001okay calling to order the joint committee on ways and means in education this morning we'll hear from department of education charter schools and libraries who will be presenting their biennium budget good morning good morning good morning chair de la cruz chair kidani members of the committee i am ivan lao the interim executive director of the state public charter school commission thank you for inviting us to share with you our budget highlights for this next budget cycle before i do that i did want to introduce a couple of people that are with me on zoom today chair of the commission john kim good morning everybody good morning morning john interim deputy director pj four i'm not sure if i see him there he is thank you for having us and my finance and operations director danny
002vasquez gonzalez hello senators happy new year today i'll be sharing with you the budgets for two program areas edn 600 which is the program funds for public charter schools and end 612 which is the program funds for the state public charter school commission its office and staff as well as our early learning pre-k program for edn 600 public charter school funding is tied to the funding for our department public schools essentially doe programs 100 200 300 and are combined and converted into a per pupil amount based on the enrollment of students enrolled in our public charter schools this is calculated on an annual basis and it should not be confused with the department's per pupil funding which is calculated differently as such reductions made to the department of education's budget have a direct impact on
003our public charter schools this current school year's charter school funding was originally totaled at 101.4 million but as the department's budget was reduced so has a public charter school budget the result has been a 5.8 million dollar reduction for a total of 95.6 million with a potential for the governor to still withhold the last 10 percent of their funding for this current school year under the governor's budget for the next biennium public charter schools are seeing a further reduction from this year's 95.6 million to approximately 92 million each year for the next two years again strictly based on the reductions for funding to our public department public schools for edn 612 the commission's budget is being reduced by 233 330 or approximately 15 percent of our budget for an overall budget of 1.3 million for
004each of the next two years additionally the commission is losing two vacant positions the one area of the commission's budget that i did want to advocate for is our early learning program which provides 17 pre-k classrooms in 11 public charter schools located in communities that need more early learning opportunities the program stems from the federal pre-k grant that was awarded over five years ago under the obama administration and it essentially provided states with foundational funding to build up their early learning programs it was an investment in our littlest learners and at the conclusion of their grant it was the hope that the state would then make that investment an ongoing part of their overall education system we originally hoped that we would receive our four million dollar annual budget but are grateful to the governor
005for the 2.9 million that was included in his budget while not ideal our schools will make it work with the priority being to preserve the workforce that our state has developed and invested in for the last five years there will not be as much left as we had hoped in that we could provide support for facilities maintenance custodial and administrative support utilities and especially now with coven internet access and additional ppe costs and then further reductions to the regular k-12 program schools would also have impacts on our early learning programs with cool bit 19 we all know how difficult it has been for our schools our parents and our students to operate and learn in this environment hopefully these are temporary reductions as our public charter schools will do their best to manage those cuts
006while still providing opportunities for quality early education these reductions will be harmful to our education programs if they are continued to continued in the long term we hope that the federal ester funds being sent to the state can help to offset some of these reductions as it would be a great loss to the state to lose this program after investing investing all this time and effort thank you for your time and consideration and we're happy to answer any questions you may have nice questions yes thank you chair thank you yvonne thank you did the charter schools get any of the previous essa funds yes the department did allocate 2.2 million dollars out of the first essa funds that were sent down directly to the schools so they did receive that funding early on that was
007out of um what was what was the percentage out of um they what they did was i think they took i can't remember if it was it was the 43 million that they received a part of that went to was set aside for special education in private schools and then the remainder of that was per pupilized so based on enrollment and then that i don't know what the percentage was but they just divided it straight based on the enrollment and so we ended up with 2.2 million going out to the public charter schools so have you had any discussion with the superintendent as to what the if there is more us or funds coming i have it um we are patiently waiting um for the discussions to happen i i realized that the you know
008the sr2 funds were just passed and i expect that they're pouring through the requirements of that and we're hoping to hear from the department as to how those funds can be shared with our charter schools so right now your budget doesn't include anything that was interesting not at this time um for edn 612 you noted in your testimony um i think page six that the commission received 17.4 million in federal funds and expended 1.6 what um are you doing with the rest of the funds i'm gonna ask danny bass gonzalez to assist me in different breaking out those that amount danny uh a law chair the remainder of the funds go out to the charter schools so as most of you are aware that the department of the dov functions as both the state education
009agency and the local education agency so because of that arrangement the commission acts as a pass-through or federal funding um the department essentially allocates uh the charter school portion to the commission and the commission then distributes those funds out to the charter schools so i've got 17.4 million dollars and um federal funds last year which did include the sr1 funds the remainder of those uh of that 17.4 from the 1.6 went out to the charter schools so um of that um 17.4 the commission kept 1.6 million is that correct what was that used for that's like 10 percent so danny i believe that's the uh programming funds that the federal program team use to provide additional professional development right so the okay we do have we do have an mou with the department that um
010provides us with funding or staffing that will assist the schools primarily for title one a lot of it because title one makes up the bulk of the funds that come to at least our charter schools on the federal side we do have uh staff that assist the schools with uh creating their title one plans as well as uh making sure that they meet the federal compliance requirements for this federal funding so that would primarily be the 1.6 we also do provide some um support in terms of providing professional development opportunities and just generalize uh sort of additional administrative support to the schools through our federal program staff if there's any specific duties or areas you wanted to go into senator kidani we could ask our deputy deputy director pj4 to maybe provide those details i'm
011not sure i quite understand are you saying the 1.6 million went back to the doe to provide services no actually the the doe allocates this funding to the commission office to hire federal program personnel to assist the schools in compliance monitoring of the use of those title funds so rather than the department essentially the department has a branch school transformation branch that also does that work so what they did was they emulated a portion of those funds to the commission office so that the commission could then hire people that could go out and then assist the schools with the use of the the title funds as well as other like uh csi sorry comprehensive school improvement fund so basically that was done through contracts through an moa through an moa with the department with the
012department of education okay but still then that 1.6 million is going back to the department of education it's to it was used to hire the employees who did the hiring you guys we did the department we did we did and you're hiring the department's people no we hire our own staff so there are employees that are responsible for providing the compliance monitoring functions that normally the department would they they have staff also that do that okay but it was not the department staff you hired your own yeah so yeah so did i mean i don't know how many individuals if this was a company that you hired whatever could we have those details absolutely remember there's any other questions okay thank you thank you so much okay we're gonna recess so that we can have
013a library set up recess okay calling the infra briefing back to order so now we hear from libraries who will present their biennium budget good morning good morning aloha it's so nice to see real people i was just saying to senator kadani um thank you both to the chairs and thank you for confirming we are they are really i love it um i'm stacey aldridge i'm the state librarian and with me i have my colleague and special assistant to the state library in mali mallory fujitani and the max headroom version i'm not even sure how many people know who max headroom is anymore um i thank you for the opportunity to share information about the hawaii state public library system and the budget before i begin though i just wanted to thank all the staff
014at the hawaii state public library system for their dedication and flexibility during the pandemic learning how new safety protocols shifting in different phases providing takeout services to over a hundred thousand people just since may and also doing new kinds of work they're basically warehouses right now who are taking in orders from folks besides being open just a little um and it's it's a very different kind of work so the increase of requests for materials has gone up 56 so they have done all of this despite their fear despite their concerns and our communities are better for the work that they've done i'd also like to thank haima for making sure we had ppe available for the safety of our staff what the pandemic has taught us now more than ever is that people need access
015they need access to our libraries when we closed our library doors in march we focused on our digital doors trying to make sure that we had enough resources available to people while they were at home the the data bears out that it was important to people we are one of 65 libraries in the united states that circulated 1 million e-books in 2020. we also had added streaming media services to include canopy and since um since july of just this year we've had 142 000 users and over 30 000 videos watched the most popular video is don't let the pigeon drive the bus by the way um and for ebooks harry potter sorcerer's stone me and white supremacy and crazy white asians were the uh crazy um yeah we're the top books rich asians our libraries
016have been and always are a central hub for digital equity something we have been focused on we provide access to technology to the internet and to wi-fi and wi-fi outside of our libraries in some of our communities they don't have any connectivity at all so the library is the only place knowing that this can this connectivity is so important we're in the process of improving our connectivity by leveraging federal e-rate dollars to ensure that we have a robust network to support all of our communities in addition we've purchased 16 chromebooks for every library to create access to the public for workforce development learning telehealth and hopefully providing opportunities for the public to participate in the legislative process in terms of terms of hearings in addition we continue to have a collection of books people still
017like physical books 3.2 million holdings that our communities are checking out to learn to be educated and to connect to our stories but it's not just a collection of books cds dvds digital resources but a collection of staff and resources that we've checked out to our fellow government agencies during the pandemic we've supported dlir by having staff um work with unemployment to be back up for unemployment we have 16 staff who continue to work um with the unemployment of office as specialists they've moved up the chain and now they're they are experts in doing unemployment and supporting the public we supplied 30 laptops to doh in three days to make sure that they had technology to to begin their contact tracing process and um in wahiawa we um we're supporting wic by having them in
018our meeting space right now because they lost their space there was a fire and then they lost their additional space and they needed a place to be that would be central to the community so we we're happy to support them and our branch members happy to support them being with us while they look for a new new place and we continue to create new partnerships we're part of a university of hawaii telehealth grant to provide hot spots to people who have high risk health issues and also to be a place where people could meet up with their doctors we're looking at workforce development support for the workforce development council by providing a place for digital literacy skills and there's many more places that are contacting us to try to ask how we can provide access
019for people who want to be connected in this new digital world time after time we step up and support our fellow agencies and our communities as the public library we are in the unique position of serving rural and urban communities and we need to be different things to different communities and we strive to be the hub that connects all of those communities our challenges are that we have 51 branches on six islands eighty percent of our budget is people we need to have people to keep them open the current budget um will cause some issues for us when we look at a 33 million dollar budget we don't just look at 33 million we also have to plan for the 5 to 10 restrictions on top of that 33 million this means less security for
020our libraries less staff less ability for us to care and maintain our buildings and that's just the simple contracts that we have to keep our ac flowing and other roofing we have concern over our ability to continue to leverage e-rate funds so that we can ensure that we have the increased capacity of internet in our communities and there's zero there's zero materials budget available staff are already down we've already been down 69 people we appreciate that the ledge left the positions but removed the money in the last session but now we're at 114 positions vacant with retirement at the end of this last year so with no students no subs we are at the point where um we cannot continue to keep our libraries open as often and as frequent as we like to to
021ensure equity of access we are also concerned because we've heard um that there are um there's there's uh attempt they're looking into special funds and whether or not to sweep special funds our special funds are our only collection money so if our special funds are taken we will have zero money for collections equitable access for all our communities is vital we must have the same hours a rural community should not suffer because we don't have the resources they need just as much as everybody else when one of our communities thought they were going to lose their library after all the staff retired at once some one of our users wrote please keep the library open it is the only community resource here in the local community for adults children and the elderly most of us
022in this country community do not have internet access can't afford books for our kids and to read and don't have reliable transportation to travel to the next available libraries that are more than 20 miles away we want to make sure we continue to be the poor man's university that people have access to resources and we want to make sure that there's equitable access to our communities so that everyone who's recovering from the pandemic and from all of the economic crisis have the resources they need to be successful we thank you for your support and we're happy to answer any questions you might have numerous questions sure how much is in your special funds right now uh we have 3.6 million and do you have you said which library there that all the staff retired same
023time uh lopperhoy so currently this is the one we had yes so currently we have the uh manager of the honokaa library he he is traveling and keeping the library open so the days are shorter but we still have access while we try to transition you had i believe some cip requests to look at know start the process of modernizing some of the library facilities is that requests for this year or did we take care of some of that although i think that was part of last year mallory the moderator hi mallory fidutanis um so yes every year we we request a health and safety lump sum amount that appropriation gives us the flexibility to handle a quite an extensive number of projects and repairs to our 52 buildings and uh if the we appreciate
024the legislature's continued support uh having this lump sum um funding available in each biennium year ensures that we will be able to finish projects that might have started in the prior biennium budget and it gives us some flexibility should you know issues arise as we open up buildings and find more problems with it thank you so stacy how many um librarians have tired retired over this past school year over the past fiscal year um well total staff we've had about 40 staff leave um since the beginning of this last fiscal year so a mixture and some haven't retired unfortunately some of our larger libraries we really do need leadership so hilo is our largest circulating branch does not have a manager right now um the person we had left in the middle of the night
025flew to chicago and called us and told us they weren't coming back during the pandemic so we have these larger libraries that really do need leadership and unfortunately it's all of our regional libraries and we haven't been able to fill those positions we have a request in for the hiring against the hiring fees so you haven't been able to fill the positions because of the freeze okay not not for lack of people that are applying for the jobs yeah i think we can find people i think it's just we yeah and yeah once the freeze gets released then you can recruit yeah and we we have put in a request to um get an exemption from the students do you have a list of all the libraries that have had to either close or reduce
026hours because of no personnel we do track the libraries right now we have several libraries that it's a pretty ongoing because they're small and they have fewer staff but we could get a list to you thank you that's internally okay um just to add to follow-up regarding the chairs um vacancy questions so um on the la for hoy hoy um vacancy um the vacancy is the manager's position actually it's all three positions it's our manager a library i think it's a library assistant and a janitor they all retired okay so there's nobody there then um no permanent position is there okay except for the person the transfer of of the hanukkah and that's quite a quite a distance so i can see where um you know the time for opening is limited um another thing
027too is that um for la for hoy hoy there's you know limitations of of um internet in between there's certain places of residence so you know they go to the library and you know as a source the libraries throughout our state i guess has been resourced for internet connections as well so um now your kailua kona's vacancy now that's a management position as well yes did the person retire yes okay so when you open up the libraries um this is the manager's need to be present yes we like to have a manager present we usually in these cases we've had to do temporary assignments which is difficult in our current budget to do but in those cases we try to do temporary assignments so the next librarian down usually if there's one or two of
028them the same they'll swap and they'll take turns being in charge but it has been our staff on oahu that has been directly managing because of the number of staff that we actually have on the big island okay um are we ensuring that transfers in the positions because you if you're a librarian two or three or whatever takes a position of the management they hopefully that the salaries have have met yeah the time spent most of these problems are going to be solved if they just let go of the freeze so once they have the freeze lifted then she can start to recruit and she won't have to play this kind of shelter magic game because we can keep asking her questions about how she's doing it but until the freeze is lifted she's still
029stuck yeah but the freeze can go on for a couple of years so you have to lobby the governor yeah yeah yeah exactly you don't like if because if she's only limited with what she has right so you can call b and f and see if they would try how long the freeze is going to be or whatever or ask them to lift it yeah okay i think that's all the questions for now thank you church any other questions thank you thank you very much thank you thank you for that non-painful process you