Sarah Kern, a science teacher at Kamakahelei Middle School on Kauai, found an eighth grade student last year sobbing uncontrollably because the girl had gotten her period and bled through her shorts, a situation that Senate Bill 2821 will soon address if signed into law.
The Legislature on Tuesday gave its final vote to the measure, which requires public and charter schools to provide students with free feminine hygiene products. It now heads to Gov. David Ige for his signature.
“I am fortunate to have a male colleague thoughtful enough to keep a few extra jackets in his room for situations like hers,” Kern wrote in testimony in support of the bill. “However, this student should never have been in such a position in the first place.”
Kern told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that students have been asking her for pads or tampons about twice a month since she first began teaching in 2013.
On several occasions, she said, students told her they missed class because of their period.
“I can only guess at how many students missed class for the same reason but didn’t feel comfortable enough to tell me,” Kern wrote.
Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School is one of six involved in the Ma‘i Movement pilot program to provide students with free menstrual products.
But before Kamakahelei became a participant, Kern said she kept a supply of products in her class and announced her willingness to provide them to students at the start of each school year.
“I try to model not being ashamed or embarrassed to talk about it, but it’s not something they’ll ask in front of other students,” Kern said.
A 2021 study by the Ma‘i Movement and the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women found that students resorted to using newspapers, old rags, diapers and leaves when they did not have access to menstrual products.
The Department of Education provides schools with extra masks, paper towels, hand sanitizer and Band-Aids to keep in classrooms, Kern wrote. But when the blood comes from a source that the student has no control over, the DOE fails to provide menstrual products, she wrote.
The state budget allocates $2 million for menstrual products in schools, said state Sen. Michelle Kidani (D, Mililani-Waikele-Kunia), who introduced SB 2821. Funding will be available July 1, Kidani said.
How and when schools dispense menstrual products is up to each campus, according to the DOE and supporters of the bill.
Sen. Kurt Fevella (R, Ewa Beach-Iroquois Point) spoke on the Senate floor Jan. 19 and called the need for widely available feminine hygiene products “very serious” and something that will change young women’s lives.
“People don’t realize how difficult it is for a girl to ask the parents, or sometimes single parent — could be a dad — to help purchase these products,” Fevella told the Star-Advertiser. “People don’t understand unless you’re a female or you have a lot of female family.”
Keeping girls’ restrooms regularly stocked should be a priority, said Fevella, who worked as a custodian at Campbell High School for over two years. He said clothing would be used to stanch bleeding when parents or grandparents decided to buy food over menstrual products.
“It hurts me to relate that some of her (his daughter’s) classmates might be without these products,” Fevella said. “I don’t think there should be any excuses on how are we going to maintain it and do it for our young ladies or young girls in school.”
At the start of Kamakahelei’s participation in the Ma‘i Movement, school officials kept free menstrual products in classroom bins. But when no one seemed to take them, officials added bins in bathroom stalls, and that led to much higher use, Kern said.
Gallon-size bags of feminine hygiene products are also kept in the school’s health room ahead of long weekends and school breaks, and their availability is relayed in the morning announcements, Kern said.
The school also eventually plans to make gallon-filled bags available in girls’ restrooms.
It’s a horrible reality that some parents have to choose between groceries and menstrual products, Kern said. But the pandemic has illustrated the importance of in-person learning, Kidani said.
“What they’re going through, it’s heartbreaking,” Kern said. “Our students should not be the ones who are suffering from that terrible choice.”
