001good afternoon and thank you for joining us for the committee on education wednesday april 7th 3 o'clock agenda in room 229. with me is vice chair senator donna mercado kim here in the room with me and virtually i have senator drew kanuha thank you for joining me 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 of the legislature's website this zoom meeting and youtube live stream event will include the three o'clock pm agenda for the committee on education in the unlikely event that we have to abruptly end this hearing due to major technical difficulties the committee will be reconvening to discuss any outstanding business of friday april 9th at
0023 o'clock p.m and a public notice will be posted on the legislature's website i'd like to take this time to remind our testifiers that due to time restrictions on our hearings we will be limiting testimony to one minute per testifier per bill for the people participating remotely all testifier audio will be muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify when i call your name staff will unmute you 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 manner we have nine items on the agenda today and we will start these all all governor's messages and appointments to various boards and we will start with gm 788 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the
003hawaii teachers standard board gubernatorial nominee davilan hahn for a term to expire 6 30 2025. we have lynn hammond's executive director to testify thank you senator kidani vice chair kim members of the committee it's my honor today to testify in support of david lokiwani han as a continuing member of the hawaii teacher standards board she has served as a faithful member and is currently the chair of our legislative committee and the htsb strongly supports her nomination thank you thank you for your testimony lynn um we have david on the line with us and we did send them pre all of the uh nominees send them questions to answer and i would like to um note that we have had we have received responses so david and i had um some follow-up questions that i would
004like to ask you to respond to um in your response to question two you noted that you provide input from the perspective of neighbor island rural charter schools and hawaiian language programs can you further elaborate on why you feel that perspective helps htsb in carrying out its statutory responsibility in promoting high teacher standards thank you senator kitani you know in the past we've we've noticed a lot of oahu centric initiatives being pushed out and um our our neighbor island teachers our communities kind of left behind i've seen it with hsta in part i've seen it with other organizations and i and i really think that hdsb being proactive to encompass all of the teachers in whatever communities they live in um really pushing to have more voice from rural communities more boys from kaiopouni schools
005and and now even as a charter school teacher more voice from the charter school community um i think it's important that we get these different perspectives we've done it with hsta you know and we continue to do that with each sta and and i see it being a real plus for htsp to have different perspectives because we've got all the different schools represented yeah all the teacher prep programs represented in one shape or another and and i just feel that moloka'i as being a rural community with a charter school without one language school you get all of that in just this single body so i'm hoping i'm hoping that i make a make an impact on our on our board thank you for that comment devlin i think i totally agree with you about oauth
006centric and how we have to make sure that our smaller communities on the neighbor islands are well represented and i wanted to note that you are a reappointment and i believe that miss hammonds feels that you have done a terrific job to represent the board and this banner my other question would be do you have any proposals that you would like to see hawaii teacher standards boards take up to help increase available avenues for teacher prep preparation and pathways i think one of the things that i brought to the board last year was growing our own trying to help trying to help moms like myself you know who might be interested in a career um go to education you know as a parent where we are our children's first teachers yeah and if we can
007set that passion for the parents to become teachers what better way to share your life with your child i think that was one of the best ideas best moves that i ever made um getting into education in my later life i really i really one of the initiatives that we talked about was was growing our own and i think that the way that the programs are set now with colgan 19 forcing everybody to go distance um there's more of a there's more of an opportunity for people from rural communities that don't have a college or even a university on their on their island you know molokai has our maui community college extension we don't really have a teacher program here but because of distance learning people like myself have gone through a teacher prep program
008and we were able to graduate and stay at home and raise our families and and become teachers so i really want to do that for other makua who have that desire to become either a teacher or you know a counselor any type of education um i i want to really push that this year i think that's a really good avenue to to follow to look at thank you devlin and we also have a number of uh written testimonies in support of this candidate um i'd also like to uh welcome senator favela who has joined us virtually members are there any questions for our nominee senator campreece aloha javelin thank you very much for continuing to serve so you've been on the board for how long now i believe it's three years three years and in
009that three years what what have you believe you've accomplished other than the growing your own that you talked about one of one of the things that i when i first joined it was an item on our agenda was the licensure for kaya pudi teachers in the past you had to have been either a graduate of kabul and now a program in manoa that certified you as a hawaiian language um teacher a kai kuni teacher and there were many of us who had not had that opportunity to go to school and graduate from you know either of these programs and so we felt that it was imperative that we allow um our kupuna that have language background our mana male that have language background and teachers like myself who have been working in kaya puny going
010on 20 years to become licensed in hawaii and so from the get-go from that first meeting that i attended um we've been pushing for that and i'm happy to say that it's come to fruition we actually have a licensure for kaya puni for kaiolo and and we continue to offer these programs to help other kumu who do not who did not graduate from you know [Music] to get licensed to get certified so we can be highly qualified in our field i think that was one of the the first things that i worked on and i think the thing that i'm most proud of is that we got to push that through so do you feel that the boy has been effective in in i know you pointed out a lot of the concerns so do
011you feel the board is effective in addressing these issues we have really strong discussions um in our meetings our in our community meetings you know and lynn has been really good about providing information both upfront and follow-up um i think so i think our board we work well together there's a mutual respect amongst all of our board members some people have more experience in certain areas and we kind of you know navigate to them to kind of lead us through this um nobody's perfect we all ask questions i mean i'm a big question ask her i'm always confused about stuff so i have to ask clarifying questions on a lot of the items that we have but the people that present to us and and they're all they're always willing to like you know follow
012up with us give us additional information and i think that's important because if you don't know how can you make a decision right you got to know what's happening you got to have as much information as possible in order to to make a decision and and we're talking about people's livelihoods here we're talking about people's jobs um i think it's important for us to be as stringent as possible but also to see there's some room for us to engage others and to strengthen the programs that we have and even like with kovit you know to find innovative ways to improve those programs very good thank you very much i think it's important i think i encourage you to continue to ask questions i certainly ask a lot of questions and yes you cannot make a
013decision unless you have that information but once all the questions have been answered i just hope that you know action takes place and things get done and that was you know sort of my question as to how effective the board and after having all these lively discussions if there is action that takes place so i encourage you to continue to do that and continue to work towards fulfilling some of these goals that you have so thank you again for willing to be willing to serve thank you members for their questions if not devlin i forgot to offer you to make an opening statement if you have a closing statement you'd like to make you can offer it at this time for joining us our next gm 789 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the white
014teachers standards board gubernatorial nominee glenn miyasato for a term to expire 6 30 2022 glenn are you with us yes senator thank you thank you would you like to make an opening statement glenn i'm just i'm grateful and also very humbled to have been nominated for this position i hope since i'm not i would be a novice if appointed to this position i hope that i will be able to contribute and collaborate with the other members for the good of our team thank you thank you um to testify then hammonds executive director teacher standards boards and then please thank you senator kidani and members of the committee again i don't know mr miyasanto personally but i've read very glowing testimony about him on your hearing site and it looks like he would be a valuable
015member for the standards board and sounds like he's ready to work so this htsp is in support of his nomination thank you thank you glenn thank you for your response to the questionnaire that we have sent i have some additional questions um in your response to question two you noted that providing targeted professional development is an integral part of your work as a school administrator how do you plan on addressing professional development for teachers through through htsb and what specific areas of professional development would you like to see them employ to support teachers senator thank you um i've come to learn over you know my long years of working in schools a variety of schools that my first job is to to listen to the teachers and to listen to what their needs are because
016i've come to see a great variety of needs amongst the different schools that i've had the privilege of working with i really did appreciate hearing the words of the the previous nominee because as you see from my thing i i did spend years teaching on molokai as a teacher as a young teacher and also as an administrator so um the those i see a great variety of needs that do come up and i think that listening to the teachers and hearing what they feel their needs are is the first step in determining how we can support them with professional development my teachers here at fern elementary school have been great i mean you know especially during this time this very unusual 13 months that have passed here they've been very clear about what they need
017what kind of professional development they need and especially for uh for our community here in kalihi at this current time i think listening to the needs of the community and the teachers gives us the starting point for the professional development that we might offer them supporting women thank you glenn i will tell you that i went to fern elementary school for all right two years i won't tell you when i can tell you when now i'm gonna i'm gonna mute senator kim any questions for mr miyazato i i do have one more question glenn um how how can you use your experiences um with various schools and uh to develop effective policies for the different needs for teacher preparation and pathway programs i think that um it's very important i i i'm there's a lot
018of things i think i'm not good at but one of the things i i feel like um i have experience with is sometimes thinking out of the box for solutions for our teachers and for our students and for the various kinds of schools and the different needs of the schools an example of that would be like for even here at fern um as well as i did previously at amu finding good substitute teachers was a big issue at both at this school and previous school and i think one of the ways that we we thought out of the box was we asked permission from the superintendent if we could perhaps train our own substitute teachers amongst the people that we have already as as part-time workers or casual hires in our school because they would
019already be there and and they would and they have the skills for example to either speak hawaiian and when i was at or here at kalihi they understand our children because they're residents of the community and and i really thank superintendent for allowing us that out of the box suggestions so for three years i've been doing that to training our own substitutes for our own school and the results have been amazing i mean these people are reliable they may not have the college degree or the teaching degree but they have proven to us to be very very excellent substitute teachers who care about our kids so i hope to use that kind of out of the box thinking and innovation to try to help meet the needs of our teachers as well as our schools
020thank you glenn that's interesting very similar to the grow our own uh thoughts that davilan had we also have a number of written testimonies in support members further questions thank you glenn our third gm790 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the hawaii teachers standards board gubernatorial nominee katina suarez for a term to expire 6 30 20 22. katina are you there yes i'm here thank you senator would you like to make an opening statement please yes please um i'd just like to say i'm really grateful for this opportunity to represent um again a small island i'm from molokai raised from 10 days old and this is my community like said you know we have to grow our own um there are very few people who are willing to um come and live here it's it's
021a very special place and you either love it or hate it and so we've had to be really creative in filling our teaching positions with licensed certified teachers and quality teachers for our kids so i'm hoping to be part of that movement and some of the innovative practices that have taken place especially to fill our hawaiian language immersion program and having qualified teachers there so i appreciate the opportunity to be considered thank you thank you katina we have one oral testimony from lynn hammond's executive director of teacher standards board thank you again senator members of the committee again i don't know dr sores but i've read the very strong testimony in her support on the hearing site and the htsp stands in support of her nomination thank you thank you we also have probably half
022of molokai that testified in written support remember you have questions for uh dr suarez any questions if not katina you know mahalo for taking time to respond to the the questionnaire that we sent out in your response to question two you noted that you will research additional programs and opportunities from other states or districts licensing entities so what current policies or practices do you see within a hawaii teacher's standards board that could use improvement um one of the things that just from my own experience that i've noticed is teachers are committing with the knowledge the the intellectual knowledge but not necessarily some of the practical knowledge i'd like to see our program strengthen the areas of um like lesson planning some of the routines that that teachers you'll see if you go into the elementary
023school they have you know set routines from the calendar in the morning like one of the students um in a classroom could actually probably run the classroom for you they have these routines that are not necessarily taught in licensing programs that would take our teachers up a notch from the day they step in the door if they had these opportunities taught to them as part of the licensing process or their education process so that's one area that i could see some growth in and we could learn a little bit from other states and as well as um bringing on board some of our current practicing teachers to mentor them very good um also so what are some specific issues that your school community has expressed which you believe will help improve the policies htsb has
024to meet statutory statutory responsibility for promotion of high teacher standards and accomplished teaching like mentioned i think the the grow our own is huge um especially for us a small community with um teacher shortages and like i said people in my opening um people who want to be here will stay and then um for the most part other people who you know they'll come and they'll leave after a year so it's really important for us even as a system with a huge teacher shortage to improve on our grow our own programs and having people be able to work and earn a living wage while training to be a teacher and then they would be picking up that practical knowledge as well as you know the educational or university type knowledge in the training program so
025that would be one of the definite areas i would look forward to working on thank you so much dr soares for your input members further questions if not mahalo moving on to gubernatorial nominee jonathan guillen teen for a term to expire 6 30 2023 also for the hawaii teachers standards board jonathan are you there yes uh chair kidani would you like to make an opening statement please yes please uh it's my honor to be here today to be considered for appointment to this to hawaii teacher standards board i have to say to be included with this class is very much an honor i consider i have not had the privilege of meeting dr soares yet but um i consider lo kehan and glenn miyazato long time friends and colleagues and that would make if indeed
026i am confirmed that would make the transition onto the board that much um more smooth more uh wonderful because of the connection to these two individuals and others on the board that i that i know i'm grateful for this opportunity to be here today and to to be considered thank you thank you for that and we have to testify in support of your nomination hammond's executive director teacher standards board then uh thank you senator and members of the committee i do know dr guillen team and i can tell you that i can't think of a more accomplished highly recognized educator than jonathan and i think the board would greatly benefit from his service as with all teachers and students in hawaii so the htsb stands in support of his nomination to the board thank you
027thank you and there are a number of written testimonies also in support of the nominee jonathan in your uh thank you for your answering the questionnaire and i had a follow-up two actually follow-up questions based on your response in your role as a state review panelist and review chair for htsb what recommendations can you give regarding the future of state-approved teacher education programs sata as to how to accomplish the teacher standards board statutory mandate to promote the high teacher standards and accomplish teaching yes um thank you one of the one of the recommendations that i have for consideration for new programs or added programs that are adding fields and so forth is to have flexibility for example one of the programs for which i sat on the review team was an online program and having
028the capacity to allow teacher candidates to enroll in these programs to pursue either a degree or certification through the program and to be able to do that while while teaching as as emergency hires i i suppose it's the terminology i think is important because it has that connection to teaching in the real world and facing those situations that might be challenging but that are you know connected to everyday work that teachers do and with real life students and being able to connect that to what they're learning through the programs that they're engaged in thank you one of your goals was to provide a system to communicate information about teaching standards and licensure how do you plan on addressing this if you are confirmed for another term on on this board chair kidani i've had the
029privilege of being the recipient of awards and fellowships and connected with teachers across the mainland across the country in different contexts some of them principals heads of charter schools of course in different contexts than we have here but all of them very excellent very accomplished to be able to access those individuals to ask them questions how do you folks do address this issue how do you make sure that your professional development is authentic it's connected to the students needs to the communities and so forth being able to ask those kinds of questions of my colleagues i think will help to serve the board in addressing the issues that we face here thank you very much for that response uh dr guillen team members any further questions if not thank you so much for being willing
030to serve thank you cherokee members we will move on to item number five um and we are now going into the uh early learning board the nominees so this is gm 626 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the early learning board gubernatorial nominee leilani ao for a term to expire 6 30 20 22 is leilani with us i am thank you would you like to make an opening statement leilani um i i appreciated the survey you sent um kidani i just wanted to let you know that i have valued the short term that i've spent already on the early learning board um and i think we have a lot of good work to finish or continue working on and i'd like the opportunity to continue so thank you thank you and uh to testify we
031have robert peters chair of the early learning board bob are you with us there you go yes i am thank you chair kadani members of the committee we stand in support of leilani al's confirmation as a continuing member on the early learning board while she has only been with us for a short time she reflects the center-based director's perspective which is a voice we need to include in our conversations and our deliberations and waivani is a strong voice on behalf of that sector so thank you thank you also to testify lauren moriguchi director of the office of early learning teacher kidani vice chair kim and members of the committee eoel supports the nomination of leilani al to the early learning board as a representative of the center-based program providers ms al has dedicated 35 years
032to the field of early learning as an early childhood specialist early childhood department lecturer and case trainer with her extensive experience in center-based programs and supporting the professional development of the early learning workforce ms al would continue to be an asset as a member of eob thank you thank you and there is no further oral testimony miss al thank you for your responses to our questionnaire i wanted to take a moment to um to let you know that in your response to the third question you noted that the early learning board has an unique and powerful role as advisor to the executive office on early learning and i wanted to make sure that you knew that in 2017 we passed act 202 which uh the board is not an advisory in an advisory role anymore
033it is a decision-making and governing board so i wanted to make sure that you you know were aware of that and i apologize i guess the um i needed a better verb that we do by you governor govind through advice but yes i understand that it's a governing board and i take that quite seriously thank you can you um clarify if confirmed how you will meet your statutory responsibility as a board member to direct and not just advise the executive office on early learning to meet its statutory mandates to create an early learning system thank you i'm actually quite interested in the idea of the system i served in a role when the state was looking at doing a quality rating system years ago and i think a lot of the work that i was
034able to do then and that i continue to do now both as a center director but also through my work with haiuic and working directly with center programs i also was really i was fortunate at the time i got on the board i jumped right in and i was very involved with the state plan and i served on a number of the different action groups that were working on it i'm particularly impassioned about both the quality of experiences for children for families and for the providers which is very challenging to balance all three but also looking towards the future i think that workforce development is going to continue to be a challenge as we try to attract people into our field when it is not necessarily a lucrative field for our workers um but it's
035so incredibly value valued and this is only going to work through a systems approach while we're looking at both what exists in the private sector what exists on the government level and i think there's a lot of models nationwide that can really serve as well i'm particularly proud of the work that the executive office on early learning created with the state plan and my small role in that is one of the things bob peters was able to say i always ask questions about center programs and how child care workers are being treated in our work as we're reflecting on things and i will continue to do so um the last part about for me with the system is that as we've gone through this pandemic and everything has gone virtual i've actually been able to
036participate more in different experiences public policy and join different organizations just to try to figure out what's going on what people are doing and more importantly what they need and i think that we again we set the stage really well before the pandemic hit we're doing a little recovery now but i think we're absolutely ready to really look at what children and families and providers need as we move forward i think that's an issue that every educator faced as we went into the pandemic and also parents who had to uh now be teachers so thank you for for saying that um can you elaborate on the resources that you believe eoel needs to accomplish its mission um so i know that finances are going to be an issue and i absolutely appreciate oh the work
037that went into act 46 before we had to close down was amazing and gorgeous and there was just so much opportunity there but i do think that the work that went into creating it still exists so right now our biggest resources are the people who are already doing the work the different systems that exist and as a center director myself who's currently not operating at financial stability i understand the state's point of view about being able to keep our finances moving forward but one of the things i think that's important is being able to just make decisions about how we allocate the financial resources but i do think we've been super impressed with the people resources digging deep again just one example executive office on early learning was very available to providers like myself but
038also i sent families to their website and their information as we were trying to figure out how to take care of our children at home while we're also doing full-time jobs and the website that came out of their work while they were working on that in that way is a fantastic resource for providers and one of the things i would like to do in my if i'm appointed in my continued work is to get that information out to the center-based providers and currently um our elb does not have a family child care person on board right now so i think that i could help you with that responsibility as well but i think we need to get the resources out so that people can respond better when they need help so a lot of the
039resources again really are just the people and the early learning board has provided me lots of opportunities to meet people who are fantastic resources for our children thank you for that response members any questions if not thank you leilani so much for willing to serve moving on to gm number 627 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the early learning board gubernatorial nominee melody vega for a term to expire 6 30 20 23. melody would you like to make an opening statement members of the committee um for this honored privilege of considering me for the early learning board thank you to testify and support robert peters chair of the early learning board thank you chair kadani on the early learning board supports the confirmation of melody vega for return on the early learning board melody has
040a long history in early childhood education and not only does she bring is a great resource for the fcil programs but she brings a great deal of knowledge and experience addressing the workforce issues and particularly workforce force equity her contributions in that area an area we have a great deal of work to do will be immeasurable thank you thank you bob also to testify is lauren moriguchi director of eoel thank you chair vice chair and members of the committee uel supports the nomination of melody vega to the early learning board as the representative of family child interaction learning programs ms vega has worked in the early learning sector and supported workforce development as bob mentioned in various capacities in hawaii for 33 years with her extensive experience in the field ms vega would continue to
041be a an asset as a member of the early learning board thank you thank you lauren melody in your response to question 3b you stated that you wanted to influence support toward the focus and prioritization of the pieces of the system that require the most attention right now what are those pieces of the system that you see as needing the most attention well i believe that the climate has changed somewhat since the pandemic and really knowing what the needs of families and children require us to be in communities to both rural and urban to understand and know what that is and right now child care even before the pandemic has been um a a challenge and an issue and and having enough capacity in scenes for children so that parents can go to work um
042has been a challenge and an issue and i i think that's one of the uh pieces to prioritize um right now thank you um and in your response to question six you noted that you believe eoel needs to remove themselves from overseeing programs and concentrate on creating the system can you elaborate on that yes i think it's a a difficult thing to do both and um i i know uh it's been difficult over the years to provide funding for creation of a system [Music] that doesn't have a program attached to it and but yet at the same time to get out into the communities to have enough staff to really engage in um in surveying finding out what those needs of the communities are and to assist the communities with building their own system because
043every community is different and the pieces of a good early care and education system within that community could look different and so that's that's um why i think the effort toward uh focusing on the creation of a system is so much more of a priority than overseeing any type of program there are agencies and and organizations out there that are actually overseeing and providing programs thank you for that members further questions if not melody thank you so much for your willingness to serve thank you members moving on to gm 628 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the early learning board gubernatorial nominee justina acevedo cross for a term to expire 6 30 2022 justina would you like to make an opening statement please yes good afternoon senators i welcome the opportunity to be able to
044continue service as an early learning board member i've been able to serve for the last two years a couple of pieces that i'm very active with right now is a small role in helping to advise with some of the finance committee to review budgets but a couple things i'm very passionate and proud about are spearheading a workforce equity subcommittee of the early learning board where we're really diving in about what are the needs around compensation and other key issues to propel the field forward and then lastly i am serving actively on the search committee for a new director of the early learning of the executive office of early learning thank you sounds like you've been very busy already on this committee on this board excuse me you mentioned in your response targeted expansion of early
045care and education programs in under service areas of the state do you have data to use to identify where the under service areas are i think some of our best data is actually work that was um was came about through the preschool development grant that the executive office of early learning oversaw the needs assessment so they're able to look at some of the risk and reach of different early childhood programs in our communities and it did show some areas that do have higher needs it was interesting because some pieces actually have higher needs and maybe higher vulnerability in terms of the index but some communities actually had higher numbers of programs that were available so you actually need to do a little bit of matching of both like look at the communities that really don't
046have some of those programs thank you i was so anxious to hear your responses that i forgot to let the testifiers have their say so um bob peters chair of the early learning board please thank you senator kadaman kadamin the early learning board supports the nomination of justina acevedo cross to a continuing term on the board as justina has noted she's been a very active member since her start she represents the philanthropy community and provides that connection between the private and and public funding sectors that is so important a connection that we want to continue to cultivate her role in launching a new committee with terry locke from the university of hawaii has added another dimension to our focus on the workforce and issues of equity you bob also lauren moriguchi director early learning board
047thank you chair vice chair and members of the committee eol supports the nomination of justina acibito cross to the early learning board as a representative of the philanthropic organizations that support early learning she has over eight years of experience in philanthropy and in her current role with hawaii community foundation her work is focused on early learning and workforce development with her extensive experience in philanthropy and supportive early learning initiatives ms acevedo cross would be would continue to be an asset as a member of the early learning board thank you justina to go on to another question i had that in the questionnaire you at when asked about resources that are needed for eol to accomplish the mission you talked about the needs but do you have any idea with regard to the resources that would
048be required like what would you push for as an uh allocation of resources yeah i do think there's a couple things to build on that eol has already been working on but one example of that is having some grant and contracting authority to help expand the work in programs so for example being able to rebrand funds out to family child interaction learning programs and communities that need it it feels like a strong step i also think there's pretty tremendous opportunity with the implementation of act 46 and even though there's not necessarily funding undergirding that yet there's still a lot of foundational work that could be done to set us up for 10 years of all three and four-year-olds having access to high quality early learning programs one of those first steps is actually around the
049kindergarten entry assessment and eoel can really play a role in helping to design what that looks like because that transition moment between any sort of early childhood program into those kindergarten years are incredibly critical and i can say that both as a kind of more on the academic side of it but also as a i have a child who's at that moment exactly a preschooler who's going to be transitioning into kindergarten and i do want their teachers to know what kind of prior experience they're coming into that classroom thank you for that members any further questions thank you so much justina for your willingness to serve on the early learning board appreciate it moving on to [Music] let's see gm 629 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the early learning board gubernatorial nominee cherylin shinoki
050for a term to expire 6 30 20 22. sherilyn would you like to make an opening statement good afternoon um senators and thank you so much for the opportunity to serve to continue serving on the early learning board it's been a wonderful experience of being able to advocate for my fellow parents and i'm sorry i just got back from picking up my son like a parent does and so hopefully i can uh address your questions with some concentrated thought thank you to testify bob peter's chair early learning board thank you chair kadami um cheryl and shane gnocchi has been a member of the early learning board whose contributions really help to keep us focused on parents and families she's also a strong advocate of looking at how the system develops and that we don't overlook
051the infant and toddler segment of our community i've been we've been particularly impressed with her own programs in the family who we where she helps parents to learn how to interact with each other offer networking and support for their roles as a child's first teachers we support chairman's continuation on the board thank you thank you chair peters also lauren moriguchi director for early learning board i'm sorry and members of the committee uel supports the nomination of cherylin shinoki to the early learning board as the parent representative miss shinoki began her 17 years in early childhood education as a parent eager to learn more about child development she's currently the executive director of family hawaii a nonprofit organization that provides parenting support and early childhood development knowledge with her diverse experience in the field and as
052a parent ms shinoki would be would continue to be an asset as a member of the early learning board thank you um cherylin thank you for your service and your willingness to continue i wanted to ask you a few questions thank you for responding to the questionnaire that we did send you do have a great depth of experience and knowledge both as a parent and as a teacher and early child care provider and i wanted to make sure that as a board member you realize that you are statutory required to set the directives for eoel for statewide policy and not as advisory and i've said this before because this is very important for us to carry on the mandate of the early learning board so in reframing your role how do you foresee yourself taking
053responsibility for the direction of statewide policy to ensure that eoel incorporates feedback from parents no yes thank you for that i i do understand that i was around when it was an advisory board and understand that it is a governing board really my role in that in that lane of thought is you know really ensuring that the executive office of early learning um follows the the mandate that we need to make sure that it's a system from prenatal to age to kindergarten entry i i serve as the co-chair of the capacity and resources ad hoc committee on the early learning board and we are recently we've been trying to ensure that the state early childhood plan has a a um excuse me a methodology a plan to actually make sure that we are on track
054that the executive office of early learning is on track in implementing that plan so it's a you know we don't always just provide advice it's to make sure that we are that eoel is fulfilling of those statutory requirements thank you for that um you made an interesting statement that this is in question six you noted that you believe the eoel director should serve on the board of education in the same capacity as the doe superintendent serves on the early learning board and i think that's a very interesting observation and my question to you is what impacts do you believe having the eoel director on director would have on how k-12 operations function you know if you think about early learning as a system education as a system it starts prenatally and then continues all the
055way up you know through college and so if we want to make the best impact overall we have to start early brain research is it's very well known that we need to start early and then the greatest returns are if we start early i believe that the eoel and the doe need to be able to work together to work collaboratively to work for what's best for the children and the families that surround them it is not something that we can really do separately we have to be able to work together um you know i know that the eoel is not in the elb is not in charge of putting our director on the board of education but in that sense i think if we really want the board of education and the early learning board
056to work together for the benefit of our kids then we need to be able to have shared leadership and it was just an observation i know it doesn't necessarily have any power behind it but it is an observation and as a parent it makes sense to me as an early childhood educator it also makes sense to me yeah i i like the observation actually um it it does make sense and so going further delving a little bit further what parts of the state early childhood plan coincides with k-12 education that you think warrants the eoel director to be on the board of education um i i think i'll answer with an example um and i'm the executive director of family group hawaii and i understand that i am the parent representative i do not represent
057family to be on the early learning board but for instance we actually have we are a grantee of the early literacy project which is part of a doe through it's it's really a pre-k through a it's a birth through grade 12 grant now when we listen to the the literacy plans of the health partners and listen to the literacy plans of the prenatal to h5 literacy partners there is a great need for family engagement and all of it and it's something that the schools i believe if we really embrace the idea that if the child if the child is the parent is the child's first teacher then when we involve the parents not so much just um fundraising for instance but really involve them in understanding child development understanding how there can be a two-way
058conversation between parent and family that we can really work and i'm sorry between parent and school then we can really work together to support that child in every way in the literacy literacy is a great example of it pre-literacy skills start at birth if the child if the parent is reading to the child every day they are going to increase them on a conversational turns increase just the whole health and wellness aspect of attachment theory together and be able to support the child's whole language environment which will impact their ability to read you know by the time they're in third grade so i mean there really is a whole um a need for that consistency of family engagement just from from birth all the way through kindergarten entry and then beyond and studies will show
059that the more you are engaged in the early years the more likely you are to be engaged in the primary school and secondary school years and that is really the key to consistency of having a family be able to support their child through their whole academic career and it just makes it so much easier to work with pam with with teachers when you actually have a relationship and a partnership with them so you're not so afraid of when the school calls because your child has been acting up well hopefully you already are aware of some of their challenges schools where some of their challenges and you'll be able to work together and i've had that personal experience with my youngest son thank you very much for engaging me in that discussion cheryl and i find
060it very interesting members further questions if not thank you cherylin for your willingness to serve uh our final um gm 630 is going to be deferred uh the nominee has notified the governor um that she is withdrawing um from this nomination process members you have the boarding sheets uh the recommendation of the chair is going to be to take all of these uh gubernatorial nominees for both the hawaii teacher standards boards and the early learning board and to advise and consent on all of these nominees i think they all have a lot to offer and i look forward to to working with all of them so without objections members um the chair will recommend advising and consent on all the nominees to the early learning board as well as the hawaii teachers standards boards chair
061boats eye okay so chair holding eye on all of the nominees gm 788 gm 789 gm 790-791-626-627-628-629 so if that is there any member on the committee voting with reservations any member voting in the negative hearing none we have let's see senator de la cruz are you with us thank okay four members present all in the affirmative your recommendation and advising consent thank you thank you members and thank you to all the nominees who came forward and we look we look forward to your service thank you for being willing to serve with that meeting is adjourned you