The city will temporarily relocate Seagull Schools in August 2023 from above the parking garage of the Frank Fasi Civic Center grounds to the Mission Memorial Center and the resource library — a reprieve for the early-childhood education center.

Postponing repairs to the parking garage for a year allows Seagull Schools to remain on its current campus for one more school year before relocating. The city had announced in February that it would not renew the Seagull Schools lease because of needed repairs to the parking garage, a move that had put about 220 coveted child care slots in jeopardy.

“We’re actually going to be displacing city personnel to be able to accommodate the school, its teachers and, most importantly, the students,” Mayor Rick Blan­giardi said Tuesday at a news conference. “It’s been a commitment by us to do the right thing. It’s not easy to figure out, because there are a lot of moving parts.”

Seagull Schools campus has operated above the municipal parking garage for the past 42 years. However, water from the grass in the schools’ green space has taken a toll on the cement of the parking garage.

Over the next year, the city will do monthly inspections of the garage to ensure that it is still safe to house Seagull Schools, Blangiardi said.

Once the repairs on the parking structure begin in August 2023, Seagull Schools will be temporarily relocated. The project is expected to take about 2-1/2 to three years to complete.

Megan McCorriston, CEO of Seagull Schools, said the childhood education center will still be able to care for the same amount of children.

“First and foremost, the families really wanted some assurances that those who enroll in our school next year could finish out the school year without any interruptions next year,” she said.

“We appreciate that extra time to ensure that we get it right and we are able to relocate to a suitable location that’s going to accommodate the whole school.”

Seagull Schools provides a unique benefit for city employees as their children are given priority for spots at the school, which currently has 100 children on the waitlist.

McCorriston said she hopes that the school will be able to accommodate more students once work on its permanent location is completed.

“We’d love to see it accommodate more children in the future because of the severe child care shortage that Hawaii faces,” she said. “We would love to serve everybody on the wait list. Realistically, 100 children is maybe four or five classrooms. So that’s what we’d be looking at in terms of another location.”

A 2017 report on child care by the Hawaii Children’s Action Network, a child advocacy nonprofit, found that there were enough seats for only 24% of the state’s young children.

Meanwhile, the city has hired an early-childhood resource coordinator who will work within the Department of Community Services in coordination with Hawaii Community Foundation to address child care needs.

“I think a lot of the work is really going to be focused on working with those at our center-based programs, as well as the programs that are more home-based programs,” said city Early Childhood Resource Coordinator Ted Burke, who was hired last week.

“My goal is to get out and talk to the families that are on the front line, the workers that are on the front lines, and figure out ways that we can support the activities that are already in place and provide resources for activities they’d like to see happen.”

Blangiardi added that he expects to see child care centers incorporated with the city’s new affordable housing developments.

“At the end of the day, we still have a net result of having a real shortage of early-childhood education available for our keiki. The advantages (of early-­childhood education) are tremendous; the disadvantages (of not having it) are even more so,” he said.

“We really want to address this issue. It’s very serious to us.”