The Hawaii Board of Education Thursday tabled a controversial Hawaii State Department of Education proposal to use $53 million in federal pandemic stimulus funds to hire tutors for public school students as the department contemplates laying off hundreds of teachers, education assistants, and other staff.

The HIDOE wanted to use 33% of the state’s share of $183 million in public school COVID-19 relief funds approved by Congress at the end of last year to hire tutors and expand summer school to combat learning loss suffered by some students during the pandemic.

After Gov. David Ige restored $123 million to his planned cuts of $164 million to next school year’s budget earlier Thursday, and following critical comments and questions from teachers, student advocates and BOE members, the board delayed approving the HIDOE’s request outlining how it would use the federal funds.

Osa Tui Jr., McKinley High registrar and HSTA vice president, told the BOE, “Tutors won’t make students who aren’t attending classes now suddenly attend. They also won’t improve the tech situations going on at home.

“The best tutors for our students are our own qualified teachers. The department is creating potholes by eliminating positions, then patching them with for-profit service providers who continue to milk our system,” Tui said.

“Using private tutoring is nearsighted and further erodes the true promise of public education,” he added.

Julie Reyes Oda heads the math department and teaches math at Nanakuli High and Intermediate.

“As a full-time math teacher, let me tell you why I failed a kid last semester. The main reason for it was for attendance. One boy disappeared about 60 days before the end of the term. All my calls and emails were not returned. Another girl, she came here and there, turned in nothing at all. My calls and emails were not returned,” Reyes Oda said.

“The probability of not showing up for school and showing up for tutoring is very slim. So if you’re going to pay for something, give me the chance to teach the kid by getting them in my class. So instead of hiring a private, for-profit tutor, can you hire a private detective to find that student and get them in my room? Give me a chance to teach the kid before you send the money out of state to a private, for-profit company,” Reyes Oda added.

Amanda Lacar, who teaches special education kindergarten and 1st grade at Mokulele Elementary, testified before BOE members, saying, “The Department of Education is supposed to provide a free, appropriate public education. Private tutors are not part of a public education. Teachers are.”

Cheri Nakamura, director of the Hui for Excellence in Education (HEE) Coalition, told the BOE,

“We do not support spending $53 million on a one-to-one tutoring program, or $9.7 million on summer learning. We do not believe that the department has the infrastructure to or track record of implementing a successful system-wide tutoring program. Therefore, it would not be a strategic use of funds. Regarding summer learning, our analysis provided to the board on Sept. 17, 2020, regarding last year’s summer program showed that the program only reached roughly 20 percent of our estimated disproportionately impacted students at a considerable cost. If a summer school program needs to be implemented, itt should be a basic program that targets students who are needing credit to be promoted to the next grade or to graduate.”

Board members raise numerous questions about tutoring proposal

BOE member Maggie Cox said, “I’m not really overjoyed with the idea of this tutoring unless we can make sure that in this process, that the personnel that’s needed at school level, along with, especially special (education), and along with the health and safety items that all the schools are going to need. If that’s taken care of first, then I think we can talk about excess money for tutoring, for summer school, or so forth.”

Lynn Fallin, another BOE member said, “I am very concerned about the proposals for tutoring. If any of the money would be used for tutoring, the design has to be very thoughtfully developed around the kinds of tutors, capacity, how rural communities are able to address finding appropriate tutors given some of the qualifications required, and so forth. Initially, it was 25,000 who were suffering learning loss. That was what was stated in the proposal. If there are that many, I don’t think we have capacity.” 

BOE member Kenneth Uemura, who chairs the BOE Finance and Infrastructure Committee that considered the proposal, explained Thursday why he and other colleagues wanted to table the measure.

“That’s the motive really also to defer, to give the public input, but also to make sure that we take a look at all the cuts to personnel and positions before we look at other things,” Uemura said.

Kishimoto defends tutor program, claiming school teachers could be hired as well as private companies

School Superintendent Christina Kishimoto responded to the criticism and concerns by claiming “I am not proposing to hire tutors over teachers. What this proposal is is I am asking the board to allow me to obligate these one-time funds to address learning loss, and I know there were a lot of comments about not putting money towards private tutoring, and I understand that reaction because there is a cut on the other side of teacher positions.

“There is deep research that one-on-one tutoring for students who are furthest behind is actually the most effective strategy,” Kishimoto told the BOE.

Using what she called “temporary dollars” from the federal stimulus bill “is a great opportunity for us to tell our families we recognize some of your children are so far behind, and they need more than just the classroom. And our teachers are actually saying we need more help, and they can’t do it all. All of our teachers are not going to be able to volunteer for tutoring, and we need the flexibility to say where those schools have enough teachers or have a group of teachers who can provide tutoring through additional time and be part of the tutoring program, great,” Kishimoto claimed.

HSTA never notified or approached by HIDOE before plan was announced

Kishimoto and other top HIDOE officials never notified or approached the HSTA to discuss or negotiate the possibility of paying its teacher members to perform tutoring after regular school hours, HSTA leaders said following her remarks late Thursday. The first HSTA learned of the plan was last Friday, when the HIDOE’s proposal was made public as part of the BOE agenda for Thursday’s meeting, in which the department said it wanted to spend $53 million to hire five private companies to conduct the training.

Kishimoto told BOE members, “The tutoring program, it is again, it’s not fully defined. It is a way to provide a substantial bucket of money based on actually national models that you need anywhere from $1,800 to $2,400 per student to provide supplemental support to students who are two more years behind.”

On Jan. 15, HIDOE released its plan explaining how it proposes to use $183.6 million in federal funds from the most recent COVID-19 federal relief package and approved by Congress and President Donald Trump at the end of last year.

The department said it wanted to spend $53 million of the federal aid funds on English and math tutoring “beyond classroom instruction and to accelerate learning and minimize learning loss,” according to HIDOE budget documents. 

HIDOE would devote nearly $54 million of the federal relief funds to offset cuts to the weighted student formula, $12 million for personal protective equipment in schools, $9.6 million for summer school to help students failing courses in high school or falling below classmates in elementary school, and $7.5 million for student devices “with anticipated matching resources from the private sector,” HIDOE said.

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