Communities help schools dodge repair logjam

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

When Ruby Hiraishi's school needed a playground sidewalk, it didn't bother to ask the state for help.

Kindergarten students at Kapunahala Elementary School in Kane'ohe make their way down the new walkway from the playground. It took a group of fathers one day to finish the walkway. Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

The sidewalk they created complies with the Americans With Disabilities Act, has a railing to prevent kids from slipping into the ditch, and gives students a cleaner and faster way of getting to recess.

It took the fathers one day to complete. Hiraishi, acting principal of Kapunahala, can't imagine how long it would have taken the state to even begin the work.

As school repair and maintenance projects languish for years or even decades on the $621 million to-do list of the Department of Accounting and General Services, some teachers and principals have gotten creative in finding a way around the logjam of state bureaucracy and inadequate amount of money available.

Statewide, there are 10,349 projects on a waiting list. Schools need everything from new roofs to modern electrical systems and termite treatment.

This year, just 1,682 of those projects have been approved for work.

The Legislature approved $60 million in spending. In the just-completed special session, an additional $75 million was released. But that falls far short, only accomplishing a small handful of projects each year at schools that typically have dozens of requests.

The public schools are suffering because of 20-plus years of neglect — and the general acceptance that school facilities don't need to be in top condition, said Ira Rohter, a professor of political science at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.

"Teachers and principals will file some request and it gets caught up in the this incredibly complicated paper system," Rohter said. "The Legislature has been passing bills for major projects, but these things take years. There are lots of little things going wrong and, instead of being responded to, they are ignored and they get worse."

Teachers and principals cope by doing the work themselves.

David Wong, a biology and physical science teacher at Farrington High School, opened up the water lines in his classroom a few years ago. An electrician friend helped fix his outlets. Before that, his students couldn't do even the most basic lab experiments.

At Roosevelt High School, which has a $5.7 million backlog of repairs and maintenance projects, Principal Dennis Hokama spent $7,000 of his school's instructional budget to partition a classroom so two special-education classes could be held there. He also partitioned an office to accommodate phones and electrical outlets for extra staff hired because of the Felix consent decree.

"You've got to do it," Hokama said. "If we didn't, it would be more difficult for instruction to take place."

Even the Legislature has worked out a way to get around the slow pace of school improvements. To avoid the state's bureaucracy, which requires the Department of Education to rely on the Department of Accounting and General Services for school repairs, the Legislature created a program last year called "3Rs."

The program, initiated by U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye and passed by the state Legislature, requires schools to match a $25,000 state grant with "sweat equity." Private contributions or professional volunteers can help the schools meet the 3Rs grants requirements.

That's how Kapunahala, one of the four schools approved so far for a 3Rs grant, will get its electrical system revamped. Some parents with electrical engineering expertise helped provide some of that "sweat equity."

The work had been a standing request from the school for at least nine years.

"We had parents make a committee with our head custodian to help us write the grant, Hiraishi said. "It's difficult to have technology in the classroom with just a limited number of plugs."

At Roosevelt, parents and community volunteers will use their $25,000 3Rs grant to renovate the locker rooms and showers at its 70-year-old stadium.

State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Wai'anae, Ma'ili, Makua, Makaha, Nanakuli), recently helped repaint Wai'anae Intermediate School with other volunteers. The 3Rs grant was $25,000, although the state would have had to pay $104,000 for the job without community volunteers.

"The whole concept of 3Rs is to get a real stretch of the dollars," Hanabusa said. "It was a great way to get the community involved and to stretch the dollar. You can have tax incentives for those who are contributing."

The 3Rs also is a small way to help cope with the DOE's list of repairs and maintenance, which lengthened as legislative allocations during the economic downturn of the 1990s dwindled. The problem was aggravated by aging school facilities in need of more and more major repairs.

The common practice has been to repair only the most critical, health-threatening conditions or tackle the least-involved projects.

Now some legislators are talking about scrapping the current method of getting repairs projects accomplished.

Among other things, their proposals would give Honolulu and the other counties the authority to conduct repair and maintenance at schools, and would let the DOE manage its money independently from the state's Department of Accounting and General Services.

Another idea: Give clusters of school complexes autonomy to manage their own repair and maintenance money.

Rep. Ken Ito, D-48th (Kane'ohe), said school maintenance and repair was handed over from the counties to the state in a 1964 law. "That was almost 50 years ago," Ito said. "Times have changed. We need to look at this issue again. We're in the 21st century, and we should overhaul the whole system."

Karen Knudsen, member of the board of education, said that any changes in procedure need to be thought through carefully. In the past, she said quick fixes have sometimes created more problems.

"The Legislature brings valid concerns," she said. "They need to hear why some things didn't work in the past, though."

Knudsen also cautioned against giving repairs and maintenance responsibility directly to the school principals, as some have suggested.

"If they want to do that they have to build up the school management. Several years ago they tried to streamline and flatten the bureaucracy and it took all of the business support staff out of the schools," Knudsen said. "We can't have our principals be responsible for that much more."

Hokama, the Roosevelt principal, says he thinks part of the problem is public relations.

If the schools could get more parents and residents into the schools to see the conditions, people would demand that the state take better care of the campuses, he said.

That's one reason why he is so excited about his school's grant from 3Rs.

"As people become involved in their particular schools, I don't think they're going to allow this to persist without significant work and commitment of resources, " Hokama said. "Across the state there are overheated classrooms and bad bathrooms. The business of education is so important. I don't think it's totally denial. I don't think they understand how real the conditions are."

Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.