The grant funds Hawaii P-20’s Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs — or GEAR UP — a U.S. Department of Education initiative designed to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in higher education.
Over the seven-year
period, the program received $29 million in federal funding, averaging about $4.14 million per year. That funding has supported services for approximately 16,000 state Department of Education students annually, spanning grades 6 through 12 and including the first year of college.
Although the grant is set to expire this year, Hawaii P-20 Executive Director Stephen Schatz said the program can continue through September 2026 using a no-cost extension — allowing the use of unspent funds from previous years without additional federal money.
What happens after those funds are exhausted remains uncertain.
GEAR UP provides middle school, high school and
first-year college students with counseling services, work-based learning opportunities, summer enrichment programs in STEM and academic subjects, and support in developing Personalized Transition Plans.
Middle school partners typically lead activities focused on early college and career exploration — such as college visits and pledge events — while high school partners concentrate on preparing juniors for college enrollment.
GEAR UP is also a competitive federal grant program, meaning not every state receives funding or the same level of funding. The program was created by Congress and signed into law in 1998; Hawaii received its first GEAR UP grant in the early 2000s.
Schatz said the program has played a key role in promoting college access across the state.
“It empowers kids through getting them into post-secondary after they complete high school,” he said. “GEAR UP has been a really important aspect of a lot of the work that we’ve done as a state, especially for the Big Island and at some of our more economically disadvantaged neighborhoods here on Oahu.”
Schatz also emphasized that particularly in Hawaii, the University of Hawaii system offers relatively affordable tuition compared with mainland institutions.
For the 2025-2026 academic year, the total cost for in-state students living on campus at UH Manoa is projected to be approximately $33,078, according to the university.
“Sometimes the narrative is that college is really expensive, which is true in some cases,” Schatz said. “Some of our work is about working with families so that they understand what the true cost of college is and how they can access
financial support to get them through if they can’t do it on their own.”
While the current GEAR UP grant does not provide direct scholarships to
students attending post-secondary education, the program collaborates with organizations like the Hawaii Community Foundation and Kamehameha Schools to assist students in completing scholarship applications and connecting them to these agencies.
Angela Jackson, GEAR UP Hawaii’s project director, emphasized the importance of continued investment in education, especially for students in remote areas.
“Education is such an important investment in our next generation, especially for students who may not have easy access to information and help,” she said. “For example, some of our more remote schools in the neighbor islands, it’s difficult for the students and families to get enough information. Now that we are not putting as much investment into education, such as programs like GEAR UP, it’s going to make it even harder for these families to get that information.”
She added, “If, as a state, we still value education as a way to improve our standard of living, then we’ve got to continue to put investment into initiatives such as GEAR UP to emphasize education and provide those resources to the students.”
If the proposed budget by President Donald Trump’s administration moves forward, college access programs like GEAR UP could face elimination, including GEAR UP Hawaii.
GEAR UP is among several federal education initiatives that could be affected by the administration’s “skinny budget,” announced Friday, which outlines a plan to reduce the federal role in education and eventually phase out the U.S. Department of Education.
Another potentially
affected program is TRIO Student Support Services,
a separate competitive grant initiative that provides academic support to first-generation college students, low-income people and students with documented disabilities.
Like GEAR UP, TRIO SSS is not guaranteed permanent funding and requires reapplication through a competitive process each year.
The White House said the budget proposal would maintain funding for Title I — which supports school districts serving low-income families — and for special-education programs under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.
However, it also calls for consolidating 18 existing competitive and formula grant programs into a single K-12 Simplified Funding Program and merging seven IDEA programs into a single Special Education Simplified Funding Program.
Schatz said that while the continuing resolution passed by Congress has kept current funding levels intact for now, the outlook beyond that remains murky.
“We’re scenario planning right now for a world in which we’re status quo, for a world in which we have a reduced budget — for all kinds of different scenarios,” he said.
He emphasized that programs like GEAR UP and TRIO SSS, while federally funded, have become integral parts of Hawaii’s educational infrastructure — and losing them could create
serious gaps.
“The on-the-ground work we do with middle and high schools — college awareness, financial aid, pathway planning — that’s all been supported by GEAR UP,” Schatz said. “We also run statewide efforts, like helping families complete the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). If GEAR UP funding disappears, we as a state will have to figure out how to replace those functions, because they’ve been implemented using federal funds. Our FAFSA efforts have been pretty robust, but it’s soft-funded — federally funded — so we’d need to figure out what’s next.”
He added that while major funding sources like Title I and IDEA are written into law and authorized by Congress, it’s unclear what would happen to smaller programs like GEAR UP if the DOE is eliminated or significantly reduced.
In some scenarios those programs might be transferred to another department, but Schatz said “nothing is guaranteed.”
“We want to make sure nothing gets lost from the student perspective, and that requires some creativity and scenario planning,” he said.
Schatz also said he hopes to begin conversations at the state level to explore how Hawaii might sustain these programs without federal support.
