Governor fights for school repair

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

Gov. Linda Lingle criticized lawmakers yesterday for devoting just $42 million to school repair and maintenance over the next two years — less money than state officials say is needed to keep the considerable backlog of work from growing for just one year.

"I think a point has to be made," Gov. Linda Lingle said. Advertiser library photo

"A school should have never been allowed to get into this state," she said.

At Ka'ewai, the sides of a classroom building have cracked, yellow caution tape keeps children away from the sloping classroom, and wood beams prop up a corner of the library. A concrete sidewalk next to the buildings has buckled in dozens of places and is painted bright yellow in patches to warn children to watch their step.

After two years of drought, a rainier-than-usual year accelerated foundation problems on the campus. Russ Saito, state comptroller at the Department of Accounting and General Services, the state agency in charge of school repairs, said the school is built on clay, which expands and contracts with rainfall, causing foundation problems.

But Lingle said politics — not need — has played a role in why it has taken so long to get work done at Ka'ewai.

The school has about 380 students, many of whom qualify for the federal free and reduced lunch program, a common indicator of poverty. Most of the 11 buildings at Ka'ewai were built in 1956.

Lingle accused lawmakers of turning to pork barrel politics instead of the recommendations of DAGS or the Department of Education in deciding which projects to finance.

She also said she would consider restricting line-item allocations for projects in areas that already have had lots of school renovations or new buildings.

"I think a point has to be made," Lingle said. She said she would talk with legislative leaders, people at DAGS and at the schools about the priority that various projects should take before the beginning of the next legislative session in January 2004.

Public schools have been fighting a tide of backlogged repair and maintenance problems — from termite damage to leaky roofs — estimated at $640 million in late 2001. DAGS estimates that number was closer to $800 million, and has since been chipped away to about $675 million, Saito said.

About $50 million is needed each year to prevent more projects from being added to the backlog, Saito said.

Rep. Roy Takumi, D-36th (Pearl City, Palisades), said the governor is discounting the $245 million that the Legislature appropriated for school repair and maintenance projects in the previous two sessions. Some of those renovation projects are still in progress.

He also noted that Lingle cut money from the education budget for things such as school safety officers and adult education, which the Legislature restored.

"Could we have funded more? Of course. But it was very difficult to balance the budget. I wish we could have funded more repair and maintenance," Takumi said. "I also understand that there's still so many projects in the pipeline."

Takumi said pork barrel politics had not played a major role in selecting school projects. Kalihi has been represented for years by Democrats, who have long had control of the Legislature, he said.

Rep. Dennis Arakaki, D-30th (Moanalua, Kalihi Valley, 'Alewa), said residents in more affluent areas have been better at speaking out about problems at their schools and raising money to solve problems.

"At schools like Ka'ewai or many of the schools in Kalihi and other areas of the state, these are people who are largely immigrants or low-income people who aren't used to speaking out," Arakaki said. "In many cases, they are intimidated."

Arakaki said the DOE and DAGS had tried to make the distribution of projects more equal by creating a matrix that ranks projects by need instead of politics.

But "the Legislature and politics being what they are, there's ways to get around it," he said. "That's why they call it bringing home the bacon. But I think the purpose of public education is to level the playing field."

DAGS has a six-year plan to eliminate the repair and maintenance backlog, but was budgeted $35 million for fiscal 2004 and only $7 million for fiscal 2005. DAGS and Lingle had requested $120 million.

School officials warned that the shortage would undermine efforts to dent the list of repairs. The backlog soared in the 1990s, when typical state spending on repairs at schools was about $35 million annually, dipping as low as $10 million in 2000.

At Ka'ewai, Principal Dale Spaulding has watched cracks in the buildings grow for the last few years. At the beginning of the semester, he had to move a teacher out of the sinking classroom and place her and the students in another part of campus. A corner of the library, where the main computers are located, is off limits.

"I'm just glad that something is being done for the school," Spaulding said.

The work at Ka'ewai will begin in six to eight months.

After that, the school is scheduled for a $1.5 million classroom renovation.

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