The "inconvenient truth" is that the poor condition of our public school campuses reflects long-standing priorities of our community. If we continue to underfund the physical infrastructure necessary to improve teaching and learning, the academic goals to which we aspire for our students will continue to be hampered by our lack of commitment.

We have known for years that inadequate cooling of classrooms in our tropical climate, inadequate electrical infrastructure and inadequate or poorly maintained physical education and performing arts centers are all barriers to successful teaching and learning.

The persistence of these conditions prompts us to call for an unprecedented capital investment in our schools.

We believe the best strategy in the upcoming session will be to advocate for a dedicated funding source, one not subject to the uncertain winds of politics or economic cycles, and one that will reflect typical business practices of corporate America, where dedicated funding to improve work environments receives the highest priority in board rooms.

Dating to the research conducted by General Electric at the Western Electric Co.'s Hawthorne Works factory in the 1920s, when it was shown that improved lighting increased worker productivity, Corporate America has understood the benefits of enhancing the work environment and has been willing to make investments that enhance the work environment and pay off in increased productivity and worker morale.

This is why successful companies spend large sums on their facilities to ensure that their workers enjoy the kind of physical surroundings conducive to positive attitudes and productivity. To force workers to perform in facilities where they would have to contend with noise, uncomfortable temperatures, dust, and unclean and unhealthy conditions would impair worker performance and be counterproductive.

Likewise, educational research makes it clear that the physical environment affects learning. Quality school design, comfortable and inviting facilities and regular repair and maintenance all contribute to improved learning.

We believe that good design contributes to good learning.

A high-quality learning environment frees students from physical distractions and positively affects student and teacher attitudes and motivation.

The American Association of School Administrators has this to say about the link between school construction and learning:

Students are more likely to prosper when their environment is conducive to learning. Architecture can be designed to support greater safety and security. Environmentally responsive heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems, for example, provide a more comfortable learning environment. Such well-designed systems send a powerful message to kids about the importance their community places on education.

We all recognize the importance of how work conditions affect our attitude about going to work or the emotional effect we experience when we walk into nice places where others work. Similarly, students should feel good about going to a place where they spend a large part of their day. They should look forward to being in an attractive, clean and safe environment. Schools should be places in which our students feel pride, as well as feeling safe and comfortable.

Unfortunately, many of Hawai'i's public schools and our College of Education, which prepares the largest number of teachers for Hawai'i's public schools, are not quality learning environments.

Just to bring our schools up to a level considered even adequate will require a much stronger commitment than we have seen thus far. In 2005, the Board of Education commissioned a study by Grant Thornton LLP and a nationally recognized expert on school funding adequacy, professor David Conley of the University of Oregon. The resulting study found that our public schools needed an additional $278 million a year — an increase of 17 percent — to provide adequate education to Hawai'i students.

An annual study by Education Week magazine released the same year said Hawai'i's per-student spending put the state in 35th place among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Sadly, not much has changed. When the Board of Education study was released, the comment from some financial decision-makers was "we can't afford anything of that magnitude." Yet these are the same voices who ask why achievement is not improving as rapidly as we all would like.

Every time student test scores are published, we are all reminded that, despite progress, we have a great deal of room for improvement. And no one is more eager to see increased academic achievement than Hawai'i's educators. That, after all, is our mission — one that we cannot promise to achieve unless courageous choices are made about urgently needed funds to improve early education, elementary and secondary education, and higher education campuses statewide.

We recommend that by 2012 a dedicated source of capital funding for renovation and improvement be created and implemented. We support the expansion of preschool sites statewide and call for dramatic infrastructure and design improvements in our elementary and secondary schools. In addition, we recommend the building of a state-of-the art facility at the College of Education at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, to serve as a beacon of excellence in teaching and learning, and as a gathering place for the best minds working together to continuously improve our P-20 educational system.

We understand it is difficult to establish priorities with limited resources, but the cost of failing to provide our children with the best and safest places to learn will have consequences none of us want and that Hawai'i cannot afford.

This commentary is part of a series of articles prepared by Voices of Educators, a nonprofit coalition designed to foster debate and public policy change within Hawai'i's public education system, in partnership with The Advertiser. It appears in Focus on the first Sunday of the month.

Voices of Educators comprises some of Hawai'i's top education experts, including: Liz Chun, executive director of Good Beginnings Alliance; Patricia Hamamoto, superintendent of the Department of Education; Donald B. Young, Hawai'i Educational Policy Center; Joan Lee Husted and Roger Takabayashi from the Hawaii State Teachers Association; Sharon Mahoe of the Hawai'i Teacher Standards Board; Alvin Nagasako of the Hawaii Government Employees Association; and Robert Witt of the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools. Visit their Web site at www.hawaii.edu/voice.