001aloha thank you for joining us for 3 o'clock p.m committee on education today is monday march 28th we are blocked in hearing room 229 this meeting including the audio and video of remote participants is being streamed live on youtube you will find links to viewing options for all senate meetings on the live and on demand video page at the legislature's website this zoom meeting and youtube livestream event will include the three o'clock pm agenda for this committee on education in the unlikely event that we have to abruptly end this hearing due to major technical difficulties the committee will reconvene to discuss any outstanding business on wednesday march 30th 2022 at 3 o'clock pm and a public notice will be posted on the legislature's website i'd like to take this time to remind our testifiers that
002due to time restrictions on our hearings we will be limiting testimony to one minute per testifier per bill for people participating remotely please remain muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify when i call your name unmute yourself and your time will begin after your minute is completed staff will mute you so that we can move this hearing along in an orderly and efficient matter thank you i'd like to introduce the members of my committee to my right senator drew cannell i'm sorry to my left senator and at the far end senator kurt favela members we have two items on our agenda and first is item scr9 and sr3 requesting the legislative reference bureau to conduct study of two potential dedicated sources of funding for public education to testify charlotte
003carter yamauchi providing comments she's not here in person i don't think um and also a jennifer azuma true pelic also provided comments members are there any questions on this resolution or comments i don't know if you've read the testimony and just to be sure um i.t we have no one waiting to testify on this matter is that correct yes thank you if no questions i'm going to move on to the next item our gm governor's message 751 submitting for consideration and confirmation as the executive director of the school facilities board gubernatorial nominee chad farias for a term to expire in six years after the confirmation date members testimony from kitayashi please superintendent aloha kidani members of the committee superintendent keith ayashi testifying on behalf of the hawaii state department of education the department stands on
004a chittenden testimony in support of the nominee chad keaney forreas has an extensive background an intimate knowledge of our public education system which i believe he can leverage in the position of the executive director for the school facilities agency the department stands ready to answer any questions the committee might have but we do stand in strong support of this nominee thank you for the opportunity to testify thank you superintendent hayashi next we have listed ed sniffin i do not see ed here in the room is ed on zoom by any chance not present sure thank you ed sniffin provided testimony and support is there a stacey watashi also present to testify thank you um also on zoom we have alan oshima good afternoon chair kidani and uh members of the committee um i'll stand on
005my written testimony i attached a letter uh in very strong support of keone farias for this initial um executive directorship of the school facilities authority we thank your committee uh and use especially senator kidani for all of your hard work in establishing this authority and we look forward to having gionee serve as the first executive director because i feel he has very strong leadership and background to guide this authority into success i stand ready to answer any questions that your committee may have thank you alan i appreciate your testimony and support welcome vice chair of senator donna kim next to testify sherry nakamura director testifying on behalf of hey coalition aloha kidani vice chair kim and members of the committee my name is sherry nakamura director of hai coalition we stand on our written testimony
006in support of the nomination of keonifarius as executive director of the school facilities board we are thrilled that keone is an educator who knows the doe well we look forward to cuny leading the sfa not only to provide funds for building renewal and new school construction but also to establish a process to prioritize projects and to build a system of equity for our students thank you for this opportunity to testify thank you sherry members we also have a bunch of written testimony all in support of keoniferias about 25 or so testimonies is there anyone else on zoom wishing to testify if not is there anyone else in the room wishing to testify members are there any questions of the testifiers this is for gm 751 for the school facilities authority executive director chad keaney farias
007no questions members if not here i don't know is chad i thought he was going to um chad are you on seven can you guys hear me thank you facilities authority executive director chad please proceed members excuse me excuse me can whoever is speaking please mute yourself can you guys hear me can you hear me yes but you got to turn down you're watching it on [Music] if you're watching it on another video or zoom out i'm not i only have one device on here [Music] chad's microphone is on i'm not i only have one device on here are you guys there okay why don't you try proceeding it stopped okay thank you i'm not sure why i was getting that feedback i'll begin again thank you chair kidani vice chair mercado kim aloha and
008mahalo for hearing having this hearing for my confirmation today um my name is chad keoniferias and i'm honored to be appointed by governor ige to serve as the first executive director of the school facilities authority i have spent the last 45 years of my life in and around public and private education institutions of those 45 years 30 years have been here in the state of hawaii serving as a teacher vice principal principal and complex area superintendent um as you saw in my resume my education degrees include a bachelor's of history and education from little mermaid university masters of study of occupational studies from cal state university long beach and a master's from university of hawaii at manoa in education administration i strongly believe that my years of service and my experience has prepared me to
009take take on this new challenge and create a new path forward for education in hawaii i bring with me in my relationships forged in school buildings gymnasiums playgrounds and in the community my record and accomplishments speak for themselves but i'm most proud of my ability to bring people together to accomplish our collective goals taking the time to build common understanding and creating a culture of inclusive inclusivity and collaboration is how we will get things done in the sfa i pledge to find the greatest talent and allow them to do what they do best i believe in high standards that begin with me the leader quality is a must my transformative leadership and my ability to think in and out of the box will ensure existing strengths shine while creating new opportunities to reimagine the use
010of our current assets i believe that education in hawaii requires a balance of public and private partnerships that create the best use of those resources let's build the facilities that our students faculty and communities deserve mahalo thank you very much chad i think that completes the testimony members um just for a little background uh chad also known as kyoni is currently the complex area superintendent for the kauke pahoa complex on the big island he's been an educator for almost 30 years in the doe he's also currently serving on the school facility agency board is one of their five members notably keaney has extensive educational background having served as teacher vice principal principal and kaz all on hawaii island he also has worked with his family's construction company managing short and long-term rentals that they have
011constructed so i will at this time ask our members if there are any questions of any of our testifiers or of mr ferrius [Music] i have some questions um let's see of chad please chad are you there yes i'm here go ahead chair as far as the uh duties uh for the asset the duties and our sfa structure and your response to questions you noted the priority administrative positions that you are looking for this committee certainly recognizes the need for the administrative report and also we're very interested in ensuring that the sfa structure has staffing that is capable of completing projects do you envision positions such as a chief financial officer to be able to also handle operational functions serving also as deputy or chief operation officer yes sure thank you for that question um
012i recall extensive conversation with the sfa board on this exact position we're hoping that this position can serve in dual roles acting more as a deputy um and we're comforted in the mlc that's in place um and i also recall conversation i'll have this conversation with the board about this position perhaps serving as an administrative services officer asl but yes it would be for the dual role thank you chad also i wanted to comment that you know being that the sfa is a brand new agency i think um it's critical for us to realize that the sfa would probably need to focus on some revenue generating projects at the onset to help us move along and accomplish what we are looking to do so with that in mind um and you are currently a member
013of the the uh board how um have you prioritized what the development of teacher housing or what their priorities are going to be and how do you see that [Music] how do you envision teacher housing whether it's here on oahu or on the neighbor islands and thank you for the clarification between oahu and the neighbor islands i think teacher housing has emerged as number one priority for the sfa board we're very fortunate to begin to look at various structures mainly in honolulu county around uh permitted uses um exceptions permitted uses for for different housing structures uh currently we're looking for the solution the most attractive way to um to get private partnerships involved with us while also maintaining uh teacher housing that's cost effective and that ensures uh quality of life for for our faculty
014our staff and our teachers and notably that these projects will look very very different in the urban and rural setting having visited well having served here in kaukau pahoa and having visited hana moloka'i these will take unique solutions quite notably the housing structures on kauhana and schools like honoka these rural areas where teacher cottages are maintained on doe facilities i believe for our rural areas that is where we will begin and start to branch off all while looking in our urban setting for projects that are attractive to investors to first start our private partner a private public partnership in teacher housing thank you chad as you noted in your response to the committee many of our school facilities are aging and in need of repair replacement one criticism of past efforts to improve our campuses
015is that it is typically a piecemeal effort upgrading or building one structure at a time do you anticipate that sfa will be handling things differently uh yes um the answer is yes in having having served in the dlv for 30 years being very very fortunate in my early years to help in the design and construction of both the keal high school and keaau elementary campuses just it was a tremendous benefit to me seeing how these projects take off how we work with private developers like shipment corporation how we um engage in the process of government bonds et cetera and and then the next 25 years in my career seeing us create lists priority lists and doing read priority lists and repair every year re-prioritizing on what's on that list has resulted in piecemeal construction one
016building here one building there felt like trying to appease certain communities in time at the time to calm them down never ever getting to the data driven um results that we're looking for so my my hope for the sfa not my hope my goal for the sfa is that we look at data collaborate with communities collaborate with principals collaborate with state leadership to build the facilities that are that our students deserve also notably in looking at some of these tough conversations around building schools in areas of growth have have turned out to be very have turned out to be the easy conversations what we haven't talked about is areas where there is low growth how do we reimagine those facilities to reuse them for community support for wraparound services for multi-generational activities and i believe
017that's the strength of the sfe and the beauty in this legislation well thank you for that that response of pioneer because another aspect of the sfa is that it is empowered to look at school lands as assets to both the school and the dewey at large there may be instances where redevelopment serves the greatest good for the state so how do you foresee taking on this part of the sfa duties yes um so i believe that question and the structure of that question is exactly why i wanted to be on the sfa board and now that question is what excites me most about the ad position um serving in the deal we having served over the last 10 years and specifically last six years on a committee called the committee on weights committee on weight
018statutorily has to me every two years to come up with the formula of one what is the value of one student based on the amount of money in the department and the toughest question often brought up to the committee on weights is what is enough or what is not enough or what is too small um to stand on its own and so though the value of one one is roughly around five thousand dollars per child with with exceptions made for gt and ell and and um economically disadvantaged the struggle is when we have campuses that are 60 70 80 years old that's not factored into the formula principles do their best to make ends meet for these kids and we've never factored in the cost of operating these facilities and i looked at it on
019a case-by-case basis usually 10 to 15 schools asking for extra money an exception to the wsf to maintain their facilities or keep their doors open certain schools in the state of white are too small to stand on its own and deserve an exception because of their geography and the distances students have to travel but others are not so we have to have the courageous conversation what do we do with those properties when you think of it as one property might not be as daunting when you start to look at 380 plus properties in the doe over 4 000 acres and the average facility age is 65 years old it can be very costly so the sfa will tackle those conversations do what everything we have in our statutory obligation to do it and engage the
020doe on the conversations that are not is that your question yes it does thank you chad uh members i've just reminded you that the school facilities agency will be tasked with building new schools building new uh buildings at a an existing school but the day-to-day r m uh will still uh be in the hands of the assistant superintendent of the facilities who is currently uh randy tanaka who's in the audience today and with that members are there any further questions senator kim thank you thank you mr freeze appreciate you being here to and willing to serve um so are you gonna be working out in honolulu or on the big island yeah as we stand up this agency um not knowing exactly where we're gonna sit but with the reassurance of the moc um we'll
021get off the ground in in my current hopefully with the mlc in my current office as i transition to work on those projects in maui and oahu so specifically will i reside on oahu immediately probably not but the work will be on oahu and that will be something that has to be um moved on very quickly so yes it is the intent to reside here at some point in honolulu yes to work out of honolulu right okay um because while of course our neighbor island a very important facility is important the bulk of it is here on oahu and um so one of the questions i have as you looking at the new schools and i i i guess i'm confused with the r m for the older schools but you know there's this competition
022it seems on getting all the new schools getting them state of the art and yet a number of our old schools you know have been around for so long and their electrical wiring is owed i mean senator michelle kidani and myself are both graduates of farrington high school and you know the buildings there and the pool that is out of out of service have been there when we were there and so it needs a lot of attention how do you how are you going to balance um the needs of a number of the older schools with the new ones and i think that's a very fair question that's an excellent question especially after senator kidani pointed out the difference with rnn and cip so this statute when we look at new schools those schools that
023we've been talking about about on the ewa plane needing five new elementary schools for this year in the house bill that just crossed over to the senate uh elementary middle school in central maui and a new high school in kapolei etc so those are new facilities on on state lands that either we have title two or we'll be seeking title four the sfa does allow the law does allow for new construction on older campuses uh new construction of all their facilities re-imagining of those facilities looking for new uses uh both school and community and maybe even income generating on existing campuses so if we're looking at a school like farrington in need of uh buildings or or what what may seem like rnn it may not be it may be new construction all together to
024lengthen the capacity and the life of that campus and to increase the capacity of that campus so it's not just the repair of the pool the sfa's authority would be in building a new group well at this point the plans are to move the pool eventually i don't know if we'll ever get to it but to put a new gymnasium new buildings and yet that plan has been on the books for a while now what is what is the average cost of building a new school from scratch like a new high school from scratch yeah i'm not sure there's a there's one statewide average the cost of construction varies from island to island i do know the kihei high school build is in the 250 million dollar range just looking at that project so the
025presumption would be that we would start there the capacity and the size of that school would matter also well my understanding is more like 300 million dollars for that school and that it's not an average cost so again is is that kind of decisions going to be made like do we look at what it costs to put a school in or it doesn't matter what the cost is as long as you put it somewhere because then it impacts every other school it impacts the money that's available for some of the older schools that would need some of that funding and not only for the new buildings but all the all of the bells and whistles that are going into the new schools as far as the technology and the old schools don't have anything right
026so yeah point taken to answer your question no there won't be a frivolous spending or a no no matter what it costs approach from the sfa we will be looking at the most efficient means in developing these schools and the most efficient sites i do know of certain projects on the books have spoken with cases and principles about schools being built in one area and sort of leapfrogging the other schools so the students would pass an existing school to get to a new school that wants to be built i believe the sfa will attract the talent work with the doe to talk about um how we build these schools using what we have in our authority but engaging the deal with what they need to do in their authority which comes to boundaries and uh
027different geographical um boundaries for schools and looking for what makes sense looking to what makes the most sense but you're right that type of coordination um has has been done it may have been done well in certain projects and not so well in others and it's usually when we start talking about what do we do with our aging facilities people and the community automatically think a school closure or a smooth consolidation and that's i mean that's though that is something that might might need to be addressed at certain points oftentimes it's not how do we reimagine the facilities we have co-locating these facilities attracting uh private partnerships and other government services to co-locate on our campus to make it feasible to keep these campuses open okay finally what is your position on portables it's been
028my whole life here on hawaii island we're so fortunate that we have that ability i'm thinking of 2015 when we had to temporarily move kyonipoko elementary to chiao campus so i guess my answer is i love portables for the purpose it's served for the purpose it serves but they should be temporary facilities and what is temporary for a portion should be temporary right what is temporary what's the time frame that considered temporary because i know we have portables that have been there for 20 years if not longer is that affordable temporary well so i wouldn't say 20 years is temporary again um i do know there are certain existing circumstances that have kept portables open i'm not a fan of portables i taught out of the talk out of them for quite a number of
029years and so no in the case of kyoni boko work we had it for a year and it went back that was very costly i get that and we kind of had a fema blank check at the time maybe not blank check we did have some fema assistants at the time so we're able to do it um i wouldn't want to see portables used for longer than the construction of new facilities so is it your intent then to review all of the portables across the state to see how long we've been there and that if they've been there over a certain period of time shouldn't we be considering what's alternative should it be a permanent building or i mean again if we're not going to analyze it if we're not going to look at it
030you're going to build it and forget about it and justify the that you know we're going to have all these portables that have a beach and every place else and then you know while we await three new schools that we don't know when it's going to come online mine so so fair question fair question and no it wasn't my intention to do that at first but uh since you asked that question it will be front of mind in asking those those questions about portables again i feel very passionate about it i love that it served this purpose when we need it and i have the experiences of teaching in there and the discomfort of of what that looked like for me and my students so it will be front of mind and i will engage
031the randy tanaka in that conversation and use and leverage those numbers to help us get our new construction done quicker thank you yeah i agree that there's use good use for portables but it is considered portable temporary and it's not supposed to replace something permanent thank you right thank you for your questions thank you senator further questions [Music] yeah senator kim my dad said temporary permanent um so we have in campbell right now temporary permanent classrooms in there for over 20 years my thing is when the doe chooses a site to build and this is with whole appealing let me go to appeal first hopefully started the development and they were supposed to start on alum farm side by kahimu hala that area that they're starting kind of moving movement now the reason for them
032going where they went was because they said the infrastructure was there already and they built honolulu middle school okay it's fine but in that time and we was waiting for a new high school location gentry built 78 to 80 homes on the lot that we thought it was the blast zone that they wasn't going to build anything there so when we asked the doe about this property we could not build a school there on fort weaver road because it was considered the blast zone we in honolulu westlock would blow up what i'm asking this is because kihei right now has a school that is being built or being built on on a property that did not meet the doe standards but it went ahead and started it anyway so can you can you give us
033an idea of what is the standards that that a regular school that is being built by the dewey have to have the minimum requirements do you know yeah so i've read i've read numerous studies that suggested a high school should have 50 acres or 55 acres um et cetera those studies have become sort of obsolete we've we've looked at models around the country of vertical schools with uh with a much smaller footprint if that's what you're asking um in terms of of kihei high school i don't know the details i i don't i don't think i i want to know too many of the details except to learn um from what was done so we don't do it again i think the beauty of the sfa or the legislation that that has created the sfa
034is to create that layer to really ask those tough questions to come together with developers private public partners and communities to ascertain what they need and want for our students and i think maybe that's i don't think maybe i know that's where we have gone wrong in the past while i want economy of scale while i want to look for the most efficient product uh but most efficient ways of building schools i do understand the need to engage communities so that we have the schools that they want to need um yeah so no i i think we need to look at various uh we need to look at a varying degree or varying type of models that is not not just hawaii based what we did was we looked at the successful schools and we
035tried to say if waikia and kea ao and and farrington have 40 plus acres that high school gotta have 40 plus acres of land so no i think we need to engage conversation around that so we can start building these projects that make sense uh just looking forward um letting you know i mean we're the largest school in the state of hawaii and we're not anywhere near in not growing so i like the idea that you open to private partnership and other things because i know we're not gonna ever get another 37 million dollar building so i threw this a lot over the cages and principal lee and other people in the community suggested the same thing over the last 10 years we have a library that is on our property that we want to
036start the conversation in swapping private partnership uh dissolving the library giving it to the school at campbell high school because the library is very very underutilized and the students only have certain time to use it they have to come with their own um which kind of they have to have their own uh librarians and they have to have their own time so i hope you're open to that and and going forward um please start the conversation with um principal lee another one is that we have a big community park across the street that is very very underused going forward if we could stop making a conversation that if we can acquire that maybe a um moa just between 5 30 or 5 in the morning to six o'clock at night so the school can use
037the facilities because we have no tennis courts we have no place because they're going to start fixing our football field after 50 years of the school you're finally gonna have a new football field so the football player is not gonna have any place to practice so this is something that i think we should start the conversation now before december come and we have no place for our kids to practice football because illinois is already working on the fact that they're gonna have their sixth grade win so i ask you if you can start these conversations i really appreciate it thank you for your time chair thank you uh looking forward to working with you closely thank you thank you members if no further questions i'm going to ask for a short recess calling the committee
038on education back to order members thank you the the recommendation of the chair is going to be to defer scr9 sr3 based on the testimony of the legislative reference bureau any questions thank you and for gm 751 recommendation of the chair is to advise and consent to the nomination of chad um farias to the as the executive director of the school facilities board members questions if not chair votes eye chair recommends advise and consent on gm 751 uh shareholder vice chair votes eye senator de la cruz excuse senator canoha senator favela all right four members all voting i one excuse recommendation is adopted congratulations mr faria this meeting's adjourned you