The state Legislature for a second year in a row has scaled down Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s push to expand early-childhood education, funding only half of what the administration had sought for various preschool proposals.
The governor’s Executive Office on Early Learning had requested a combination of measures totaling $6 million mostly aimed at helping provide an extra year of preschool for late-born children who would have been eligible for junior kindergarten, which is being eliminated next school year. An estimated 5,100 4-year-olds will be affected by the change.
The proposals would have established more than 30 prekindergarten classes at some public schools, provided additional tuition preschool subsidies for low-income families and allowed the state to contract with providers of alternative early-learning programs.
The piecemeal approach was the result of lawmakers’ hesitation last year to fund a $25 million school readiness plan Abercrombie proposed.
This time around, lawmakers agreed to include $3 million in next year’s budget for the proposed public prekindergarten classes. The reduced funding will establish about 20 classes to offer free instruction (public schools can’t charge tuition) for children who meet geographic and income qualifications. The income guidelines to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch will be used, meaning a family of four cannot earn more than $50,117.
Lawmakers also did not advance a bill that would have set up the framework for a state-run early-education program in the event voters approve a proposed constitutional amendment in November allowing public money to be spent on private preschool.
Abercrombie has said a combination of public preschools, private preschools and state-funded slots in private preschools is likely needed to serve all of the state’s 17,200 4-year-olds.
Without that framework legislation, "if the (constitutional amendment) passes, it could possibly delay contracting of preschool programs, which means it’ll take longer to serve more 4-year-olds," said GG Weisenfeld, director of the Executive Office on Early Learning.
"This would have at least created a framework for what this early-learning system would look like and make clear that this would not be a voucher system, that there would be a clear separation of church and state, and alleviate other concerns," said Senate Education Chairwoman Jill Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe).
The proposal, House Bill 2276, was one of more than a dozen education-related bills being negotiated by a joint House-Senate committee all week and into Friday night that died in conference committee after missing an internal deadline for action.
Another failed measure, Senate Bill 2975, sought to set aside $1.25 million for the state to contract with so-called family-child interaction learning providers to further help preschoolers access services.
Besides preschool initiatives, the joint committee wasn’t able to advance a bill that would have repealed higher mandated instructional hours that are scheduled to kick in over the next two years.
The bill, HB 1675, sought to tweak a 2010 law, passed in the wake of teacher Furlough Fridays, that lengthened Hawaii’s school day and imposed minimum instructional hours at public schools.
The learning-time requirements in the law have been a challenge for schools in subsequent years. Yet the Hawaii State Teachers Association lobbied against HB 1675, which would have eliminated the higher hours required in future years, arguing that instructional time is a contract issue that shouldn’t be in statute.
The 2010 law stands as is with the bill stalled, meaning all middle and high schools by this fall will have to provide a minimum average of 51⁄2 hours of instruction a day for a total of 990 hours a year.
And under the existing law, elementary and secondary schools will need to further increase instructional hours to an average of six hours a day, or 1,080 hours a year, by the 2017-18 school year.
"Schools worked really hard to get to the 990 requirement. We’ve always said the out-years, the 1,080 hours, was not really possible," said schools Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi. "So we’re going to have to figure out a way to manage the situation, but clearly we don’t have adequate funding for the additional time requirements."
HB 2257, which would have raised the cap on the salary for the superintendent position to $250,000 from $150,000, also failed. The current cap was set by lawmakers in 2001.
The statutory cap has kept Matayoshi’s salary at $150,000 the past three years, while at least two school principals earn more than she does. But the Board of Education, which proposed the measure, emphasized that the proposed increase was tied to the position, not the current superintendent.
Among superintendent salaries for the nation’s 15 largest public school districts, Hawaii, the ninth largest, ranks lowest with its $150,000 cap.
