Some state school board members and public testifiers alike expressed continued frustration Thursday with what they see as slow and confusing public communication from the state Department of Education on the status of the 3,001 public school students displaced by the Lahaina wildfire.
The latest DOE data, shared Thursday at a special meeting of the board, indicates that the number of students the DOE has not been able to reach by phone fell slightly to 495 as of Thursday — 463 students who had been left DOE voicemail messages that had not received a response, and 32 students not reached at all, including some whose voicemail inbox was full or not set up, or there was no current number, for instance.
DOE data also indicated that the number of students still not enrolled in any kind of educational option as of Thursday was 967 (see accompanying tables). That number includes students who are undecided; those pausing their education, possibly until three Lahaina schools are expected to reopen after fall break; and those students who still have not been reached.
But how many students may have died in the Aug. 8 fires still is unclear.
The DOE has said the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prevents it from disclosing such information. Identities have been officially released for only 55 of the 115 people in the standing death toll. There is one minor so far among the identities released, another minor on a separate list of missing people and a third minor who is believed dead, according to reports in media and social media.
The latest DOE totals are from calculations by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, based on remarks during the BOE meeting that were confirmed with a department spokesperson afterward.
“People want facts,” parent advocate Jessica Caiazzo told the board in testimony. “We’ve lost complete faith in the system right now. … There’s just no trust. I’m wondering, when you’re saying that you’re making the calls, are you doing the emails? Are you guys going into the neighborhoods? Are you guys seeing the hubs? … Do you have people on the ground, because not everyone is going to the remote places. I find that all so disturbing, because people do feel neglected.”
BOE Vice Chair Kaimana Barcarse said later that “it’s hard conversations that we gotta have, to get these (student contact) numbers up. But I want to acknowledge one thing: It’s not for lack of trying.”
He said DOE staff have been working hard at reaching everyone possible, but he has also spoken to some hard-hit Maui residents, “and it’s just really hard in that some of our families, to be honest, are not ready to be reached. And so please, keep keeping on, keep trying, make the local connections.”
State deputy schools Superintendent Heidi Armstrong, who has been involved in the student- contact efforts, told the board that through the one month since the Aug. 8 fires, “the process for accounting for all our children has been a long one. … It is taking a while. It did take a while. And I take full responsibility for the length of time that it took.”
She recounted how telecommunications outages and haphazard moves by families to shelters and then to temporary housing has made contacting some families extremely difficult. “The gravity of the situation was chaotic. At first we didn’t have communication. We didn’t know where our families were. But that said, we started taking action from the first week,” she told the board.
She and state Schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi said more than 60 DOE personnel are now involved in the contact effort on phones and “boots on the ground,” in person, and they reiterated that efforts will continue until the status of every student is known.
A dashboard showing progress on contacting and enrolling students is expected to be added to the DOE website in the next few days, DOE Communications Director Nanea Kalani said.
Among other Lahaina-related developments that Hayashi and other school officials shared at the BOE special meeting:
>> “Learning hubs” are expected to launch as early as next week in West Maui to provide in-person services for students enrolled in distance learning, high-needs special education students, and Hawaiian immersion students.
>> Fewer than 50 students took advantage of new bus routes that launched Thursday to temporarily transport displaced West Maui students to three other schools in other parts of Maui. However, some families came to the bus sites to sign up their children for temporary schooling, so “we anticipate demand will grow,” Kalani said.
>> While students of the destroyed King Kamehameha III Elementary School are expected to temporarily attend classes at Princess Nahienaena after fall break in October, the DOE is also actively scouting locations to serve as a longer-term temporary school site for possibly a year or two until a permanent replacement is built. Among the possible locations are at or near Lahaina Cannery Mall, Napili Park, Maui Preparatory Academy, Pulelehua development, a vacant lot in Kaanapali and some churches and hotels in West Maui.
