For students nationwide over the past three years, the COVID-19 pandemic brought despair and difficulties, causing the deepest educational upheaval in U.S. history — and unfortunately, Hawaii was no exception. But glimmers of hope toward recovery are emerging, with Hawaii notching “exceptional” progress in an assessment of 16 state systems. The challenge now, of course, is to keep building on those gains over the next couple years to meet — even beat — the educational levels seen before the pandemic hit.

Two key factors were cited in “exemplar” schools that are seeing the best success, as noted by the Center for Assessment, an independent consultant contracted by the state Board of Education: When school leaders used a more decisive leadership style, and when those “strong leaders” found ways and used creativity to get needed funds for their students’ pandemic-related challenges.

Exactly so. And that’s why it’s imperative that Department of Education officials spur, motivate and share between schools those best practices that will make optimal use of the tranche of federal funds allotted to Hawaii for post-pandemic recovery: $639.5 million total in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds.

A wide variety of grants are available, for instance, for needs ranging from more IT devices (laptops and tablets), to behavioral and social-emotional counseling, to academic resources specifically for rural and smaller struggling schools.

Summer interventions, too, should now be underway, with coordination, grants, staffing and outreach to families. Priority is needed for summer hubs for graduating seniors who are academically behind, students in transition grades, and those experiencing engagement challenges. Making traction should be wholly possible, with the DOE devoting nearly $46 million in ESSER funds for various learning opportunities for summer 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Clearly, Hawaii cannot allow its students to fall further behind. The Center for Assessment noted that the pandemic’s impact on local students’ performance in English language arts was “mostly moderate to large,” while the impact on mathematics was “mostly large to severe.”

Thanks to efforts in the past year, though, some of that learning loss seems to be recovering: Students proficient in English language arts had been at 54% pre-pandemic, sliding to 50% in 2020-21, then inching up to 52% last school year.

Math proficiency, meanwhile, had been at 43% pre-pandemic, plunging to just 32% during the pandemic, before rising to 38% in 2021-2022.

While encouraging — upward is surely better than downward — the DOE must continue making ground, especially considering that pre-pandemic, language arts and math scores were already lower than what the DOE hoped.

It will take grit, creativity, hard work and sharing of successful strategies to continue the positive climb. Hawaii’s educators cannot afford to squander a dollar of the $639.5 million in federal catch-up funds, for the sake of this generation of pandemic-hit students.