Jonathan Okamura: Alarming New Report On Hawaii Public Schools Is One More Sign Of Legislative Failure

The Kids Count Data Book for 2024 was recently issued by the Annie E. Casey Foundation based in Baltimore, which has been reporting on the well-being of American children and their families since 1990.

For those like myself who advocate for ethnic equality in Hawaii and support public education as one of the principal means for its attainment, the report’s findings are distressing, although they are not necessarily surprising or new.

The report indicates that Hawaii’s public school students are not faring well academically in attaining basic skills such as reading and math and even just showing up for classes.

While most of the report’s data is not broken down by ethnicity, I’m certain that there are significant differences in educational performance among ethnic groups in the public schools because such disparities are evident in other areas of educational attainment, such as undergraduate representation at the University of Hawaii Manoa.

Since the report is concerned with the educational achievement of K-12 students who have yet to enter the job market, its findings clearly demonstrate the perpetuation of ethnic inequality for another generation due to the ongoing failure of the Legislature to fix the chronic teacher shortage problem.

Indigenous and ethnic minority students represent about 70% of those in the public schools.

The Number Of ‘Chronically Absent’ Skyrockets

In the Kids Count report, what I found most troubling was the 39% of Hawaii students who were “chronically absent,” which means they missed 10% or more days of school in 2022. The DOE school year is 180 days, so these students were absent at least 18 days or about three and a half weeks.

The 39% figure represented more than a doubling from the 19% in 2019, prior to the pandemic, which may have had an impact on the huge increase. It can be assumed that chronic absenteeism negatively impacts a student’s ability to proceed to the next grade level and ultimately to graduate from high school and enter college or the job market.

This is one area where the report did break down its data by ethnicity. It found that 59% of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students, including Micronesians, Samoans and Tongans, were chronically absent in 2022.

A figure that high, a clear majority of those students, indicates that they probably are also well represented among the 14% of Hawaii students who did not graduate on time, according to the report.

Legislature’s Misplaced Priorities

I will cite information from Waianae High School, not to belittle its students, but because more than $6 million in funds were recently appropriated by the Legislature. One might assume that those funds are going to be used to address the school’s long-term chronic absenteeism problem, but one would be wrong.

Of Waianae’s 1,900 students, 54% are Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 8.7% Asian, 3.3% Caucasian and 22% Hispanic.

According to the DOE Strive Hawaii report on the school’s academic performance in 2021-2022, Waianae had a graduation rate of 81%, which refers to the percentage of 12th-graders who graduated on time with their classmates.

As for being chronically absent, in 2022, 58% of Waianae students missed 15 or more school days, which might be attributable to the pandemic’s after-effects, but the state average was much lower at 32%.

Despite those troubling statistics in the DOE Strive report, Rep. Cedric Gates, a Waianae graduate, announced funding last week for building a new artificial-turf football field at the school. Gates, who represents Waianae and nearby communities in the Legislature, led the $6 million legislative initiative.

He told a television news reporter, “It’s so important to get Waianae High School up to the same standards as the other high schools in the state,” but he wasn’t referring to academic standards, such as increasing its graduation rate or its college-going rate of 28%.

Gates continued, invoking the arguments used to support race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions as leveling the playing field, but literally referring to athletic fields: “It gives us a fair playing field to compete with the other schools because when you’re competing on grass and you’re transitioning over to a school with turf, it’s just a different field.”

Which Playing Field Do We Really Want To Even?

The $6 million Waianae High School received could have been used to hire more fully licensed teachers, instead of relying on unqualified emergency hires, or additional counselors to keep students on track to graduating on time or to urge them to take Early College courses available on campus.

Those teachers and counselors could have encouraged and supported more of their students to proceed on to college at UH Manoa, UH West Oahu, Leeward Community College or elsewhere so that they can compete fairly in the job market and not just in football.

Since only 13% of the Waianae community has a college education, teachers and counselors, rather than parents, can play a major role in their students’ further education.

Hiring more DOE staff to fill vacant positions obviously was not the policy priority of the Legislature.

Some might counter that the community wanted a new football field, and legislators responded positively to their wishes. But lawmakers don’t necessarily provide their constituents what they desire, such as publicly funded election campaigns that are supported by a majority of Hawaii voters.

Hiring more DOE staff to fill vacant positions obviously was not the policy priority of the Legislature, which instead allocated almost $600 million this past session for school facilities, including Waianae’s new football field.

While such new facilities won’t be completed before the primary and general elections, photos of groundbreaking or signing ceremonies for them with the governor can be prominently displayed in a legislator’s campaign advertisements and website.

Those ads reveal the personal priorities of many but not necessarily all legislators — to get themselves reelected rather than to address their constituents’ needs and desires for a more equitable and rewarding future for their children.