The state is confident it has found a way to fill a void and fund much-needed after-school programs for intermediate and middle schools through community involvement and private donations, Lt. Gov. Shan Tsutsui said Thursday.
Tsutsui announced his office is developing the Intermediate/Middle School Challenge Initiative to provide the organizational framework for schools to offer after-school programs while breaking down funding barriers.
The program aims to blend federal and state funding with "a reliance on community partners, local businesses, working professionals, educators and our kupuna to lend knowledge and financial resources," Tsutsui said following a news conference at Washington Middle School.
Tsutsui said the state now supports after-school programs at the elementary and high-school levels, but middle schools have slipped through the cracks and depend largely on inconsistent federal assistance and grants. Tsutsui envisions starting up sports, academic, and arts and culture programs such as video production, Web design and ukulele classes; drama, debate and dance clubs; and science, math and robotics competitions — supported mostly through business and community partnerships and donations.
"The idea of this program would be to take successful programs in our high schools and introduce them to many of our intermediate- and middle-school students," he said. "In addition, we want to expand exciting new programs that are currently being offered in some of our intermediate schools."
Washington Middle School offers many of the programs Tsutsui hopes to introduce at intermediate and middle schools throughout the state. YouJin Kim, a seventh-grader at the school, said she is on the chess team and involved with cross country.
"At Kaimuki Middle (School) I have a couple friends there, they only have, like, band or orchestra or possibly Japanese," Kim said. "But then at Washington we have a lot of electives that many students can choose from."
Washington Principal Michael Harano said middle school is often "the forgotten years."
"We need people to know that middle school is where you’ve got to be, you know, this is where you start," Harano said. "It’s got to start in middle school."
One of the successful programs Tsutsui said he hopes his initiative can emulate — but in most cases on a smaller scale — is a middle-school sports pilot program going on at five target schools in the Nanakuli-Waianae and Kau-Keaau-Pahoa areas.
The three-year program kicked off in October and is funded entirely by $1.3 million in donations from organizations and individuals such as the James and Abigail Campbell Family Foundation, Bank of Hawaii, Kamehameha Schools and Board of Education member Keith Amemiya.
Tsutsui said he has met with a number of business leaders over the past two months and "just run into overwhelming support for programs like this."
