There’s not much debate about the value of preschool to a child’s readiness to learn. That’s well established in national research, and Hawaii leaders have settled on a path to expand early-learning opportunity through the public schools.
What is up for debate is how to make that happen, and the latest facet of that discussion — how public preschool should be administered — is coming to a head in the Legislature, with a clearer definition of governance and an allotment of funds still awaiting a final decision.
Hanging in the balance is a plan, embraced by both the Executive Office on Early Learning (EOEL) and the state Department of Education (DOE) to carry out one of Gov. David Ige’s stated goals of expanding by 22 classrooms the on-campus availability of preschool for public school students.
What’s still unclear, though, is exactly which of these two agencies will have what authority, and how much money they will have to get things underway.
Hawaii’s own struggle to make preschool more widely available to its keiki goes back decades (see story on Page F4 for highlights from that history). Those who didn’t have the means to cover private tuition got help from a patchwork of federal and local resources too thin to cover more than a lucky few.
ROCKY HISTORYProgress in improving Hawaii’s early education system has been halting and full of conflict. Here are a few data points from the chronicle:
1989-91: State funding approved for the Preschool Open Doors Program to help families pay for child care at participating preschools using a sliding fee scale.
1997: Lawmakers recognized a public-private partnership between the state and the private nonprofit Good Beginnings Alliance, for policy development, planning and coordination of early childhood education and care services.
1998: The Legislature adopted House Concurrent Resolution 38, setting in state policy the goal that “all of Hawaii’s children will be safe, healthy and ready to succeed in kindergarten.”
2002: The Legislature passed Act 177, which appropriated capital improvement funds to build preschools on elementary school campuses statewide.
2004: Act 219 became law, creating an unfunded, two-tiered junior kindergarten and kindergarten program in the Department of Education, starting with the 2006-2007 school year.
2008: The Early Learning Educational Task Force, created in 2005, released its five-year plan for an early learning system addressing needs of children from birth to age 5. Lawmakers then established the Keiki First Steps program, supported by grants, and the Pre-Plus Program within the Department of Human Services to develop classrooms on DOE and charter school campuses.
2010: Lawmakers amended the public school kindergarten entry age beginning with the 2013-2014 school year, so that children must be at least 5 years old on the first day of instruction. They also required the DOE to develop a plan to assess the success of junior kindergarten programs and how to provide services for those no longer eligible to attend kindergarten.
2012: The Legislature established the Executive Office on Early Learning (EOEL), charged with creating a comprehensive early childhood development and learning system for children prenatal to age 5. Lawmakers also repealed the existing junior kindergarten program at the end of the 2013-2014 school year.
2014: Lawmakers included $3 million in the state budget for prekindergarten programs to be provided in the 2014-2015 school year. That November, voters rejected a proposed amendment to the Hawaii State Constitution to allow the use of public funds for vouchers that could be applied to private preschool tuition. This was part of the Abercrombie administration’s effort to enable universal preschool through a combined public-private system. Arguments against it included concerns of compromising the separation of church and state, as many private preschools were associated with churches.
2015: The EOEL Public Prekindergarten Program was established to provide services through DOE and public charter schools.
The pace began to quicken when a separate agency was created to oversee pre-kindergarten instruction policy. The Executive Office on Early Learning (EOEL), founded in 2012 under the administration of then-Gov. Neil Abercrombie, was set up within his office.
It later was attached to the state Department of Education “for administrative purposes only, only because agencies cannot be permanently attached to the Governor’s Office,” said Lauren Moriguchi, EOEL director.
The agency’s public pre-kindergarten program was codified in Act 109 in 2015, the law stating that “the program shall be provided through the Executive Office on Early Learning, which may partner with the Department of Education.”
The legislative actions starting in 2012 comprise the statutory basis of why EOEL has authority over public preschools, even though they are on campuses run by the DOE, said state Rep. Justin Woodson.
The Maui legislator is chairman of the House Committee on Lower and Higher Education and aprimary introducer of House Bill 921.
The measure, he said, is intended to clarify what’s already in law: EOEL has “administrative authority” over preschools, according to the current version of the bill, which awaits final Senate review in the Ways and Means Committee.
EOEL has been doing a good job overseeing the program, Woodson said, citing in particular the positive scorecard given to the program by the National Institute for Early Education Research at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education.
The early-learning agency has expertise in this field, while the DOE’s focus has been primary and secondary education, Woodson said.
”Why would we work backwards in diluting that work?” he added, during a telephone interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “To me it makes sense to build out EOEL, not to have DOE also take on this task.”
Complications on cooperation
Here is where there’s a complication: Under Chapter 26-12 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, the DOE superintendent is given the administrative purview over, among all the other duties, “special education and Title I funded programs at the prekindergarten level.”
HB 921 accordingly has special education and Title I funded programs (targeting low-income and poverty needs) carved out as exceptional cases to be overseen by DOE.
However, said state Rep. Amy Perruso, these programs are not supposed to be sequestered into separate classrooms; students enrolled under them are supposed to be integrated with the regular student population as much as possible.
This has raised concerns about the bill for Perruso, a teacher at Mililani High School and a former officer with the Hawaii State Teachers Association, who also is the vice chairwoman for the education committee. The lines of demarcation between EOEL and the DOE may complicate the needed collaboration, she said.
“I honestly think if this bill didn’t exist, they’d be able to work together,” Perruso added.
For her part, Superintendent Christina Kishimoto has declined comment on the legislative matters until after the final form of budget requests and of HB 921 becomes clearer in the coming week.
However, she did meet with the Star-Advertiser editorial board on Feb. 26, before the state Capitol issues became heated, for a wide-ranging discussion that touched on plans for preschool expansion.
“Months ago, we had asked the complex area superintendents to work with the principals to identify schools that have high-need populations, usually through Title I designation, who don’t have a pre-K within close proximity, and that has a space to open up a classroom today,” Kishimoto said.
“We created that short list of 22 definite schools, but then we had a longer list of schools, as principals continue their work, of over 30 schools that had a classroom available now.”
She estimated the cost of launching the 22 new classes at $14.3 million for capital improvements to adapt the space to preschool needs, and $1.5 million for staffing.
Lack of consensus and leadership
On the state Senate side of the discussion, there’s even more frustration. State Sen. Michelle Kidani, who chairs the Committee on Education, said in an emailed response to a query that she had been “encouraged by the announcement that Governor Ige made during his State of the State speech on his desire for universal Pre-K.
“However, I was thoroughly disappointed to later find out that while his budget included funding for 22 new classrooms it lacked the funding for the existing 18 pre-K classrooms currently operated by the Charter Schools and whose federal funding will not continue.”
There is also a lack of consensus on the future of pre-K from those who should be spearheading the discussion — including Ige, who has shown “a lack of leadership and guidance” and has only instructed the various agencies to “work together.”
”The amendments I made to HB 921 in committee were an attempt to create language that preserves EOEL’s authority over pre-K as well as encouraging the DOE to make a good-faith effort to partner with the EOEL in all future expansion opportunities,” she said.
What’s best for seamless transition?
Moriguchi underscored that EOEL is the agency that is requesting the additional funds and has received the applications from the 30 schools contending for one of the 22 spots. She said the co-location of the EOEL program on school campuses will help to ensure the seamless transition of children moving on to kindergarten.
Not everyone is as convinced. Perruso said she was concerned about the administrative separation of preschool from the other instruction if the ultimate goal is to have universal preschool available through the public schools.
The DOE emphasis has been on K-12, she acknowledged, but the superintendent wants to expand that range.
“She wants to go P-12, and if that’s outside her purview, she can’t have a holistic approach,” Perruso added. “And that would be a loss.”
