Several state education officials on Thursday decried massive budget cuts set for Hawaii’s public schools for the next two years, and expressed worry that even with a supplemental $55 million that Gov. Josh Green has pledged to partly offset the shortfalls, public education of students will suffer.
The state Legislature’s
$2 billion-plus operating budget for the public schools is $57.1 million less in general funds than what Gov. Josh Green requested for fiscal year 2023-2024, and $109.7 million less than what was requested for 2024-2025 (see accompanying table). The gaps were even larger when compared with the state Board of Education’s original requests last fall.
More major disparities lie in the capital improvements budgets: The schools are set to receive $434.2 million less than the BOE-approved request of $536.1 million for the first year of the biennium, and $479 million less than a slightly higher request for the second year.
State lawmakers also
zeroed out 5 out of 9 categories of lump-sum appropriations for capital improvements and meanwhile approved 117 line-item projects worth $307 million.
“It’s a travesty,” board member Kili Namau‘u said, appearing to fight back tears, during a meeting Thursday of the board’s
Finance and Infrastructure Committee.
“If there’s any legislators that are out there listening to what’s going on here … what’s happening to the Department of Education and what you are doing with our students is really unbelievable,” Namau‘u continued. “And then for them to put in additional for their pet
projects — I don’t understand how this can continue to go on in our society. We need to invest in our children. And that starts with the Legislature.”
Bruce Voss — whom Green is replacing as board chair with prominent business leader Warren Haruki starting July 1 — said he understands that overall state spending had to be adjusted for the latest state revenue projections, at a 1% decline in revenues instead of an earlier-predicted 2% increase. The state Constitution requires the governor to produce a balanced state budget.
But Voss lamented the loss of BOE requests to add funding to the schools’ “weighted student formula” to address pressing needs such as the instruction of students learning English as a second language, special challenges faced by small schools, and improvement in math competency, for example. Such deep cuts to programs that address urgent needs of students and are crucial to fulfilling the board’s new six-year strategic plan are “puzzling and disappointing,” Voss said.
No employee layoffs are expected at this time, Lynn Fallin, chair of the BOE Finance and Infrastructure Committee, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser after the board’s meeting.
Strategies the DOE may use to cope with the budget shortfalls may include delaying implementation of some initiatives; scaling back some services or programs; securing alternate sources of funding, such as federal funds; and requesting emergency appropriations in the 2024 Legislature, said Brian Hallett, assistant superintendent and chief financial officer in the DOE’s Office of Fiscal Services.
The final operating budget is “lower than the department asked for, and the governor had requested, and the House draft funded, and the Senate draft funded. That’s not normal. It’s a bit unusual,” Hallett said, as details of the final operating and CIP budgets were presented to the board committee and full board.
“I’m really worried about fiscal year ’25,” Hallett added. He said the department already has begun to prepare a supplemental budget request for the second year.
Deputy Superintendent Tammi Chun, who stood in Thursday for state Schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi as he was out of state, said: “We can’t be as ambitious as we had intended to given the way the budget came out, but we are looking to maximize the impact that we can have under the conditions that exist.”
Green, in a news conference on Wednesday, announced major cuts to the overall state budget, with elimination or reduction of over $1 billion in spending on 22 projects because of the shortfall in projected revenue. The Legislature is considering whether to override any or all of Green’s 22 so-called line-item budget vetoes and line-item reductions. The governor generally has until July 11 to sign, veto or allow bills to become law without his
signature.
The public schools budget — which typically takes up roughly one-fifth of the state’s overall budget — already had been slashed during last-minute negotiations at the end of the legislative session, drawing complaints from education stakeholders.
Green on Wednesday said he intends to devote portions of a $200 million discretionary fund granted by the Legislature to public education: $55 million for the state Department of Education, and $25 million for the University of Hawaii.
Stipulations on exactly how the DOE and UH may use the supplemental funds are not yet available, officials said.
UH also is facing significant shortfalls. UH requested a total of $558 mil-
lion over the biennium to address capital renewal, progress on deferred maintenance and funding for projects to modernize each of 10 UH campuses. The Legislature appropriated a total of $384 million.
The operations budget for UH for the first year of the biennium, meanwhile, “should be sufficient to maintain current levels of operations,” Kalbert Young, UH vice president for budget and finance and chief financial officer, said in a statement. However, “sustained funding and funding for the full biennium will need to be addressed in the 2024 legislative session.”
