001Good afternoon everyone. Calling to order the committee on education. Today's Friday, January 23rd. It is 10:03 p.m. Conference room 229. uh and uh today I would like to also being this is our very first meeting of the year of the committee uh by itself uh introduce my members. Uh to my left is vice chair uh senator Kedani and to her left is senator Fukunaga. To my right is Senator Himoto and Senator Deort. So we're all here all five members of the committee. Uh, so today'sformational briefing is about accountability at the Hawaii Department of Education in light of two recent state auditor reports. One on classroom heat abatement and the other on driver's education program. On heat abatement, the legislature approved 100 million to cool 1,000 public classrooms in 2016. These investments were made because excessive
002heat directly affects student health, learning, and teacher retention. The auditor's report raises serious concerns about planning, execution, and whether those funds are translating into timely relief for students and educators. The driver's education audit similarly identifies gaps in access, oversight, and program delivery. Despite continued legislative funding for many students, especially in rural and undeserve underserved areas, driver education is essential and not optional. When programs fall short, students lose opportunities and public dollars are not used as intended. In both cases, the legislature did its part. We provided the funding. The audits call into question whether department has the management systems and accountability measures in place to deliver results consistent with the legislative intent. So, this briefing is not just about reviewing the audits. We expect clear answers on how much funding has been spent, what outcomes have
003been achieved, where delays occurred, and what corrective corrective actions are underway. So going forward, we expect a written correction corrective action plan, clear timelines, measurable benchmarks, and regular reporting to the legislature. When public funds are appropriated, especially at this scale, we do expect transparency, accountability, and results. And more importantly, we expect our students to benefit from this. And so for our first audit, we will be taking up audit 25-06, Department of Education and Department of Transportation Administrative Administration of Driver Education Programs. And uh calling on the auditor's office to give us an overview of the audits and then we will have um responders from the appropriate departments come up. >> Okay, Les. >> Good afternoon. Thank you for hosting this briefing. We like these briefings about our reports. My name is Les Condo. I'm the
004state auditor. Um we issued this report about uh driver education in April of last year, 2025. Uh we started this audit because of concurrent resolution that requested us to audit both the Department of Education and the Department of Transportation's driver education program. Specifically, it asked us to look at uh whether the Department of Transportation was uh Department of Education was providing driver education in its public schools, what what they were doing to address the backlog. Uh it also asks us to look more broadly at both programs, their procedures, their policies. I think maybe Senator Hashimoto was one of the introducers of this resolution. So, we appreciate the the the ask and we enjoy doing this report. um driver education in department of education and department of transportation those programs they are separate distinct programs they
005are not one program they each have their own separate distinct program and because of that sorry because of that it's really two separate audits so I'm going to talk first about department of education's driver education program and perhaps maybe we'll take a a second or two and talk to the department of education and I can come back and talk about the department of transportation's program that relates to driver education. Um, so first about the department of education, a little background about DOE and their and their depart and their driver education program. Driver education in department of education schools. It was created by the legislature in 1966, 60 years ago. And this is the language from the department of from that act uh act 42 in 1966. And it identified the legislature at that time, it
006identified this problem that these motor vehicle accidents were causing deaths and and injuries. And and just kind of a side note for director sniffing, according to the act that year, there wereund in 1965, the year before the act, 105 people died on our roads and 8,300 people were injured in motor vehicle accidents in 1965. >> Of course not. See, he wasn't even born. >> So, Senator, you were not one of the people driving on the roads. Some of us may have been. No, not really. >> Anyway, sorry. But um the >> I was not the the legislature directed the department to create a driver education and training program in its public high schools after hours on Saturdays and during summer recess. and and explained the purpose of the program. The legislature did site the grave
007problems created by high motor vehicle accident and death and death rates and it deemed this program to be a ma matter of urgency uh that the department provide this instruction to uh minors as a solution to protect and preserve health, safety and welfare of the public. Um, in 1999, the legislature made completion of a of a um formal driver education program mandatory to get a driver's license for drivers under the age of 18. So, this will age some of us because some of us, me being one, never took formal driver education class. 1999, that's when it was became a requirement. That started, bill passed in 1999, effective in 2001. In 2020, 2005, sorry, the legislature passed another law that required uh graduated gra uh driver licensing requirements. In other words, there were three steps to
008becoming a licensed driver in the state of Hawaii starting in 2005. But the law today, it still in essence mirrors the law that was enacted by the legislature in 1966. It's been now codified or recottified as section 302A413 which is on the screen right here. And it directs the department or actually I take that back. It says the department may authorize or establish a driver education program. It also says that the department for purposes of this section shall do certain things. Those things being that they must set priorities and prerequisites. They must establish and employ the necessary requirements for and employ the necessary instructors and they are going to issue or required to issue a certificate of completion of the course upon successful completion by the students. I got to note that this statute this
009is the only statute I take it back. There's another statute I'm going to show you in a second but this is the only statute really that defines this program that sets up the structure of this program. There's no other more detailed provisions in the law about how the Department of Education is supposed to deliver driver education. The department also may implement or adopt administrative rules specifically in 302A413 and it's a really important provision. I'm going to come back and talk about administrative rules in a little bit. The other provision in the statute, the only other provision that relates to driver education in the department of education schools is this provision. And this provision says that the department of education will hold classes, will certify their own instructors. They'll have courses to certify their own instructors.
010This is an important provision. I'm going to come back and talk about it later on when we talk about the Department of Transportation's administration of their program. But this is something that is important for the department of education and something that the department of education was not able to do when the department of transportation had taken over or when they were administering their program. So I'll talk about this in a second. So what did we find? We basically found in a nutshell that the department of education did not complete the program structure for for driver education in its schools. the the legislature created some broad general framework and it directed the department of education to complete that framework the structure of the program through administrative rules and the department did not. What we found instead
011is the department had offered driver education in 35 of its 68 high schools. The 68 high schools includes 21 public charter schools. And of the 35 schools where driver education was offered, three of them were in public charter schools. So in total, 35 out of 68 public high school offered driver education when we performed this audit and that would have probably been around the time frame being late 2024, early 2025. So what we also found is we found the department had not promagated rules as they were required by law to do those necessary details to complete the program. That's what's missing from this program. It had not established the prerequisites and priorities that the law directed them to do. It had not it had stopped providing training for its own instructors. And like I said
012earlier, that's at the direction I think of the Department of Transportation. We'll talk about that in a second. The department also didn't have any policies and procedures to guide how driver education was going to be administered in its schools. Uh instead of a program, it was treated just like any other afterchool extracurricular activity. But the legislature determined that it was the state policy that driver education was going to be a department program. there's a very big difference between that policy directive and just any other extracurricular activity after school like robotics or debate. So as a result what we found is we found that there was no uniform manner in which driver education was offered at department of education high schools. 35 schools offered instruction in essence the way that they want to 35 different ways.
013school principles, the school's driver education coordinators, they really had control over whether the school was going to offer driver education and then how they were going to offer it. And I mean by how that means how they were going to in essence advertise so that students or people who were under the age of 19 could apply. And I forgot something. The law requires driver education to be available to students, sorry, residents of the state of Hawaii who are age 15 and under the age of 19, regardless of whether they attend that particular high school, whether they attend private school, whether they've graduated already, or whether they've just dropped out from school, or maybe they're homeschooled. But the law requires driver education to be available equally to students or residents who are 15 and under 19
014between that age period. So what we found is the schools, the principles, the coordinators, they were deciding how they were going to advertise, my word, advertise that people could apply for driver education, how that application process worked, who got into the courses, how weight lists, if weight lists were maintained at all, what the purpose was, and how those were administered. All of that was decided by the schools and the principles and the driver education coordinators at the school. was not a centralized uniform consistent process as you'd expect with a program that the Department of Education was supposed to create. It's that lack of structure. It really created an opportunity which we'll talk about where it was every man for themselves kind of the wild wild west. And we see examples where there was favoritism where
015there was unfair treatment for people, students, residents, kids, teenagers who wanted to take driver education. That opportunity was not available to them because of this lack of structure, lack of policy, lack of what we would call controls where management could ensure that the program was operating the way that they intended and have some supervisory oversight to make sure that it was being operated the way that they intended. What we did see, so what we did is it was very difficult for us to locate driver education information on the school websites. How are is a student or resident supposed to understand what opportunities are available for them? So, we looked at many school websites and we found that there were different approaches to advertising driver education. Some didn't have any information about driver education. We did
016find a number of schools were using Google forms for the application. Handful of them, not all of them, but the forms were different. Some of them required certain information, others required other information. One form required students to provide their their permit number. They some some one school required them to indicate where they went to school and it only listed a handful of schools, the schools within that district or near that district. Um other schools required other information on their Google form document, their application. Uh it was different. It wasn't standardized. It wasn't one size or one way. It was done differently. But we also found that some schools like W Pahu as an example, many schools, they didn't use an electronic online system. They required paper forms. Here's an example, and it's from the W
017Pahu newsletter. You'd have to find the newsletter to be able to find this information. I'm not sure how widely disseminated that newsletter is, but it says that you need to pick up the packet in this room. stop by P36 to pick up an application. Here's another example. Roosevelt High School students must turn in a hard copy of their application. Another example from Khani. Here's the hard copy application that needs to be filled out and and turned in. This is a good example, too. This is Kyu High School online form, not online form, paper form that we could access through their website. The problem is when we looked at this and we found this in late 2024, uh, Kaiser High School, sorry, Kyua High School had stopped offering driver education in 2022. They had the application
018fill up, no information about the fact that driver education was no longer offered at the school. It was something that a student might be able to access, fill out, and then turn in, but they're not offering driver education at that school. We did see some schools, sorry. So, what we did find because of this lack of structure is often how you get in is who you know and we have a little text box here which is this slide. We little we did a little text box about a situation at Radford High School where some Punoho students were allowed to take driver education during the school day. So, that's a four credit course. a little different than the extracurricular afterchool courses that we primar primarily looked at here. We looked at this one and we highlight
019this one just because by DOE rule only students registered at the school are supposed to be allowed to take four credit courses during the school day at the school. These students initially the allegation was 10. We ended up finding that there were well we ended up talking about the department of education's investigation or department of transportation's investigation. They only identified two students. The students were puno students and there was some relationship to faculty uh at the school. The students had a relationship with faculty at Radford High School. So actually >> being able to take take the class during the school day. They're not it's school. How long? >> They're not supposed to. So that I think I'm sorry that was my point is that without any kind of structure any kind of oversight these kind
020of favoritism issues it certainly arose >> school >> don't know no our our scope is very limited some maybe the superintendent can answer that question just kidding uh anyway so this who you know thing we suspect it's probably more than just this incident instant because when we talked to other driver education coordinators, uh how do you select people for for uh the class? One person told us, well, I asked the the teammates of my football of my son's football team whether they're interested. Um so there's other ways that that people would be able to get enrolled in a driver education class that is really not fair. It's not transparent. It's not equal access to all. So that's the point that we're making here that with a program without that structure every school was doing it
021their own way and the result of that was inequity was unequal treatment was sometimes favoritism not the way a program really should be should be operated so one school castle they did have a weight list so online something that you fill out not every school maintained a weight list required by DOE rules or or policy to have a weight list at every school so without a weight list the department cannot understand the demand and that was I think one of the senator's concerns about what is the demand for driver education how can the department of education perhaps meet that demand kind of it as aside department of education charges $10 a student to enroll and participate in department of education driver education instruction if you're not able to take that instruction and you have to
022go to take driver education in a private in the private riv sector, the cost is about $550. >> So that $10, was that the initial amount in 60 years ago? >> I believe so, but I'm not 100% sure. I don't think the amount has changed. I'm not sure. Maybe maybe the department can answer that question better than I can about how long it's been $10, but the difference between the 10 and the 550, it's significant. Um, but without a weight list, it's very difficult to gauge demand. some weight list maintained by coordinators in their head, not on paper, not some kind of record that somebody could see, not some way that somebody else could determine whether or not they were going down the wait list if there's openings or maybe for future years. One coordinator
023told us that people sign up when they're freshman, but she takes the seniors. So, in other words, the freshman eventually may get into the class, but they're going to have to wait a few years before they're able to to enroll in the class. She felt that it was more appropriate, better for for her to service the people that were older and not necessarily the people that were younger. That's not a department policy. That's certainly not in the statute. Without that structure and the rules, she just made that she just made a decision about how she was going to select students to be part of the class. So I wanted to talk quickly about the significance of the program. I keep talking about program program. I know initially the department questioned what a program was. They
024didn't think they needed to establish a program because the language of the laws may establish and administer a program not mandatory. So the department suggested that that they did not have to create a program. They suggested and we do not say this that they don't have to have a program in every school. I agree with that. The law doesn't require them to have driver education in every school. and we did not suggest that. So I hope that got clear clarified or cleared up with the department. But there's a significance when the legislature decides as state policy that driver education is going to be a program. That's state policy. It's not an extracurricular activity, you know, like I mentioned drama, robotics where perhaps the principal or the department decides they want to offer this type of
025instruction. This is state policy. State policy requires consistency, requires structure. So the importance of this is that there needs to be a program. Um started in 1966, continued through uh section 302A 413 today. Um >> can you summarize? >> Surely >> what was the response from the department? >> Okay. And what's important is the rules. That's how you develop the structure. They got the authority to implement rules. They need to do that. Uh we have a little thing about rules here. You guys probably are familiar with rules. We try to educate the department and other readers of our of our report about what administrative rules are and why they're required by law. Required by law. So one one difference is perhaps it may be discretionary from the department's perspective, but once you do certain things
026and you affect the rights of people that use your program required by law to have administrative rules. These are recommendations. We included many recommendations in every report. I got to talk to you real quick because I looked real quick yesterday or the day before about what the Department of Education has done. They actually have a new website and this is one of the pages. They actually have other information on that website and one of the things that they've added hopefully across the board consistent through all their programs is they put prerequisites and and priorities for people to enroll in their in their classes at different schools. One of that is you got to live in the district. So, I was surprised. >> So, you didn't have this website when you were doing >> Oh, no.
027new. I hope it's in response to the audit. Uh we always want agencies to improve and and to do things better to address the problems that we we've identified. So I was surprised, happily surprised. Uh but at the end of the day, it's not a rule and they still need to put all this stuff in administrative rules. The significance of that is it cannot be changed at the whim of a new administrator or a new superintendent. There's a process. It's transparent. People get a chance to offer public testimony on those rules. So that's the significance of why it needs to be in a rule. This is where our report is in case anyone here maybe people that are watching are interested and uh well that's it. So anyway, sorry I rushed through the end but
028thank you for the opportunity to talk about our report. >> So members um you can ask questions of the auditor. You can bring up DOE have questions for the auditors. So less, you know, I think thanks for that great presentation. Um I I think good good overview. I think what you you told us heavily on the DOE side. I don't know if you're going to talk about the DOT side. >> We have the DOT side and a separate >> Okay, we're going to do that after. >> Yeah, that to both. What do you guys prefer? >> Maybe a quick be on the DOT side and then >> Okay. Sorry. Okay. The DOT program is like I mentioned earlier, it is a different separate distinct program from DOE. They have their own responsibilities uh different from
029what DOE's responsibilities are. DOE's uh responsibilities its program it started much more recently than DOE's program right it started in I think the year is 19 sorry 1999 is when the legislature established through statute uh the department of education department of transportation's program again it allowed them authorized them to to promagate administrative rules unlike DOE DOT has has adopted administrative rules they did it six years later, but they have administrative rules that provide structure to their program. Um, defines their responsibilities like it's supposed to do, defines the rights of people that use the program. So, DOE, sorry, DOT really has two responsibilities, just two. Certify the driver the curriculum that's going to be used to train people who are called master trainers or train the trainers. people that train the driver instructors, certify the curriculum
030for the driver education instructors that teach the students and certify the curriculum that will be taught to the students. That's one of their responsibilities. The other responsibility is to certify driver education instructors. Really, I would call it license the instructors. And I would suggest that second responsibility is somewhat ministerial. The statute or the rules provide what an instructor needs to provide amongst other things. driver abstract, copy of their driver's license, they can't have moving violations within the last year, no drug or alcohol related incidents relating to driving under the influence within the last 5 years, things like that. They need to show proof of that. Once they show proof of that, in my opinion, what the rule says is that the Department of Transportation shall shall issue the driver instructor the certificate or the license.
031So what we found is the department is doing things very differently. So so in a nutshell what we found is the department of transportation allowed a relatively low-level employee to run rampant you know without adequate supervision to run the program as she wanted to whether authorized by law or not. That's what we found in a nutshell. So the director did not certify any curriculum and the director by by the rules he is supposed to convene a a committee task force curriculum task force to review the curriculum and provide him recommendations. He eventually is supposed to certify that curriculum which is a fundamental part of the entire program. without that certified curriculum, hard to issue certificates of completion of curriculum or program without the curriculum being first certified. So anyway, I want to talk a little
032real quickly about what we found the highway safety specialist, the relatively low-level employee, what she did, how she expanded, greatly expanded her authority under the statute, DOT's authority. She approved curriculum. The director did not certify curriculum. He did not delegate that responsibility down to the highway safety specialists. She just took it on herself to decide what curriculum was appropriate. Right? She sub substituted her decision as to what she thought was appropriate. And we would question whether that's whether that's really appropriate. She certified master trainers. Master trainers are the train the trainer people. The law or the rules do not provide for certification of master trainers. Department of Transportation's sole responsibility with respect to master trainers is to certify the curriculum that they must pass successfully to be a master trainer. She certified it. She certified
033three people, three that had relationships or she had relationships to them. The first one that she certified was based upon this training course that they went to. She and the person who she eventually certified went to this training course. I think it's in Western Washington University. And the PowerPoint presentation really is is very enlightening. It says specifically this is not that course. This course is not to train or to to to help people become trainers of other instructors. Yet it was based on this course that she certified those instruct that person to be a master trainer. And the thing about certifying or limiting who would become a master trainer is because those people eventually would train people that wanted to be driver education instructors at a cost. Not free, not part of the Department of
034Transportation's program where they would provide this for free. They would be private citizens, private individuals who would be able to to charge people who wanted to become an instructor. And it's just not DOE instructors. It's also private driving school instructors. These requirements apply to tri private driving school instructors just as well as DOE driving driver education instructors. Uh, another comment and this is about the lack of any kind of oversight by the Department of Transportation as to what this person was doing. This person was using allowing the master trainers to use the Department of Transportation seal and the state of Hawaii seal on their on their information that they were pushing out advertising for for classes for other instructors to take. You can't use the state of Hawaii seal to represent that you're part of
035the state or part of the department. Frankly, it's illegal. But that was allowed. That was being done. and without any kind of oversight, push back, any comment by anybody. It likely was approved by the highway safety specialist, but that's my speculation. But that's based upon her relationship with the three master trainers that she had selected. Um, this is where we get back to the DOE law. The DOE is responsible for training their own master trainers, train the trainers. but by limiting the number of people or the people that she decided that she certified. Again, certification is not part of the requirements under the rule. But by her taking on that responsibility, she excluded the Department of Education instructors, 11 who had been previously training Department of Education instructors, she certified none of them to be
036master trainers. Zero. So that required the department of education to send people who wanted to be driver education instructors under the department of education to one of the three master trainers. So we saw in 2024, fiscal year 2024, four DOE employees went to private instruction with these master trainers at a cost of about $1,900 each, which the department paid, Department of Education paid. So she also interfered with how the department of education was providing driver education. She dictated to them how they would provide courses during the pandemic. She limited online or virtual courses, not online, virtual courses to 14 people. She never changed that once the pandemic stopped. She limited in-person instruction to 10 people. She told the Department of Education how to provide instruction. The Department of Transportation has no authority under the rules
037under the statute to dictate how that instruction is provided. In fact, all the Department of Transportation, its rules has is the instructor has these responsibilities. He or she is supposed to be able to decide how they provide instruction so that they can issue the certificate. She also, this may be out of order of my slides, but she also decided that if an instructor was sick and could not complete the course, another certified instructor could not then step in and substitute to complete the course. The students who were under the the instructor who could not finish the course for whatever reason, sick or otherwise, they had to start again from step one, square one. She decided that people who she decided when when instructors their certificates were not renewed timely even though the course that they
038taught was done when the certificate was in place that those students that certificate that they had received from the instructor it was invalid. So she made up some rules on her own that greatly affected the department of education's instruction and the students that they provided instruction to. She required instructors to attend different kinds of classes uh to maintain their their um their certificate or their license. Not required by rules, not thing things that are outside of the rules. And those classes were taught by one of the master trainers, one of the three people that she selected. And again, it's not free. It's they had to pay. She suspended driver education instructors in a way that was not fair, not equal, not across the board. It was very arbitrary. Some people she she suspended for different
039things. They were late in renewing their their certificate. They didn't do certain things. In any event, it was not a fair process. She processed driver education applications or certificates for renewal untimely. We have a number of examples where this is a letter A dil dated April 6 telling an instructor that their certificate for May 2020 through May 2021 was now approved a year earlier. Here's another letter, same date approving a renewal for another period of time the next year and a third letter same date for the future year. So clearly she was doing things very differently for different people. For other instructors, if you were late and you didn't renew on time, your certificate was suspended. Uh she directed county licensing departments not to honor student completion certificates. If a instructor had been had been
040um suspended even though the course had been completed by the student, the certificate was signed by the instructor while the instructor was still licensed. She directly contacted the DMVs, department of motor vehicles on the different counties and instructed the vehicle examiners not to accept the statement or the certificate of completion for those students. There were times when she suspended or refused to honor allow the DMVs to honor certificates where the certificate didn't include the students middle name. There were many instances where some of her decisions and her authority well outside of the legal authority but some of her decisions and authority very arbitrary very questionable. Um anyway so these are the things that we identified where she greatly exceeded her authority. We detailed it and a lot more in our report itself. uh we added
041um a lot of recommendations certify the con the curriculum develop some consistent clear documented policies and procedures so that people would know how to run this program and specifically just relating to licensing or certification of driver education instructors. So the department of educa department of transportation really has to understand what its roles and responsibilities are how limited they are. It's really akin to DCCA and and PVL and them licensing other professionals. You present the application, you give the required documents, you walk away with your license unless there's an issue that comes up later that you're investigated. Uh anyway, here's our file. Here's our report again and this is our website. Happy to answer any questions. I'm sorry that I did the speed dating speed. >> I have a question because I read the audit and
042what also troubled me is about this um DOT court monitored project paid members of a nonprofit volleyball club around $200,000 a year and a and half of questionable work. And this is this is the same person that you talked about that was controlling this whole program that also had this other program was doing also in conjunction with DOT. Is that correct? >> That's correct. Can you just give a brief >> that's on page 46 and 47 members if you have not th >> this review of the department of transportation's driver education program it was a very messy we weren't messy but understanding how things were were being done it was unbelievable you know we would get a lot of different responses from the same person uh at different times when we talked to her. So
043it was even under hard for us to understand what she was doing or what she was describing things moved. Um so what we ended up trying to understand is what other responsibilities did she have and this was one of them the court monitoring program. And as we learned about this, and in fact during one of the interviews, she jokingly or otherwise told somebody in my office that was talking to her at the end of the interview, well, if your daughter's interested, give me a call. So, it's another one of these things where it's I think it's who you knew. And I think a lot of these people that were involved in the court monitoring were people that had some affiliation with her volleyball club or volleyball more generally. Some of them are high school students.
044Can you explain the what this court monitoring is and how it's related to DOT? >> I think it's through a federal grant. I'm not sure. You'd have to ask DOT, but it's where the Department of Transportation and specifically this particular program is I'm not sure the value in court monitoring, but it relates to how courts are are sentencing or the f or the what they're doing with people who are um found to be have driven under the influence. I think it's alcohol uh and how courts are dealing with that. I don't know the and I think she told us the value she felt is the judge would see somebody sitting there and would not be lenient with the defendant. I'm not sure the judge even knew that this high school kid that's sitting there is
045somehow monitoring whatever sentence that he he imposed on somebody that had been, you know, convicted or or had fled to some drunk driving. >> Not a high school student. >> I don't know if there's any. it's supposed to be a student at all, but certainly it raised questions about not only that there are high school students and you know court does not operate on the weekends and after school hours. It's during the school day. We didn't go into that too far, Senator, because it was outside of the driver education program. It was just part of her other responsibilities that really raised some big flags about what's going on. and it tied to many of the affiliations that she has with the or had had or has with her volley her own volleyball club and just
046volleyball in the state more generally. So, one of the people or maybe all three of the people who were the people she designated to be the master trainers, there's some affiliation with her and maybe it's a volleyball affiliation. Uh, one of the people that she designated seems to have a personal relationship with her. Their address is the same address. They co-own a house together. She denied it being her her boyfriend or any other kind of personal relationship, but there's a lot of connection there. And certainly the fact that they co-own a residence together suggests that there's some monetary interest, so to speak, uh when she selects people for different roles and she forces or mandates that instructors go for different kinds of training through these these three designated master trainers. So this person is still
047with according to this she left the department >> department of transportation can provide more information about this but um she went as far as we know uh or we did talk to her when she had moved from the department of transportation to the department of human services. So we had some challenges in getting her to come back to talk to us but those got resolved through the director. But um as far as I understand she's still there. I don't have any information to suggest that she's no longer at DHS. Uh but certainly even the leaving the Department of Transportation and like I said the department can talk about that probably in more detail but I don't think I think she gave notice after her last day kind of thing. It was very odd. Uh she
048was a very challenging person to talk with and I'm sure the department was challenged in having her on staff and supervising her but I think the point is they didn't supervise her. Any other questions for the auditor? He'll still be around because he has another auditor. So, can why don't we start with DOT then? I know Ed might have to leave and uh is really not involved in the other next audits. So, come here and start um you want to comment if >> Yeah. So, so following up on the audit, I appreciate Les going coming through and his staff coming through to get us the information on this. We followed up with all of his recommendations. So, all of the recommendations are done. um we've completed all those pieces especially getting rid of the employee
049that was there >> is that you you agree that >> I don't know >> done all the recommendations >> I don't know we have not we have not done any assessment in a couple years three years or so we'll go back and we'll review the implementation of the audit recommendations but right now we don't know um and the only reason why we know a little about DOE is just because I was looking around to see if they had done anything to address some of the recommendations >> so perhaps you you to save some time you and um provide the committee with a list and what exactly that that you folks done to satisfy >> recommendations. >> Yes, definitely >> good members questions. Senator. >> So, so Ed, I guess I guess how do we prevent
050this from happening? Because I I think you know as the person that introduced the reso originally, you were aware of what what was going on and then the I think just the frustration with your department's response is why we had to do this reszo and I don't think it should have been taken to this far although we learned a lot, right? But I think how do we prevent this kind of thing from happening? Because the symptoms were all there, right? I think the DOA was so frustrated. I was so frustrated and so we had to do the reszo. So why did it have to get to that? Why didn't couldn't you guys be more proactive and really understand that there was a lack of oversight of this individual? Right. >> Since since we started that
051conversation, we took a lot of action on that employee, limiting her scope as much as possible and resetting the program. It was in such a disarray. It took a while to to reset the program. So it's not that nothing got done during that time frame. We had to reset everything that was that was being done during that time, especially the relationships with the DOE. So part of it was making sure that we reset with DOE, make sure that their their instructors were certified and made sure that we started resetting the master the master trainers throughout the state. Right now we don't have one. The whole goal for this year is to make sure we have at least two per island throughout the state. So part of the discussion is bringing in that class to Hawaii
052to make sure we get those master trainers going. But bottom line, we had an employee that wasn't being managed. We put management rails around that employee, then started resetting the whole program and everything she had she had worked on. We're taking action on that employee and then she left. But before she left, she was on sick leave for a long periods of time. That made it more challenging to take those corrective actions. >> So So to your question on on how we make sure this doesn't happen again, uh we've already reset what the requirements are for D for the driver's education program from the DOT's perspective. We have it in our we have reset the the priorities and reset up our our committee to ensure that those curricula for drivers education trainers is already set
053as well. >> So, so I guess what is the system now? So, who's overseeing you know I don't think you know you probably have someone under you overseeing but I guess it would be helpful for us to understand what is that hierarchy now. How is that changed? The program is run out of our highway safety office and our highway safety administrator and and her direct assign is directly involved in the program. The person that runs the program is two levels below, but they're directly involved throughout and they report up to the deputy on this to ensure that we we and our relationship with DOE reset how many or how we can get more people trained in the state. >> Right. >> So, who was who was her supervisor to begin with? So, under the the
054um highway safety office, we have a highway safety. We have a highway safe um >> safety officer. >> Yeah. An officer and below that was the was our driver's ed specialist. Yeah. >> Okay. So, that person is that person still in that >> the supervisor was brand new that we brought in to take care of this person. We brought in a person um a person from DO who's really good. When she came in, she helped us reset the program. >> Okay. now overseeing >> um before that was the person that left in in the interim. So that the position was open and and or being filled and unfilled throughout. There were people who were who were oscillating in that position >> that was supposed to supervise. Yes. >> But who was supervising that person? >>
055The highway safety um the highway safety administrator. >> And who was that? >> Uh it's Lee Nagano. >> And that's the person. >> She's still there. Yeah. >> Okay. Well, that's that's questionable. if she's still there, how come she didn't monitor this >> knowing that POS knowing that position was filtering and so forth, knowing that all this was going on? I mean, there needs to be accountability. And if that person is still still there, well, I I'm not sure what kind of performance they have otherwise. But that raises concern because if that can happen on their watch for that long period of time, certainly I don't know what else is falling through the cracks. Yeah, we we've reset the the the requirements and the expectations for this program with her outside of this program. She's
056she is a high producer. So now we we have rails around it. >> Understand how that how that happens when you have to set rails when that I'm sorry. I'm just >> sure. >> You know, I I would just like to um follow up with that as well. I think we should open that also to the scope of who this individual staff was. Um because these people have been a part of potentially seeing and maybe turning the other way uh while this obvious abuse of power was taking place. And so um I think that you were able to switch out leadership, but I'm talking about the staff. I'm and I'm not sure if this is in the auditor's report of people that were in the office at the time, but uh this concept of tolerating
057enabling or just like how I said looking the other way. I mean, this is what continues to create and breed abuse of power not only in this department but further than that. >> Yeah, I totally agree. So, you're asking for us to to send out the the person's name and everything? >> No, no, no. Sorry. So, so just to clarify my comment, not necessarily a question, but anybody that was within her department or her office at the time, these people have been trained on bad behavior and abuse of power. So, it's important that that gets another internal look as well because they've seen this bad behavior and I'm not sure how this individual had left the department. Maybe she resigned, maybe she retired. Um but I think that it's important to uh the department and
058the office to know that there are severe consequences when you abuse power. I mean the auditor had said it was illegal to use state logos. Um so I mean we can really take this thing deep if we need to but I think it's important for the office in general to just really see that there are harsh consequences with this. >> Totally agree >> thank you for that. I think uh maybe what would be helpful to you and to this body would be to ask the AG to intervene also and let her set up the investigation so that we do it properly. >> We've already we've already approached our AG with the information to do an investigation. >> When when was that? >> Um I can get the date for you and I can send it
059to the committee >> recent just recently. >> Um I want to say it was last year but I'll send you information. >> I I got to check I got to check on where it's at. Yeah, they'd like to get a report because I don't know that things should stay lang, you know, and they're talking about investigating who got $35,000 and this person have spent and possibly 200 something thousand and a lot of other infractions. I would think that those kinds of things would get investigated as well. Yeah. >> If not more so. >> I'll follow up on the dates and I'll get it to you. >> And it's not that that's important. And it's to make sure that um you know all of us your superintendent I mean superintendent as well as the department heads
060and and everybody under you and under them know that we have policies in place and we don't want all of us to be under suspicion of protecting someone and not knowing the truth of what really happened. >> Agreed. >> Thank you. >> And I think it's also important that there there are checks and balances. There seems to be no checks and balances in the situation. And what what worries me is that we don't know where else in the department until we get another audit that we might find some of this stuff going on. I mean, this program has been going on for 60 years, you know, and only now all of this stuff comes to light. If it wasn't for a resolution, we it might still be going on. I mean, you know, we don't
061know. And that's what concerns concerns me um as we as we go forward. So, we want to have faith u in our in in our state workers. We want to have confidence that they're doing their job and that you know, but yet we we hear these kinds of incidences and it makes for bad morale. I think overall >> totally agree. >> Yeah. >> And and overall this is my fault because since 2014 I was running highways and up to this point that's all under my purview. I'll I'll tell you quite frankly that program was very small on my on my focus. So bringing it to light um through to through Senator and and through the audit was a good thing to make sure that we can readress everything to move forward. Thank you for stepping
062up and taking your responsibility because lot so many times I hear excuses but at the end of the day it stops at you right or absolutely well the director you had you were just highways at the time but you also had somebody above you >> right >> so we took the action after after we started the conversations uh with senator and and and with after um the audit team find came in and we started having the conversations we didn't wait for the audit to be completed to start taking the actions Okay. Well, certainly appreciate you responding to the auditor's report as well. Um, any any other questions of DT and we move on? Okay. Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much. >> Okay. Just go pave our roads. Okay. >> Yes. >> Thank
063you. >> Okay. Superintendent, you're up. >> Hello, Chair Kim, Vice Chair Kani, members of the committee. Keith Aayashi, superintendent. Um, first off, I I I also want to thank um thank all of you for the opportunity to respond as well as the uh state auditor for providing um their hard work and their their uh their insights into our driver's education program. >> Let me just make a little comment right here. I just wanted to be known to the public as well. You know, I'm not just picking on DOE or picking on I have had a bill for years now that said that every audit that we pay for and every study that we pay for that should have a public hearing. The results should have a public hearing. And so I am doing exactly what
064I expect others to do, other chairs to do because so often we do these studies, we do these audits and it sit on the shelf or it comes by our desk. We're inundated with all kinds of reports and studies. we don't read it, but it should get heard and the public should know what's going on. So, I just wanted to preface that um that it's not just picking on a certain audit or because I would hear it all if it's up to me. Okay, go ahead. Thank you, >> Chair. Um so, again, thank you very much um the uh state auditor for uh bringing these recommendations to light for us. Out of the 10 recommendations that uh the department received, um eight have been implemented and are done. uh one the the first recommendation uh
065as far as the HR Hoya administrative rules we've started that process already um and we following the 12 to 18month process to get everything done we anticipate it being completed by January 2027 so that that process has already started um as well as recommendation number 10 which uh deals with reporting to the board of education uh we are um in the process of getting that agenda for the board so I think within the next uh two or three months we should be taking it to the board for uh to provide that the the um in response to the information in response to the auditor's recommendation. >> Um I don't believe any board member is here in person, but I do believe we might have one on Zoom. Um slow is he on Zoom? But my
066I guess my question is did the board at any time take up the audits, >> this audit or the next audit? uh for for this audit we are we are agendaizing it with the board. >> No, but I'm saying did the board before you agendaize it because they can take up whatever I mean this was out in the public already. So did the board ever bring this up in the meetings? >> Um no not not to my knowledge yet. >> Bring up the the heat. >> Um did we discuss the heat? >> Captain is here. >> Yeah. Did the board ever take this up? Their state board did have a brief discussion August >> August of for which >> shortly after >> for the driver's license. How about that? >> Both of them. And did
067they take any action or did anything? >> just a discussion. >> What? Yeah. >> Question. Yes. >> Uh sorry. Uh you had mentioned the DOE recommendations. You folks did eight out of the 10. >> Yes. >> Uh which were the ones the >> first and the last one. first int number one and number 10. >> Number 10. >> Oh, yeah. Kr for number one and border ed for number 10. >> Let me ask this while you're doing that. So, superintendent, I looked at your response and I was a little troubled by that um because according to the auditor, uh they originally asked for your response and you gave you didn't give a response. Then you met with the the committee, right? you um what >> I don't know >> sorry about that chair that would
068be on our end you may continue >> what it is is there something going on with our system >> uh we're good to go chair uh sorry about Okay. Okay. So going back so um that you provide you you could have provided written comments to the draft report but chose not to and u while you didn't participate according to the report and correct me if I'm wrong that the assistant superintendent office of curriculum instruction design and others uh including resource teacher who works at the high schools um met and they didn't bring up anything that you brought up in in your your letter that you subsequently uh came up with. Um so I'm just concerned that you know and then they called that they followed up and called and then they were told that um
069we do not intend to provide any written comments to the draft report and that was on a in August >> right >> was that August or April? >> April. >> Yeah. Yeah, you're correct. We did we did not provide any written responses to the audit. Um we we do take the audit very seriously and uh so we did take a look into the recommendations and >> No, but why didn't you guys take it seriously when it came out and provided any comments at the time? >> Oh, we were in the process of after we read the audit the draft report um we started already working on the responses to the recommendations. >> Okay. I'm sorry. I have a hard time. Yes, please. With every audit, we provide a draft to the audit and we ask
070to meet and talk about the draft >> before you publish it. >> That's correct. We don't we don't share with legislators or anyone else. So, we did that and we did meet with people from the department and we had a good conversation about concerns that they had about the report. We had a typo or some other mistake that we ended up correcting after as a result of that meeting. And then we waited for the response and when we didn't get it, we followed up to ask, are you going to provide us something in writing? Do you have written comments? And we were told no. And then the superintendent wrote to us three months later. >> Go to >> So we had a good discussion. >> Okay. So why was there no no response? You didn't
071think it was important. They didn't think it was >> uh No, definitely we take the auditor's report um as very important. Um um my understanding was that we we didn't write a response because we uh were going to address the recommendations in the audit. >> Okay. Now, I'm going to take that an issue because according to your letter that you followed up three months later, three months later, you wrote a you wrote a letter saying you don't agree with anything that you folks didn't have to do rules that you didn't have to do this. You you aled and said you didn't agree with that. So, how can you be working on his recommendations when you send a letter saying you disagree with everything? Not everything, but a great deal of what he said. >> Um,
072so I I am getting Yes, I I know. Yeah. Thank you. >> Who the letter? >> So, um, it it was under my signature. >> I know, but who wrote the letter? >> Obviously, whoever wrote the letter didn't read everything because you subsequently sent another letter saying, "We agree with you." Right. So you went from no response to and then a meeting and no response and then you went to a letter saying you know what we don't agree with this because we didn't have to do this it's not mandatory and then they wrote back and then you came back with another letter say okay we agree with you >> I I I take responsibility for that chair um this was actually the first audit that in in my years time that I started as a
073superintendent this is the first audit actually that I if I'm not correct that's the first one no it is and so I I take responsibility for any mixup. We do at the end of the day. Um I take responsibility. We've addressed the audit. Um it is very important. I think what Mr. K had brought up in terms of providing our students with opportunities. Uh we we we looked at where we are offering driver courses where we're not you know we need to to the best of our ability to expand a number of offerings for our students. Um we we have developed the web page. We're able to assess now uh what the need is. I think that was part of the audit that we weren't able to or we are able to now assess the
074need. We know where the um uh where there are weight lists at at the different schools. >> Wait, sorry, but you're not being direct in your answer. She's asking you why you didn't respond, why there wasn't an urgency. Now, I understand that this might have been your first audit, but anybody who's anybody knows that when the auditor is auditing, it's the most important thing, >> right? >> So, so why didn't you respond urgently? >> So, um I take responsibility for that. We did it. It's me. >> Well, you're going to take responsibility cuz you're the guy in the seat. So, whether you do or not, the finger is pointed to you. Why didn't you respond immediately? >> Well, oh, let me just add to that. The people that met, they've been around, they know audits,
075right? The people that work for you, they know audits. Part of them, part of them were in the meeting. So again, there were no response. So you cannot just say this is your first audit. And and not only that is that how can you write a letter that did saying that you didn't agree with any of it and then turned out that you did? Somebody were advising you to tell you that the auditor was wrong. And that worries me. to send out a letter that is clearly in error. I mean, I get I get upset with my staff if they send out stuff to me that is in error, you know, because it's my I'm the responsible one to make sure that whatever is going out at the end of the day that it's correct.
076>> Okay. And being superintendent of education with all you guys degrees, I cannot I I'm sorry. I am just flabbergasted that you could send out a letter that said that they were completely wrong and I think it says that in the letter. Um it it it blows my mind that you can say that they are completely what was the words that you used? I'll find it somewhere in here. But what was the words that they use in the letter? You said the gross gross error or anybody I have the letter best you have the letter. Okay. Can you give that to the chair please? >> Okay. to clarify statements of the state office of the auditor. The audit report raises as a pro however however is inaccurate. The legislature has never mandated department establish and
077administer a motor vehicle driver education and training program. Rather, it's been permissible. This has not changed since the law's inception. The audit report is correct that the legislature first addressed that. However, did not require department to establish a driver's education program. Merely states the department is hereby authorized. Legislature let's see to this day the program remains permissible. Not once during the nearly six decades after act 42 inception has the legislature made any such mandate. Department is unaware of why the legislature did not mandate the program. like the driver education program in general department's interpretation of the statutes that the department has authorized is not required to do that. So and it goes on and you cite things and then and then the next letter you sent out and you agree with them. I mean somebody
078did some research to say that we didn't mandate that. I mean I'd like to know who did that. That was in reference chair um to uh when state auditor did reference I believe it was uh 302A4 413 >> but the whole gist of this is that you're saying that you're not required to do rules you're not it's not mandated that right I mean that's the gist of your letter >> we we are u working on HR and in the process of that that'll be finished by January 27 27 2027 >> good questions Yes, please. >> Um I can appreciate, you know, on the neighbor islands, you know, the the fact that there's a shortage of uh available um opportunities. >> Do you have a number, I guess, between the auditor and department of education as
079to the level of unmet need both on Oahu and on the neighbor islands? >> We we do. Um I believe we do have that number, Senator. Um Jack Well, if that can be provided, >> we can provide it to >> to the committee chair. I think you know the goal would be to really see how we can assist the development and you know respond to whatever unmet need there is. But it's it's hard to know how how how much is needed and so that's kind of why I wanted to get a a ballpark just you know to get a sense of what it might take to address that unmet need. Thank you. manager, when we were looking at the audit because that was one of the the concurrent resolutions request without the weight list, there
080was no way for us to determine or understand, you know, what that demand was. So, I'm not sure what the department has implemented since then, but hopefully they've implemented some tool that would allow them to calculate the demand. One more comment before I before I get off my podium here. Um and unfortunately the DOT directors left but it allows driver education could be um can be obtained or completed through online courses which the director needs to certify those courses or that curriculum. Online is different than virtual when the teacher is right there in the room and you're watching on video. So the opportunity for students on neighbor islands for instance or other places to be able to complete driver education there are other opportunities. It's just right now we're talking in-person instruction and uh or
081or virtual and not online courses which the statute of the rules certainly allow. >> Let me ask you may I >> um Senator Fukunal uh thank you for that question. Um the website that we have we have stood up for a driver's education. Um so if students uh want to apply for a driver's ed program going into that website they will select the school that they want to apply to put the application in and so it's through that site now that we're able to calculate uh the need and and yeah right so thank you >> um superintendent what is the cost to deliver this driver's ed program >> I we don't have that we okay to bring Terosima. >> Good afternoon, chair and members of the committee. Terry Shiima. So um we receive from the
082insurance commission's fund 2,200 uh oh I mean 2,200,000 a year and of that um 1,500 is used for projected school programs like 52% of it is for instructor fees um administrator time for the coordinators um it's also for um maintenance things like uh vehicle gas maintenance repairs and equipment. Uh some you know you have >> the question is what does it cost the DOE to deliver the program? Not what's in your budget, not how much money you get. What is the cost to deliver this program so far? >> So currently it's about two 2.9 to 2.7 million a year. >> Okay. So the amount of money that's provided to you is enough to cover the delivery of this program. >> Yes. >> Okay. The delivery of the program such that it doesn't necessarily means you've
083been delivering it the way it should be delivered. Yes. >> So is there an an anticipated amount? What what is going to cost to be able to deliver the program the way it was intended >> to be a statewide program consistency across the board and so forth? What is that? I I think Senator, we we um what we'll do is we'll take a look at um how many students have signed up. We we can take a look at also expanding the program. So, uh we we need some time to do a further analysis then we can get that to the committee. >> Okay. My concern is that this program has been going on for 60 years and 60 years we have no data. We we I mean according to we don't know the weight list
084and these are stuff that you should know because the next question is who determined the costs? Who determines the cost that we're charging the participants? >> I think that cost has been set over time. I think there's something else in it that we need to reevaluate. >> So, you've never re-evaluated the cost? >> To my knowledge? No. >> Why not? >> So, it's determined by the board of education and it's been $10 and the fees that's collected goes back into the general fund. >> Yeah. It's middle school, right? $10. It was not 60 years ago. $10. Nothing stayed the same. 60 years ago what it is today. Not saying that we should be charging, you know, whatever it cost us to deliver the program, but the fact that one, you haven't even reviewed it to
085see. I mean, we review bus fairs, you you review school lunches, you review everything, but for some reason this tend I mean it seems like again what the auditor pointed out is that is it's not been taken seriously the program. I I I don't know how else to >> we'll do a re analysis, Senator. We'll do a reassessment of the charges. chair, how much how much how many students are we serving right now? >> Um I have that. Um so um when well we're still in this school year. So last school year uh we serviced 3,637 students. Well, they enrolled and of that 2,975 students pass um the course. Do you know how many were how many wanted to take the program and couldn't for whatever reason? >> I know. And that's where the audit
086was helpful. We are now um looking to track that. >> You guys never thought about tracking that before. >> Well, are we starting to track though? Because we must have the weight list now, right? >> Yes, we do. >> And we we don't have some preliminary data. >> Uh I do have some preliminary data. Um so and these could be duplicate counts because a student is able to um request more than one site to um be on the list. So for uh Kawaii um for Kawaii we have there and it's it fluctuates because when it's an ongoing list so as they um open up seats for upcoming courses they could be taken off but more people add you know constantly. So right now we have 37 for Kauaii, 95 for Maui, uh 200 for Hawaii
087Island, and Oahu is um fairly large. We have uh 633, but a large portion of this is because we have 171 at one of our large high schools and we're taking steps to um um partner with another instructor from another school to do the virtual part of the program. So, we're trying to bring that number down >> because part of it is it's the hard part. I'm sure you can do the in-classroom instruction fairly easily. It's it's it's behind the wheel instruction that I'm sure is a little bit more complicated. So, it's kind of like a bipation of how you got to figure this all out, right? >> Yes. So, by bringing by partnering with another school to do it virtually, then we could free up that other um instructor's time to do the behind
088the wheel. Just so go ahead. >> If I can redirect uh to page 21 or if we still want to stay on the data at the appropriate time. Okay. Page 21 please of the state auditor's um report. Uh it is stated in there that a deputy superintendent who is over um this program has mentioned to have limited understanding of the program. Uh, is that deputy intendant still with us or previous deputy superintendent? >> Hi, deputy superintendent. Um, so in your in the state auditor's report, it was mentioned that you had said you had limited understanding of the program. Uh, if you have limited understanding of the program, why are you overseeing it? >> Correct. I I don't directly oversee the program, but I do oversee the office and the um conversations in the um audit
089here or in the audit meetings were very helpful um to grow my understanding of the details of the program. >> Who directly oversees it? >> The assistant superintendent for the office of curriculum and instructional design. >> Who is that? >> The Terry Ushiima. >> Okay. But you're over her, right? Correct. Okay. So ultimately you oversee her who oversees the program. Okay. So it brings me to my next point where you had mentioned you had just learned that in the state auditors report that you had just learned this is a two department program. That seems pretty basic. Um did you not have understanding that this was DOE in collaboration with DOT? I did know that it was a I didn't know the details of the responsibilities of each program and that is something that the um
090auditor helped clarify in the audit report. There was confusion about um who was responsible for what under each department and I think that was a big finding of the auditor's report. >> You had also mentioned that you were lacking guidance. Um who were you expecting to give you guidance being that you are the overseer? No, we were um that was referring to guidance for the driver education program um which um was one of the recommendations in the report and so we now have clear curriculum and clear um protocols for implementation. Yeah. So this is very concerning um that a deputy superintendent that's supposed to be overseeing this program has limited understanding not even knowing the basics of this is a two department program. Uh so how are we expecting to move forward if you still
091have the same people that are in these position overseeing these programs that are not taking initiative and being proactive in getting to know these programs. Uh and how are we going to have confidence that these are the people that are going to be helping to promote our programs? uh make sure that there's all the checks and balances in these programs. I mean, where can we really start getting some accountability because the state auditor according to his statement is sick and tired of auditing the state the department of education. Okay. So, uh this is where we are finding oursel um not sick of it. I'm I'm not sick not sick of it. Frustrated. Frustrated. >> Um yes. Uh because because I this is where we've got to get to the root of really what this is.
092And time and time again the arrows are always pointing to leadership. It's always pointed to the deputy superintendent, the superintendent. So where can we start getting some hardcore accountability where people are just knowing the basics that this program is a two departmental program. I mean that sounds pretty basic. >> Thank you, Senator. Um ultimately the accountability rests with me. Uh I I am the one that's accountable for it. Um we are we have reviewed the audit. Um we've made the um addressed the recommendations. I think uh there is definitely additional more articulation going on within the within the section uh to be sure that everyone is well aware of what the requirements are, what the driver's education program is uh and our um our um the importance of us working together with the department of
093transportation who has been very helpful in helping to secure the necessary certifications for employees. So is it is it not uh uh does the deputy superintendent just not take a proactive approach in learning the programs that are under her purview? >> They they are very proactive in um >> well it seems like they're not because it says here that they have limited understanding of the program >> and I and I think >> so that doesn't sound proactive. It sounds very apathetic. they um I think in any situation um even even for me I I'll to admit uh you know I think coming into a department it's not an excuse uh but there are many programs in the department and you know it's a continuous learning even for me as a superintendent um I learn every
094day something new um it is my responsibility though saying that to u be able to oversee the department and the the breadth of what we have to do and the importance of it you know it is very every program is important as >> yeah these deputy positions although superintendent with all due respect this is not a learning on the job type of task >> you don't come in and then learn you learn you master it and then you come in and so maybe these deputy superintendent are just not equipped for the job >> okay if if I may senator um uh the selection of the deputy superintendent um go through a very rigorous selection and the ultimate decision is is line on who uh seats in that very important seat. Uh the deputy superintendent that
095we have or we're fortunate to have working in the department right now um are very adept uh very knowledgeable in their area. Uh you know and and we'll continue to all of us to work together um to ensure that we're delivering quality programs for our students. >> Well, maybe they're too in-depth. They don't know the real ground level things. um we're finding that they're so educated maybe they're too educated to help us with very basic things that our school needs. So I'll say that. Thank you. Chair >> follow up. Is it always going to take an audit before folks understand what your responsibilities and roles are going to be? Is that is it always going to take an >> Senator? No. >> That's what appears because you know what? Yeah. You can say now that
096the audit made you aware, but the the reszo was introduced back in 2022. When the a when the reszo was introduced already, you should have been looking into your program. If if you had no idea, which you should have an idea, that's why you and you have hundreds of people working for you. You have a whole slew of administrative people working for you. You know, I have during the year I have two people and during session I have two. I have four people. Four people. And I can I know more about some of your programs than you do. How is that possible? Right? I'm just saying. How is that possible? And you're asking for more people and money for more more leadership people. That worries me. I'm sorry. It it does. It worries me because
097in 2022 when this was introduced, I don't know how come you folks didn't say what's going on with our driver's license. You got to wait for an audit to come out to know what your responsibilities are to understand the program. >> We I mean 60 years this program on the books. even coming to the legislature, you know, and yet I don't know. I don't understand. I I'm sorry. I I just don't understand how that's can slip you folks and not understand what the I mean, it's not like this is a a tiny little program, you know, in some school in the rural area. No, it's not. We we'll be definitely more vig vigilant in >> Is there a reason why in 2022 when the audit when the resolution was introduced that you folks didn't then
098say and be more aware so by the time the audit came in you could answer his questions. >> We'll be we'll be much more aware Senator of uh different resolutions that come in from the legislature. >> No, it's not >> and continue to take them seriously. folks are supposed to know your programs and if you don't when we bring this stuff up and then we have to go to a resolution but even then then that should even light the fire at that point right I mean it's not like you know I mean come on this is your program >> yes we we have started taking some steps um as we work with the auditor's office even before the final report but I understand yes we >> provide support back to him you guys didn't even
099respond >> even after your meeting even when you didn't know how to you didn't understand what your limited understanding. You guys didn't even bother to write a report or or give a response. It's like thumbing your nose. Well, it definitely wasn't that. And and and we'll do better to um in the future to be more um be more responsive. >> Okay. Follow up. >> Yeah. No, I I think I think at the end of the day, this this was a good, you know, audit. I think it gave a lot of information and I understand as the person that was pushing this you guys were in a really tough position that you know the DOT was kind of micromanaging the DOE and so I think at least we have a breakthrough now and hopefully they're not
100micromanaging the department so I think there was some really good takeaways from this at the end of the day all we want are are you know to increase drivers education to increase enrollment I I think I think there was probably a lot of helpful things I think when we introduced this audit we didn't know that there was structural issues that you really needed to work on and so I at least now, you know, and and we can we can move forward. So hopefully you can get those last two recommendations completed. Yes. >> Um and but but I think I have to say we we are in a far better place than we were back in 2022. We're not quite there, but I think we're in a much better place. So thank you, chair. >> Thank
101you. >> We are going to move to the next audit, the heat abatement audit. And let me just say part of my frustration um superintendent is that we're going to see a thread running through everything today with this next next audit. We're going to see a thread as to the DOE and the failures of of the information. And when we get to Medicaid, the same thing we're going to see that. So that's why it's just building. So when you say we're going to do better, it just worries me because it's the theme that's running through this whole thing. I think it's >> Senator, may I ask a comment? Yes. About what you guys were talking about? I think it's important and and necessary that any state department, any program be accountable for state resources and
102state money. Absolutely. By the way, I never said I was tired of the deal. >> I was being dramatic, >> but I think it's very important and our job is to provide recommendations. Our suggestions is how to make them accountable, how to address the issues that we identified, meaningful recommendations. uh and the department is I guess trying to address those recommendations. I got to say both both for transportation and education the key is they need to have policies and procedures documented processes so that the people who are on the ground doing the work they know how management expects them to do that task to do that work we would call them controls in my office senator called them checks and balances you need that they need to have document processes >> I'm going to interrupt
103right now because you know what as instructors as educators of our students they have to do that in the classroom they have to do that with the students, they know that already. So, I don't know why it's falling apart at the upper level when on the lower level, you got to have all of these these reports. You have to have all these policies in place, right? Or the parents are going to be up in arms or you cannot they cannot get go to college. You don't have the SAT scores if you don't have those things in place. So, it's falling apart there. So, I'm preaching to the choir. You're here because we I important. So, >> but for this it would allow the assistant superintendent, deputy superintendent to make sure that things are being done
104the way that they expect it to be done and they would have a process to be able to evaluate that and we would when we come back for an audit to be able to actually evaluate that process, that program, whatever they have in place. But thank you. >> More important than that, I think the individuals in these positions should also be evaluated. And that's another thing with with board of education. Are you folks evaluating that? you know, I know you folks made some salary adjustments and stuff. Where's the evaluation and where is your evaluation of the people under you delivering the programs? So, that's important as well. So, okay. Bless. This is on report number 25-09. Auditor, an update on the Department of Education's heat abatement efforts. So for those of you out there, heat
105abatement, air conditioning of our schools. Okay. >> Can I share my screen again? Do I just not sure what the message I have on this? It do you we need help on this? Okay. I think it's getting >> Hi. Yes. Um, so we're just going to do the same exact thing as earlier, Mr. Condo. >> Okay. >> Through Zoom. >> Did it not work? >> Is it working? Nope. Hold on. Okay. Mr. condo Ricky is going to go down to help you out with that. >> Why don't you start anyway? >> Okay, I'll start anyway. I don't need the slides. Um my presentation is way shorter, much shorter. And that's because so what we did is is we did a report uh a report about the uh cool classrooms initiative and as well as at
106the time what was the current air conditioning initiative which was school directed AC. We looked at both of those programs. Neither of those programs are in existence today. The initiative has completed or finished and the school-directed AC program, it's my understanding, has been revised and is no longer the program that schools can use to air condition their classrooms. So this report our our my discussion is much shorter uh just because those are things of the past. um act 47 in so in in the governor governor Eay's state of the state address in early 2016 he announced that he was going to cool a thousand classrooms by the end of the year and in 2016 the legislature appropriated $und00 million to support that effort. So what we intended is we intended because we had capacity just
107to do a relatively quick and dirty accounting of that money. How did the department spend the hund00 million? Was there any left? How many classrooms were cooled? How successful was this initiative from the department's perspective? That's what we intended to do. We had done a similar accounting in I think it's 2017 or 2018 about the cost of the Hawaii Super Ferry to the state of Hawaii. And very interesting, at least to me, we discovered and reported that until the year 2028, the state continues to pay millions of dollars on bonds on on geo bonds that the state had issued to support the Hawaii Super Ferry, specifically for the barges and the ramps that they the state had built in the harbors. So, we wanted to do a very similar kind of report, just a report,
108not an audit, to account for how the department spent 100 million. Uh, we expected it was going to be easy. We expected the department was just going to be able to provide us accounting records or some kind of spreadsheet that would show where the money went from this specific appropriation. It wasn't part of the department's general general appropriation operating budget. It was specific for air conditioning classrooms. What we found is we couldn't do that. The department couldn't provide us with the accounting of the $und00 million. they couldn't tell us where that money went and whether it was 100 million or they used some money from prior years that made it more than a h 100red million. Uh we were able we were able to get a number of different lists from the department about what
109classrooms what schools were were airond conditioned but those lists were not consistent. They were different they had different classrooms different number of classrooms different schools as well as different amounts. So what we thought we were going to do to to try to determine how much was spent, we decided we wanted to go look at um at the contracts themselves, the contracts the department had executed to to facilitate this initiative to put AC in classrooms. So we went actually those documents are maintained in paper form. So we went actually to their office in Kyuki so that we could look at the boxes the contract boxes and unfortunately not all of the contract boxes were there. They were missing a number of contract boxes information in the boxes themselves were missing. For instance, we hoped to find
110final closeout information to see whether or not contracts had been amended, whether there had been any change orders that would have added to the cost of the project. We could see the contracts, but we couldn't see any other documents in those in those boxes. But at the end of the day, sorry, now I have a screen. At the end of the day, wrong one. Anyway, um, it oh well. Anyway, at the end of the day, what we were able to calculate was was that uh and and by the way, we put a disclaimer in the report at the very beginning, full page, which we never do about our the lack of confidence that we have in the actual data and we explained how we ended up calculating. This was an audit, we probably wouldn't have
111been able to complete it. This was just a report. So, we put a big disclaimer which uh is right at the beginning of the report to explain how difficult it was for us to get information about the cool classrooms initiative. Anyway, we we ended up uh determining that for the 100 million or maybe a little more than 100 million about 25 thou 25 million of that was spent on consultants, design consultants. We also determined that most of the AC that was installed was solar solar AC. In other words, it was not connected to the to the grid. was a separate um contained system. Solar panels directly to an inverter directly to a a split system AC unit. They were not window units. Most of them were were uh split system units that were installed. On
112average, including the design cost on average was about $120,000 per classroom that was cooled. So, we ended up determining based upon information that we had gathered. And we have a nice graphic in our report with the different schools that we believed were airond conditioned under the initiative with the the amounts of the design consulting costs as well as the construction costs. And we calculated that they the department had air conditioned 838 classrooms over the state at a cost of about $105 million. That's as best as we could determine and a lot of that from our review of contract files of those boxes that I described as well as other information. We we determined also that there was a lot of maybe it was because it was rushed but there was a lot of design I
113want to call them errors where um contracts were entered into by the department to air condition classrooms that were already air conditioned that air conditioning was installed or PV panels were installed on um and most of these were installed in in um temporary what I want to call them portable units portable classrooms some of these are very old 60 years old or maybe even long older. Um and the reason for that it was much quicker for the department to install in those in those classrooms because the classroom the structure of the classroom it's a contained unit wooden structure generally so they could easily more easily install the PV panels on the top and install the air conditioning the ventilation in those units not the most most um insulated type of classrooms a lot of leakage
114so at the end of the day we we identified where where these uh panels were installed um under big banyan trees. Nobody said anything. We talked to the people at Castle High School and they questioned why the contractor went ahead and installed them. We question we talked to other principles at other schools. They questioned why AC was installed in certain classrooms when other classrooms really needed AC, not the ones that they were installed in. Uh they were installed at Moapu and I saw an article recently the new Moapu Elementary School has been has been built and dedicated. they were installed at Moapu Elementary even though even knowing the school was was destined to be destroyed and rebuilt. Um, so there was a lot of errors in how the department implemented this mandate or this initiative,
115Governor Eay's initiative uh to get to a thousand classrooms by the end of the the calendar year. Uh, at the end of the day, our challenge was we couldn't see any records. There was many people in the department that were involved in the initiative who are no longer there. One person who was the primary person, he retired and he passed away. So in addition to the fact that there were no records for us to review to understand what the department did, how the department spent the money, there was no one for us to talk to. And I think that's really the big takeaway from this is the department needs to keep records. The department needs to do better recordkeeping. They need to develop these procedures. we don't have any understanding is the criteria as to
116how classrooms were selected, how schools were selected for installation of AC units. So I think that's the big takeaway for the committee is the department needs to improve its recordkeeping. It needs, like I said earlier with respect to driver education, they need to develop documented processes, these controls, these checks and balances so that people that are doing the work that that they they they can do it to make sure they achieve the mission or the purpose of of the department or whatever that program is that their supervisors up to the superintendent. They can make sure the work is being done in a way that they expect it to be done to achieve that purpose or that mission. And then the supervisor can make sure by looking at what they're doing, documentation of that process to
117make sure the person who's responsible is actually doing it the way that they expect it to do. And of course, when we come in to audit, we can actually audit that process. We can see the records. We can see the documented processes. So to me, that's that's what the department needs to do. 100 million, it's passed. It's gone. But without documentation, we don't know how it was spent. The department needs to be more accountable. I know that we're well at all this. It's okay. It's okay. Okay. And then real quick with cool school directed AC. So the department took a huge pivot before the Okay. The um Okay, you got to put full screen or do that slide. It's fine. Turn slide. Thank you. Thank you. So this is the graphic I was talking about
118that that we have in our report. It's nice looking graphic. It tells you a lot of the information per school. uh and island about uh where AC was installed, the cost of design as well as the cost of construction for those schools. Picture of Castle High School where they installed the um the PV panels under this big banyan tree. So the the production from those panels must be very limited just because it's under shade for most of the day. moving to uh school directed AC, the department took a big pivot in moving from um the cool classrooms initiative or just generally how they were air conditioning classrooms under CIP money where it was department controlled. The department controlled the construction. They executed contracts to install AC. The big pivot was they went to this school
119directed AC where they put the responsibility to air condition classrooms on the schools themselves. individual schools now had the ability under this different program to air condition their own classrooms. And it was generated or maybe it came about because there were some reports about parents and student uh organizations dropping off air conditioners at schools because students were complaining about how hot their classrooms were. So, it was an opportunity for for schools to be able to to uh install those window units. And they were window units, not they were people weren't like be dropping off the split systems. it was window units and it was an opportunity for them to be able to install those AC without having it be a departmentwide effort. So what happened is the department uh issued or the the assistant superintendent
120deputy superintendent at that time sorry the assistant superintendent at the time he issued this memo which created this program very little detail to the program it's just this one memo that provides some information about this new program and the concept of this program was that in exchange for um the so what the department really wanted to do which is kind An interesting side story, the department doesn't have or at least when we spoke to them when we started this audit, they didn't have an accurate inventory of classrooms that had AC, which seems really odd to me that these are your buildings, Department of Education. You can't tell me which classrooms, which schools, and which classrooms in those schools have AC. No, we don't know. And I was told or we were told by the deputy
121superintendent at that time that and I don't remember his title but somebody else that was also very involved in in this area. Um that the principles school principles kind of dictated their own it was kind of like their own kingdom. If they asked uh they didn't if the department asked the principal sometimes wouldn't respond. And the example that had been raised to us is the department wanted to install PV panels above a parking lot at a school. The department owns the school. The department pays the energy bill, but the principal said no. The principal said no. And we see that all over the place. We see that in some of the DOE um offices where they have the PV panels, which is great. It provides shade, but it generates energy. But we were told in
122that school, the principal said no. So that was the big question was what's the inventory? So this program was intended to help the deter to help the department gain that in inventory understand what classrooms at what schools had AC. So in exchange for that what the department was offering these schools that went through this school directed AC program is they were offering the department a free electrical assessment may cost, we were told, up to $10,000. It was really to assess whether or not the school or specifically the buildings where they wanted to install AC, whether the electrical system could handle that additional electrical load. If it can't, there could be serious safety issues, short circuits, maybe even fires, we were told. But that was the the carrot. It was to incentivize schools to participate in
123this program, report their inventory of AC in exchange for this service that the department was going to pay for for the electrical assessment at the schools. Uh we had trouble understanding what schools participated in this. the website that we were given. I'm sorry, I'm just talking about the without the PowerPoint at this point, but we were struggling to to understand which schools had participated, what the inventory was, how recently that inventory had been updated. Uh we were given first a dead website and then later on a live website, but even that website, it didn't seem like every school was inputting the the information, the active inventory, the current inventory, and they were inputting it different ways. Again, it gets back to my point about you need to have some control. You need to have some
124procedure, some process so everyone does it the same way so that you can understand that this is this is you know this school and this school we can compare the apples to the apples and not an apple to the orange. But anyway, so my long thing here is again this program got scrapped. We were told at the end of our audit that this program was no longer being no longer a current program and the program was being revised to something else where the schools now would lose some of the control over their AC where contractors were now going to be the contracts with contractors to install any kind of AC units or any kind of other work relating to these AC units were now going to be th those contracts were going to be procured
125and entered into by the department. So, it took some of the control or maybe a lot of the control out of the school and put it back into the department to to deal with contracts to to deal to to relating to ACing classrooms. I'm not saying that's a bad thing given that perhaps that challenge of of procuring of procuring um contractors that process it's not easy and perhaps maybe the expertise is not at the school level. I'm not sure exactly how things were done at the school level to install window units, but the window units that were installed, by the way, the cost per unit was maybe about $5,000. We reported, and I'm sorry, I don't have the slide right here right now, but it was about $5,000 per unit in contrast or in comparison
126to the split systems that were done under the school directed, sorry, under the cool classrooms initiative that pencled out to about 120,000 per classroom. So there's a significant difference in in the um in the cost to air conditioning classrooms under the school initiative class school classrooms initiative and the school directed AC AC program. I'm sorry that's all I really wanted to talk about. I just think that we didn't offer recommendations. These are it was just a report but uh at the end of the day the department is really not accountable for that money and they need to be better account more for that that money. 100 million is a lot of money. Where it went, how it was spent, uh the process they went through to ensure that they were spending it reasonably and responsibly.
127That needs to be documented. And that was my point initially about the cool classrooms initiative. No documentation. They need to document better. >> I have a follow-up question. Page 23, you state from the start, many of the solar AC systems failed or didn't work properly, resulting in a salvage effort with an estimated cost between 3.3 to$6 million. The troubleshooting team dispatched by DOE would later discover that from the start, many of the solar AC systems failed or didn't work properly. They noted that contractor's final inspections found obvious installation issues such as missing insulation, exposed wires, and other issues, but were not able to identify many of the hidden PV and battery problems. The troubleshooting team also found air conditioners that were damaged by geckos or rodents which contractors and contract contract managers considered act of
128god damages which they were not obligated to repair. They also found fundamental issues that could have been addressed during the design and planning stage. So all of this >> I I think that um the department's challenge and partly I'm speculating I think they also told us some of this that uh they there was not one contractor or one manufacturer that could provide all of the installation of AC. So they distributed the work through many different contractors using many different types of equipment. And because of that lack of any kind of standardization, so to speak, there was some challenges with who was installing, how it was installed, and the equipment that was installed. The other big challenge is many of the classrooms weren't cool. They went the the parameters for the AC, it was something like
12975 to 78° or something like that. And teachers may not have been aware of that. and they're trying to run the AC to cool their classrooms well below that that that parameter of 75 or 78 degrees or whatever it was. Uh and to your point, Senator, I know you called it the AC thing, but the response was by one of the consultants is this is heat abatement. It's not AC. So, it's to reduce the heat in the classrooms, >> you know. And then we also report in our report about challenges where the department decided they were going to seal jealousy windows in the portable classrooms so that they could keep the cool air inside better. But you know that also created a very hot environment when the AC wasn't on like in the evenings or
130after school. So it became a very hot classroom. We also have an MK Think study commissioned or paid for by the Department of Education where they comment about the air quality when you close up these these uh portable classrooms where the carbon monoxide level or carbon dioxide level, excuse me, gets to the point where it could impair learning, impair cognitive thinking. So there are a lot of challenges in what the department did and I would suggest it's because there was a rush a rush to spend $100 million within this very short amount of time and maybe even more than hund00 million. >> Thank you. >> So I think at the end of the day we have very few of these units that continue to work in the way that you'd expect them to work. Many
131of them are dying. You know the warranties or the lifespan of not only units but also the PV panels but maybe more importantly the batteries that were installed. they're reaching the end of that lifespan life cycle or lifespan and I think some now are getting plugged into the wall into the grid and you know you I don't know we report about it too but there's also another law that the legislature enacted that same year that requires the department to be net energy zero by a certain time very quick very very soon if not now um very challenging when you're sticking in AC into the wall without taking out a bunch of other kind of electrical loads that that likely are present isn't in classrooms. >> Anyway, thank you. >> So, so the numbers you quote
132in the audit, those are best guesstimates then because you couldn't get >> Yes. >> on concrete data. So, that 108 whatever that's >> 103 that's that's the best that you could come up with >> based upon looking at files and things. There's other numbers that we that got we report some of them. They get tossed out but we're not confident. >> Got it. Got it. Thank you. So chair um before >> uh with the new website um it looks like it requires a login. How did you get the login? >> Oh well we requested and they gave us a login. It was first to a website that was not active and then they gave us another login to the active site. But I'm not sure we haven't logged in since we issued the report. So
133I'm not sure it's still the active site. >> Okay. And then at at the time when you did log in, it was outdated data information. >> It's inconsistent data. Some schools seem to be current and other schools seem not to be current in terms of their inventory. And I think we know that because we feel like there's some schools that got sent or or AC through cool classrooms initiative and we don't see those classrooms identified in the website that you're referring to senator where the schools are required or supposed to report their inventory. So according to your report uh you can't quantify or prioritize where these AC's were put in what districts in what schools. >> I think we did a good job. I think we did our best and that's that chart um in
134our report to identify you know where where the where the department put the air conditioning. So we identify, you know, by by island schools on each island where we saw contracts relating to AC under what we think is the initiative funding. Is that what you're asking me, Senator? Yes, >> that is. Thank you, >> Chair. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Superintendent. >> Granted, you were not here in 2016. Uh but you know, I'm sure there's people on your staff that were here. Um and I understand that um you know you took over in 2022 so but still this issue um remains as a concern. I am pleased that you did respond who did send a response in um to this audit and you didn't address many of the issues. However, uh the main one
135of the documents and the contracts and the number of schools that have air conditioning, but you did say that the department had already initiated proactive measures to enhance procedures for the school directed air conditioning. Oh, Gren, I wish I would want to know what was initiated um prior to them concluding their audit, which is what you stated in your honor. >> Thank you, Senator. Um joining me, Deputy Superintendent of Operations, Jesse Suki. Um Senator for for um to your question one of the proactive measures was uh the department the state office did um from the uh school initiated ACS um in institute a process where now schools would work with the office of facilities and operations um to request uh uh AC's whether they're going to put ACs or not and I think that was
136that was in response to uh department facilities and operations being able to really assess and get a better handle on where our AC's are um and uh what what else needed to be done to get based on analysis. But deputy Suki if you want to add anything else. >> Well, let me ask this first. Is there still a school directed AC program? >> There's a it's been modified. >> It's been Yes. And what it's called is it called that? >> It's still the same thing though. Yes. >> And how long has you have this modified program? >> Is it two years? The memo memo went out in January 2025 to all complex superintendent and principles and then the follow-up guidance was um sent around uh is dated November 5th. >> 2025. >> Yeah. >> So
137one year >> November >> January no what one you said in January 2005 you sent the memoir. Oh, January 29, 2025, there were a memo about the procedural changes and talking about what the SDAC new program would be and then the guidance after that that really went into detail about what needs to be done and the process. Yeah, it's November. >> So, very very recent. >> Um, so you never provided the list of schools that participate in the school AC program. According to the auditor, he never got that list. So, so are you attempting to get that list or are you >> We have a list. We have a list. >> Was that list given to the auditor? >> I I don't think we did we send it over. We didn't send it over, but
138if >> when did you when did you finally compile this list? >> I I I started five months ago, but I asked for it and we we have a list. U it shows all the u it shows where the money was spent. It shows um what schools it was at. Um all of the money that was under act the the um hund00 million act 47. Um it's it's accounted for in in our um fiscal management system. So we know where the money was spent and what for and we have a list of schools. >> So you came on just about the time that this letter was written for the audit. >> September. Yeah. >> Yeah. So the the letter is dated August 1st. Um how many how many architects remind me that you folks have
139in your me facility? We talked about this in the >> engineer. Yes, we talked about that right in the >> uh 24 positions share architects and engineers. Um >> okay, because we asked this question in field >> we asked this this question in resumes. >> Yes, sorry I I took notes after you asked. So 34 architects and engineer A&E 24 engineers 10 are architects. >> Okay. Well, thank you for taking notes and and looking at because I'm concerned on page nine and I've said this before. Yeah, I sound like a broken record. I'm concerned about the number of consultants we hire, the number of of um apps we rely on or department relies on. And on this page there were seven design consultants for the 25.3 million which I think the auditor did mention. And
140under this Miller Kelly architects architects we have architects but we had to hire these architects and they're not the only one. We also hired Pacific architects. Um and then it's 5.3 million but on the bottom it says DOE would end up shelving much of MK tank multi-prong conceptual framework for cooling classrooms as bids for installation expensive solar AC system classroom consumed its 100 million budget 25 million I mean 5.3 million just down and yet we have all these architects and then why why do we have architects if we're going to hire all It was a hundred million and this this is just me like reviewing all of the materials and trying to figure out the same question. Uh a hundred million in a very short period of time. >> That's what the question is. >>
141But the contractors help deploy the money because it's a lot to do in a short period of time. I so >> still do that to to this day that we brought that up in WHAM. You still hire architects. We have all the contracts that we went through in WHAM. all the architects, all the engineering firms, and yet you still have them on staff. And I understand that some of them are doing um what um overseeing work, right? They oversee the projects, right? Project management work. But then you hire a consultant to do project management. And then so the architects and engineers that license oversee the overseer. >> And I've brought this up before and it's like here in writing all of this money being spent. And I I have a hard time understanding that >>
142we we are trying and looking at we are looking at it's one of the um deliverables we have for our strategic plan to look at how um we handle our contractors and to sort of reduce our reliance on them. But having at least some contractors helps us deploy CIP some contractors. Yes. But it seems like that's the standard because so for some reason after you hire state workers be it architects engineers I I think they are afraid to maybe do the work because they don't want to they don't want to get audited they I don't know what it is so it's easier to hire a consultant and you're not the only one DOT does it all the time at the airports we even had engineering from these companies would sit at the desk on the
143seventh floor of DOT And if you walked in, you wouldn't know who was the who was the consultant and who was the the worker. And they since stopped that because we kept harping on it. But these are the kinds of things that goes on in state government. So it's either or. You either hire all these cons uh architects and engineers and they do the drawings and they do this stuff or you hire out. And there are going to be times when you're going to need some outside help, but it shouldn't be the norm. Or we don't need them. Hire project managers and hire them all out. Contract them all out. Right. I mean, it's we've got to look at that. So, I hope you folks will >> I don't want to have to do an
144audit on that, but I'd like for you folks to to look at that. >> Yes. >> Okay. I have other questions, but I will go ahead questions. >> Yeah. Uh, with regards to the Castle High School, um, you folks put in an AC, solar AC in the classroom that was sitting under the banyan tree, the monkey pod tree, and now the department is because it doesn't, the sunlight doesn't hit the solar panels because of the monkey pod tree. Uh, now the department is actually having to pay to cut the trees so that the sun can hit the AC. So, how much is that costing the departments? that kind of maintenance. So, you see how mistakes have consequences and now this is an ongoing issue that the department is going to have to continue to use
145funds, taxpayer funds to pay for this maintenance. It's like you guys are forcing this thing to work and you're putting it in places that basic common sense says it's a cooled classroom. It's under a monkey pod tree where your DOE architect even said and I quote, "This is a very rushed project." A very rushed project. So >> we senator um Oh, I understand your point. um how uh that particular portable was selected for um for the solar AC in in the Kuya classroom project. Uh um I I I'm sorry but I'm not able to share why why that happened and what else why that particular classroom was selected during that time. >> Terry, are you able to comment? >> Oh, sorry. >> Oh, me? Yeah, Jesse. >> Jessie. Jessie. >> Sorry. You're Terry. >> Thank
146you. >> No, I I I was I was just going to say that um I agree with what you just said in the auditor. It was a rush project because the money lapsing was a very short period of time and a lot all at once. >> But isn't that the being the norm? You folks get all this money for CIP in a short period of time. You can't spend it all and that's why we have such a encumbered funds that are sitting there. You cannot build 12 schools. You only built what? Three schools. I mean it's like it it's a norm. So >> I think chair um we appreciate the support from the legislature and we've shifted from uh the process to lump sum buckets for defer maintenance in in those different areas. We do
147>> and so and so that that actually provides us with the flexibility to prioritize projects that need to be done. So we appreciate the the legislature supporting that. >> Yeah, that that that has helped a lot. And we do have, you know, the the schools, uh, you know, they're either in design, uh, you know, waiting for construction money or, um, you know, we're asking for design money to get them moving. Uh, but, you know, they're not just city, >> and we Sorry, Glenn. >> More troubling than even that for me is the fact that documentations are missing, contracts are missing. You guys don't know. you guys don't have the don't don't know know how much money was spent. I mean how can you guys manage a hundred million dollars of the taxpayers and not have
148the documentation to me that is 101. >> So I I I'm very troubled by that because again it seems to be a pattern. Um >> so so that was concerning to hear that and read that. Uh I did you look at and see that we have tracked all of the expenses for this uh 100 million. We spent about 98 million and about uh so when you were out I asked them if they had the information if they know how many classrooms they said they did all of this but they haven't submitted the report to you a report to you. So um >> was not employed at the time we did this >> right. No, but just recently >> they asked many times. Okay. And we got no thumbnail that the deputy superintendent is representing. He
149has. We did not get. >> Yes. No, but I'm saying they said they have it now. So hopefully you'll get it. So can you guys send that? >> Move on. And I want to clarify. I didn't say the money would lapse. I said it was rushed probably because there was an initiative by the government. >> Somebody said it would lapse >> or superintendent said the rush would because the funds would lapse. That's right. I said I wasn't implying but they would lapse it was because there was a initiative to meet 100,000 classrooms by the end. >> Well yeah it was a great political statement >> right but not laps >> and there was a laps in concern as well. So it's both of those things. >> So so for your so I don't you know
150it's great that you found all those documents. I I don't know did you always have it all all the time or not? I you know they just it was uh not easy to retrieve because they were in these boxes but >> you couldn't find the box. So the boxes were missing. >> They have them. It's need to be needs to be retrieved >> or did they just not want you to give it >> storage? >> So so I guess so so how okay so so moving forward I hope we don't have boxes. I hope it's you know so hopefully digital at this point. If I may on that point, yes. U one of the changes that they've made at OFO is to digitize all of their documents and keep them, you know, files, digital files.
151>> Okay. So, and I assume the the login that he logged into and there was couldn't get any info. I I assume that's updated as well because I think what we really need to understand is are you guys actually and we had this conversation wh are you guys actually using that software to truly track projects now? So >> because it's no sense to have the database and then you you don't use it, right? Because I think this is a good example of why you'd want to track it. So at least if you get audited or somebody makes an inquiry, you can easily well we could even follow along, right? So we don't have to call you and you send us a spreadsheet every time. We could just go on and see where our project's at,
152right? >> Yeah. I I don't know the status of the outward facing but I know that internally they do use um the the uh CPT to log in these projects as as part of the school directed air conditioning project workflow and it's tracked that way through the process. I I get the air condition, but I'm talking about this. This is just an example of your greater CIP projects that we are very very concerned about, right? Because it's really hard for us to track, right? People on the ground tell us one thing, we go up the chain and it's a whole different story. And so, you know, I think if if we follow the this air conditioning audit, they're they're telling you all the systematic things that you should be changing. And I think it it
153applies to a lot of other areas in the DOE for with with in terms of facilities. And so I think we're just trying to understand moving forward what have you guys corrected but I I don't know like you're not giving us a good understanding of okay this is the things that we've implemented since then right is the you're not giving us that the the online system is working so okay we don't know if the tracking is actually working you know are you are you empowering other people to to to do you know things at the school level like the people that could have caught right are you empowering them to say stop stop the project because we don't think that's in a good location just like the transformer at W Luke Elementary. I don't know
154why people somebody didn't catch that before but you know you put in the wrong location and now year two years later we still waiting right and so I I think those are the systematic things that we need to understand that you've actually corrected because of this audit right and that's the purpose of an audit we just we trying to get better but you got to pitch to us >> what is it that we've done to to get better >> so one of the so I keep pointing to this but this this is the guidance and one of the important things about the guidance and I think part of what you're saying is people who have to implement this like principles and casses they have to know about Right. And so HOFU has been going out
155and training on this which came out in November. >> But that's just for air condition, right? >> But it's for other projects too. >> It's all project. >> Yeah. Yeah. We have we have um larger projects in here too. Yeah. And so for the ACs, if it's a window AC, not a split system um it doesn't trigger um certain things. The money's there, then it goes through this kind of fasttrack. But if it's not, then it goes into our um larger project. So, so is there a system if they feel like they need something at their school, can they log it somewhere so at least it goes up the chain? Because I think that's why a lot of the the the principles were trained. Okay, you there's nowhere to input it for the DOE. So,
156go ask your legislator, right? And then you got you got upset because we're putting in too many line items. So, now we're giving you a pot. But everyone needs to understand what is the process. And if so, if we don't know what the process is, I would like to see what my principles are asking for. So, at least you got to be sharing what that information is, right? So we don't have that data though. There is no input of you can request a project because there's that need at the school. >> Well, what they can what there's a way to track in this process that we have these projects. But I think what we're talking about now is funding, right? So if there's no funding, then >> well, but but we got to understand what
157the need is, right? Because part of it is I don't know how you calculate your RNN backlogs, you know, because what data are you using and how old is that data, right? And so so part of it is if you're not transparent with the data, it's hard for us somebody to verify like the auditor is saying, right? >> Yeah. We can we are working on providing a list of projects that are priorities. >> Yeah. This is a single >> I can page 38. A new website and old problem. The school directed AC program project tracking website called CPT which stands for CIP project tracker was intended to enable DOE to track projects including schools air conditioning inventory. Yet when they visited the site in April of 2024 it appeared to be inactive and during a
158April 24th meeting DOE officials confirmed to us that the site was dead describing it as rendering of a site and said said it should be taken down. However, a few weeks after the meeting with DOA officials, the site was populated with large collection of data that appeared to have been uploaded over a short period of time, including attachments as such, but suddenly the present information appeared to be of little value. So, it is this project has this project been tracker been taken down or has you folks fixed it or what have you done with it? I can say and internally with the way we track projects we also use CPT that is working. Um >> so this is updated and working >> as far as the web the public facing side I would have to
159ask it is version two is up and >> when did that get up and running? >> When did that get >> what? No it's not working. >> No it's not the CPT2. >> Yeah 2.0 2.0 which requires a login. >> Okay. >> Our access was not to the public. It was to the DOE. That's why it required it was to the DOE's internal access. >> So this 2.0 website that's in your report. >> Pretty certain it was to the DOE internal access. It's not a public facing >> but it's still not but it still has >> I just clarified that it wasn't a public facing database. That's why we required access login access from the >> but they did say the site was dead right. >> Yes. >> To be taken that. So is this
160site similar to design build jobs tracker? resign bill job tracker that >> I used to try to track my CIPs in my district which I brought up to Audrey about this and I was told that the system is also not active or working or >> Yeah, I'm not I I'm not familiar with that one. That's different. They say >> it's on your website. They somebody directed me to this. We looked it up. We went on as you can see this was a Monaloa um project and that one had no update and this one is Khali Wenna last updated 5212025 I went on um on that date or right after that date and all it has on here was the amount $150,153 and it has Kevin Mory is the contact and there's nothing else fill in
161and I brought it up. I brought it up to Audrey. I brought it up to Jenine. I think that what they saying, "Oh, that we don't we don't update this." I'm like, "Then what the hell is it doing?" >> Yeah, that could be one of our that's one of our legacy systems possibly. I I will look into that. >> We can't. No. Okay. Thank you for looking into it. But the problem is you have all these systems. Nobody's paying attention to it. Nobody's updating it. It's we can't get information. I asked for information. You give me two different sets. In 2023, you gave me a whole set. I asked for the same update. I gave a whole different set. It It's not even consistent. I don't know. I don't know what you folks how you
162keeping track of your own projects if you cannot even give it to us and we ask for it. >> We we're we're working on that request for that for the projects for you. Uh I I this book came up a year almost a year ago and still nothing nothing and I don't know Kevin my I don't is he supposed to update this? There's no meeting scope. There's no um start date. There's no preliminary design received. There's no final design. There's no permit submitted. Nothing. It's all blank. It's all blank. Every single except for the amount and the name of the person. >> Sure. Same thing for Mona Law project. Same thing. >> My apologies for that. If u give us an opportunity to get together and we can come back and present to you and
163share um a system that uh is up and running. >> Superintendent, how many times do I have to bring it up with your staff before we get I have to come to a hearing, bring this up and and and embarrass people before we're going to get any kind of update or fixing or answers. I I don't like to do this and I don't know where the board of education is if they're not reviewing some of these kind of things. And that's why I wanted the board to be here because my question goes back to the board. What are you folks doing as far as following up? >> Yeah, >> that's their one and only role. I have how many other roles? This is not my one and only ro committee I I I chair, but
164yes, I sit on all these other committees. chair. Um it again it falls to me to be sure that these things are up and running. If you give us an opportunity to regroup and we can come back and share back with the committee um an update. >> Yeah. Because you know my issue with with Khalena the bridge you folks went in and asked for it and said all the health and safety and then you folks went and lapsed it. >> Yeah. And did not let anybody know about the lapsing and then you got because you folks said you didn't know that the city owned it. Come on. after 3 years of the project, you didn't know that the city owned it. That again, that it just boggles my mind. >> I I think the bottom
165line is, you know, just just from this audit and I I told you this in person, superintendent, but I I think the committee just needs a clear strategy of where we're going with facilities, right? I think I think you know their conditioning thing that was before your time fine but I think moving forward it's still not perfect right I I think we I've expressed my own frustrations you know the chair is not the only person who has issues with CIP projects in our district and we only ask because at the end of the day the people that you know we care about you they're concerned about it right I think I'm trying to get a transformer installed and it's just like an act of Congress to get everything moving right and and so I think
166that's that is is very difficult but I think what we need to understand it that there's hope that there's there's we're moving in a direction that we understand what the strategy parts are that all the all the small pieces that are going to we're going to see something that's much more successful. We're not going to have something like the the 100 million we can't account for. But I think I think we haven't heard that yet. I think that that's why it worries me. I think the board when I I told you in wh members what their strategy is, they don't know what the strategy is. I think every single member of that board needs to understand what is the strategy in facilities. We have to all be going in the same direction. And I so
167I hope you folks can articulate that very very clearly. >> Thank you Senator and that would be incumbent on me to ensure that that is in strategy is in place so that um I'm able to share with the board what that is. So that that's on me. So I'll take responsibility for that and we'll we'll do better. >> If we can go to page 15 of the report. Um, it says here at the bottom, oh, let me see. A media report at the time, which was based on DOE procurement documents, found that the highest per classroom bid came in at $360,770, which was to install a solar AC in one portable classroom at Eva Beach Elementary. $360,770 for one one solar AC system. Where are these numbers coming from? >> Page 15. >> Was it
16815 or five? >> 15. >> Sorry. You know, you're asking me. >> Yeah. Well, I was actually asking intending it for DOE because you you were >> I'm not sure the question about where are they coming from is what you're asking because we report we got it out of a media article the $360,770 for that one class. >> We don't know where they got >> So, I'm asking where that number came from. >> I think it came from I don't think they >> Yeah, I don't know where the media got that from, but we can we can see if we can >> Okay, let me just move on to my next >> chair. we can move on. Um, for the classrooms that were enclosed with plexiglass, what is your solution to remedy that because uh
169there's a large number of classrooms in my district that are sweltering in their classrooms with no AC and now no ventilations because the jealousies have been plexiglassed. >> Um, Senator, if you can let me know what schools they'll be high school. >> Okay, we we'll take a look at that. Um the schools that I do know of, uh plexiglass was installed inside of the classroom, but uh they were installed with those um those clips that can rotate. So those plexiglass the glasses could be removed, but if it's uh if it's permanent, then uh we will definitely take a look at high school. >> Yeah, it's permanent. It cannot be removed and so it's making it uncomfortable for the students and also for the teacher. It's very hot conditions. Anything else? >> Uh, yes, sorry. Uh,
170page 25, uh, the DOE repair log registered nearly 1,800 requests for air conditioning maintenance from 2018 to 2024. With the 10,00 AC initiative, how are we logging in a repair log of 1,800 requests? Is this just multiple repairs on one AC? it it does cost money to maintain AC's. Um if it's a school initi initiated AC then um they maintain it. If it's the PV AC's that was um done with the act 47 money then and then then we'll go and maintain it when they put a request in and and we'll we'll maintain it that way. We have a tracking system for repair maintenance. Yeah. >> Okay. If you could share that with us. I mean again I think we could avoid a lot of these re really difficult moments with just transparency, clarity, but
171then also response time is very important. Like I think we could have gotten through half halfway through with the driver's license um briefing had you had just responded in a quicker amount of time to the state auditor and then also giving us the information that we need as well. So thank you. Thank you. check. Can you give us a report on what is it going to cost as these batteries um die out as these systems, the ones that were put in under the $und00 million and those all age out? What What are we going to do? What's the plan? How are you going to keep the these classrooms cool? >> We're actually looking at that issue now as they sort of come of age. Right now, we we're maintaining them. Um you probably have about
172a couple years more where we have to make tough decisions about them. Um >> well, you're not going to wait till the the couple years come. I mean, we want >> Yeah. Yeah. >> We want to know what the plan is, right? And what the cost is. One of the things that I hope that DOE and the board will do is as we add programs and as we add personnel and positions and so forth, what is the overall impact to the state budget? And I don't think we we look at that. We look at in a vacuum, you know, early education, early child care, all of that put together, charter schools, what is the impact? Because already DOE education takes up one-third of the budget. As we continue to add on programs, it's going to
173take up more and more and and then sustaining that and then like now I don't think it's in the budget on how to sustain the hund00 million or air conditioning or whatever it is we put in or didn't put in, right? and what happens when they get old and we have to recycle them now. So that inherent cost is going to be very impactful. So I hope you folks are looking at that and as you come forward as you ask for your your budget and CIPs that you folks are mindful and you present it to us as to these are costs that's down the road that we can't kick the can down the road continuously. So just to just to summarize basically putting things in context and and just the two audits you know in
174the driver's education report you know there was a lack of leadership allowed at the lower level specialists to hijack the program in the heat abatement staff departures and rush planning led to chaos DOE couldn't count the money in the heat abatement DOE couldn't count the student demand in driver's education the auditor describes the heat abatement project as a $und00 million disaster and the driver education program as structurally incomplete. So, has a single DOE administrator, contractor, or decision maker been disciplined at all, held financially liable for any of these failures? And if the answer is no, which I suspect it is, how can you assure this body that the next hund00 million appropriation won't suffer the same fate? a lot a lot of the leaderships not here from or people who worked on the heat abatement
175but also I would have asked could you give us a few years to spend the money instead of just one so we could plan it out >> understand but I'm just saying that the structure of the DOE that's in place >> whether the ch bodies change but there are some bodies that are here you know long time I've been here a long time and so you know it's not just because that special individual something is not right with the structure and the oversight >> systemically. >> Yes. And and and and you know documents and and recordkeeping and so forth the basics somewhere along the line there's a disconnect. So how can we have the confidence and that's I think what what we want to know. We want to move forward but it's hard to have
176the confidence because the same things happen again and again. So that's something to think about as we go forward, as we go into the session, as we address bills that going to come and some of the bills may be addressing the very things we're talking about because again, the trust is not there. So we got to pass a law, right? And even we passed the law 60 years, the law never wasn't wasn't implemented the way it was intended. Okay. Okay. So with that, we are going to move to the last item on the agenda. Believe it or not, we still have one more item on the agenda. Uh so the Medicaid reimbursements, as you guys transition here, uh focuses on a critical but often overlooked issue. The Hawaii Department of Education's failure to fully and
177consistently draw down on available Medicaid reimbursements for services already being provided to eligible students. Medicaid reimbursements is not a discretionary funding. It is federal money owed to the state for qualified health related services delivered in our public schools. These include services such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, behavior health support and nursing services for students with disabilities. I know it sounds like it we're this is a health health uh committee and it's not. It's it's education. So there's been this colliding of of responsibilities and I think sometimes put at the detriment of our schools and our teachers. It's very difficult because that's not what they signed up for. But they now have these responsibilities. But in the case of the Medicaid reimbursements, you know, year after year, we've been leaving some federal millions of
178federal dollars possibly on the table. When we compare Hawaii to other states, the contrast is stark. States with similar or smaller student populations routinely draw down two to three times more Medicaid reimbursements per student than Hawaii. Many have invested in proper billing systems, staff training, inter agency coordination, and compliance infrastructure to ensure that they capture the full federal match. And Hawaii has just not kept pace. This is especially troubling because the legislature continues to appropriate state general funds to cover these services. The services are already being delivered. Medicaid reimbursement could directly offsate state costs and reinvest resources back into our schools. So in short, this is not about expanding programs. It's about basic financial stewardship. So today, we hope the department will explain why Hawaii's reimbursement rates lag so far behind other states, what barriers
179the administrative staffing or system related have prevented full participation, how much federal funding has been foregone over the past several years, and what concrete steps are being taken with timelines to fix this problem. Because at the time when every dollar public dollar matters, failure to claim available federal funds is really not acceptable. So, our students really deserve a lot more and our school needs the resources and our taxpayers need the accountability. So, with that, Superintendent, I know we've talked about this. So, >> thank you, Chair. Um, joining me is Deputy Superintendent Heidi Armstrong, uh, who will be sharing about the, uh, Medicaid reimbursement. >> Sure. I I'll provide an update on the department's Medicaid reimbursement process. Um, I um am hopeful that I'll outline or to be able to outline clearly the Medicaid claiming pause
180of which we which we did have to take the compliance steps that are underway and the plan to resume and expand claiming so that you that the department can appropriately access federal funds to offset state costs for required health related services. So the the department um was claiming for um a limited number of services from about 2019 to 2020 um 23 but in November 2023 the Medicaid reimbursement section identified a critical error in the department's electronic record system and this system failed to act accurately report the ratio of nursing services provided to students. The system defaulted to a one:1 ratio when in actuality um some of the nurses were serving multiple students. But our system was not able to accurately record that and that led to improper claiming at a higher reimbursement rate that than
181should have been been allowed. So when the Medicaid section caught that, they halted nursing reim reimbursement until the system could be modified because that's what needed to be done. The department continued to seek reimbursement for administrative claiming and worked to restart the direct service claiming and in this case it was nursing. In January 2025, MedQuest, who is our partner um from DHS and they are our state Medicaid provider, halted the Medicaid of Medicaid administrative claiming processing. This was due to compliance concerns regarding provider eligibility and federal guidance that disallows the administrative claiming process unless the direct service claiming um is continued. was also conducted. So later that year, MedQuest provided the department with a guide to school-based services that outlines the requirements and expectations for direct service and administrative claiming. In May 2025, the department
182submitted its timestudy implementation plan for Medicaid administrative claiming to MedQuest to meet the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services compliance deadline of June 30, 2026. In November 2025, the department was informed by MedQuest si to submit a quality assurance plan that aligned with the office of the inspector general standards before any claims can be submitted for direct or administrative services. The department has submitted a corrective action plan to MedQuest to address past non-compliance and has engaged a consultant to consult to um conduct a comprehensive risk assessment and gap analysis on gap analysis on all Medicaid reimbursement activities conducted by the department. This report will create the scope of work and implementation roadmap for the department's quality assurance plan as required by MedQuest. The department is working closely with MedQuest to reser to resume direct service
183claiming for select nursing services by March of this year. Expanded direct service claiming is projected to resume on or before January 27. Thank you for the opportunity to share the update and the proposed um timeline for our um Medicaid billing re resuming Medicaid billing. >> Um the consultant, when did you hire this consultant? And we we worked with MedQuest and selected the same consultant that they work with. And >> January 8th >> Oh, this year. >> And what cost? >> Uh $24,000 something for the initial garden. And is there a reoccurring cost? >> I'm sorry. >> Is there a reoccurring cost? >> No. >> Michael Stanbury. I'm the administrator for the Medicaid reimbursement section. >> So, Michael, um, in your estimation, why have this been such a so problematic? go for I mean you don't
184have enough people we didn't get it right the system yes something went wrong with the system but at the same time the corrections I mean enlightened us >> sure um that's a very complicated question thank you um as far as the uh direct service when we stopped uh what we were claiming and we well >> you were only direct servicing nursing right there others you could have done as well but we we haven't done that. >> Yes ma'am. Uh nursing by its very nature is a medical model. It's a a doctor must prescribe the service and a nurse is therefore going to provide the service. So it follows a medical model. The other related services occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech language pathology and um behavioral services. Um the department of education uses an educational model
185as is required to. So it follows IDA and and provides FAPE to our students. In order to claim for those services, it requires a medical model. Um, so, uh, we recently are, uh, as of November switching to a medical model, but unless we're in a medical model, um, we can't claim for those services. >> But you folks have resisted moving to the medical model. >> And we did initially and we we were having many conversations with MedQuest. Um we did um have different um opinions on on the um school-based claiming model versus the medical model, but we do and other states do have versions of a school-based model that is a bit more friendly to um school-based service billing rather than the strict medical model which follows a um like you would bill in a
186hospital. However, after many discussions and many attempts and many plans, um we and wanting to get a move on this, we have um accepted and the to move to a medicallybased model in our school system for Medicaid reimbursement. So when you say medical model, it really is just getting a a therapist or a doctor's approval for a service. So what direct services can you expand for special ed students? I think that's the problem. Sure. Not a medical model, but medically approved for license licensing of of these various services that you could provide to the student. And thank you for that question. Um, none of the services um are whether we bill for Medicaid um or not services do not change for the students. When we say a medical model, it's the way that the providers
187OTP speech um and our nurses um document their services. Right now we have a process in our IEP and our related service providers have an educational model for keeping um record of their services. When we move to a medical model, any service um that is provided, we must have a physician's authoriz or a physician diagnosis who is providing that kind of service, right? Not necessarily physician. >> No, we need a physician to give a diagnosis that that service is provided. So, we currently provide service based on need, not based on the um a phys a physician's um diagnosis. >> So, how many special ed students do you have that are eligible to get Medicaid service? >> That number? >> Yes, ma'am. So, um let me preface this by saying they'll have a Medicaid ID, which
188means at some time in their life they were assigned a Medicaid ID. doesn't mean that today they're still Medicaid eligible, but there's about 4,495 if I had to guess. >> 4,495. >> That's quite a specific. >> Yes, ma'am. Out of about 19 or 20,000 uh students that qualify for special education, about 10,500 or so qualify for related services. And then that that other sub number, >> how do you how do you work with the students? Because our special ed students do need the services. So my understanding is the teachers, the IEP's teachers, the special ed teachers are the ones who work with the students from kindergarten all the way to high school. So you must have the records in the system. Is that correct? So that you can assess in your medical quest uh I
189mean your Medicare reimbursement section. What do you do? We we do every student who receives any kind of related service has an IEP and that service is recorded in the IEP and then um the the documentation and recordkeeping of the service is all together there. So when um a service is is offered, it's because there was an IEP team meeting with all of the relevant parties and it was determined that this service would help um um would help assist a child with their education based on assessment results that showed the child has um has a need. So with the medical model that will still continue but we will need to get a doctor's diagnosis saying the child gets that. Does the med med medical reimbursement team do it or does who does it? >> The
190parent can give it to the school. >> Okay. or the parent can give authorization with proper documentation for um a designated person at the school to work directly with that child's health care provider to get that information because I think that's a disconnect because you've got 19,000 students that may have um services that they need and somebody should be helping them. And I understand that the the the uh special ed teacher does have the IEP meetings and brings everyone together. What happens to that information so that somebody's assisting the parents to say, you know, you could get these services and putting that together? I would think the med medical reimbursement section should be working with the teachers and the schools to show them what needs to be done and getting that information. Is any of
191that being done at all all these years? >> Yes. In order um for us to um claim for the nursing services that were >> services directly >> um we did need parent permission and parents were given information on um um what what we are seeking. We would like to be able to claim reimbursement for these services. um they were given information on how this will impact them or not and they have to sign off. How is that how you're supporting the teachers supporting the families to say these are the kinds of things we can give you because the more you can support them the more reimbursement you can get I understand is 50% of the of the >> our process right now for providing services to children wouldn't change with the Medicaid reimbursement that's a
192team decision based on assessment data >> monies back definitely we could get more money and that is our goal and to your point. We do recognize we are leaving money on the table and we um it it's not an excuse, but it's very complex and yes, other states have done it and have been doing it, but um we do have um good partners with MedQuest and they are helping us move forward. >> Did um how much did we pay out for special education um this past year? Let's just say in one year. And how much did you claim of that for direct services? >> We didn't claim for direct services at all last year. No. >> And when did you do 2023? >> 2023. >> Okay. So 2023. How many students and you claim for
193and how much did you get in reimburse? >> Do you have that? >> No ma'am. I do not. >> We do have that information and we can get it to you as a follow. >> I think we're looking at what are we leaving on the table. But if you don't have data and you're not claiming that we're leaving everything on the team, >> we do have the data when we were claiming and it was minimal for that particular um subgroup with the transition to the medical model and the training of the staff and the new recordkeeping system that will be required. we will be able to um claim for more direct service um or for more related services other than nursing. Um >> so you're not claiming for any of the other services like assisted
194technology, behavioral health, speech therapy, none of that. >> No. >> So according to what I have here in 2020 just the direct service for nursing, we got only $830,41. In 2021 for the nursing direct service 1.5 million and then in 2022 it went up 2.5 2023 six million then it dropped in 2024 to 3.8 and then in 2020 2025 I did an administrative claim all those years and that amounted to for five years 7.4 4 million, but nothing was claimed for 2023, 2024, 2025. >> Correct. Because our current system and and during that time, we've been um um working with vendors to get a system or an add-on that will allow our um claims to be submitted correctly. the platform that we're using statewide currently does not support that and that it it does take
195time but we also recognize time is of the essence but that we have been working on that at this point it it we um >> when did you recognize that >> in 2023 the our Medicaid section recognized that they and um the the reimbursement they were expecting ing to bring in was actually higher than what they projected. And so that caused a deeper dive. And then it was recognized that when the claims were set differentiating onetoone services versus one to many, a nurse with one to one or a nurse serving one to serving two, three or more children, they were being recorded um the same way. It didn't differentiate the service. And when the why because our system doesn't have the capacity to do that who is inputting that information >> the the nurses when
196they provide their service they have a service log and they input it there and we gather the information from the system >> the nurses giving the service somebody from DOE you know >> yes ma'am it' be my section my section coincidentally the skilled nursing contract falls under me also >> your section >> the Medicaid reimbursement section >> so you would know what whether it was faulty or Well, we when we discovered it, it was because we were expecting X dollars back for our reimbursement for direct services and we were getting Y. We're getting more. And so that caused us to go in and look at each individual transaction to see what the difference was. And that's when we figured out that it was all being and we worked with our IT departments to to help
197figure that out also. And that's when we figured out that we were submitting every single claim as a onetoone instead of whatever it actually was. And a one to one claim is $68 an hour or back then it was 50 but $68 an hour. So a one to two would be half of that. So instead of claiming for example $34 an hour we were claiming $68 an hour for that same service and that's why we stopped. >> So but you had a third party administrator UMass Medical. >> When did that terminate then? And you're doing it now and No ma'am still with them? >> Uh no ma'am in in June we stopped with UMass because we were of of last year because we were transitioning to a new third party administrator which is PCG. >>
198So what was happening from when did they start? 2006. >> My goodness, a long time. I think UMass started 2012. But but >> all of that time wouldn't you have a system in place already? >> Well, the the the hurdle there is that because uh our third party administrator back then, UMass, cannot see our system. They can't see our IEPs. They can't see everything that we submit. They take on faith that we can prove that what we submitted was accurate. They can't see into our ECS system. So the to catch it was on us. They submitted the claims and they said, "Okay, we we expect the DOE is giving the correct information." Turns out we weren't we caught it and when we caught it, we stopped. >> Okay. So when you caught it and simply
199the way you said it was that you you were claiming all the claims are going in as a one-on-one which some was one and two. So why couldn't you just adjust it? >> The well the system didn't allow us to if we were to go in the the issue uh in the simplest terms. So if you have three kids at a school, so they're one to three. If at any time one of those kids goes home or uh if there's two nurses and one of the nurses doesn't show up for work, it's going to change the ratio. So it might go from 1 to three to 1:2 or uh it could be a tube feeding. So at twothirds of the day it's 1:3, but when it's the tube feeding comes in, it's 1:4. And our
200system can't it can't fluctuate like it can't differentiate. So it just put all of it in as one to one. >> How many students were we talked to? >> Uh back then when in 2023 we had about 500 or so we have 607 today um that are receiving services about a third of those are IEP this question or I made this remark is that you know why couldn't it be done manually then? I mean it's not everyone that was three three or two oneonone you had you had individuals. So that number wouldn't have been that great but or hired you know temporary help to do that. Um >> yes >> because the amount of money that you left off the table is greater than what it would have cost. >> Um as we we discussed
201the other day um we were trying to find a solution for the problem and it included switching to PCG because we wouldn't have that issue under PCG. So in 2020 when we stopped quite frankly I didn't think of it. I didn't think to go and drill down the kids that we assume that we're going to be able to claim for on a one to one are they're the only kid at that school. So there's no chance that they will ever become a one to two or a one to three unless another kid gets added. Right. Um so quite frankly we didn't think about it back then >> still put in for that one to one. Right. >> We if if we had thought about it when we stopped. Yes ma'am. We could have but I
202just didn't. We were trying to find other solutions and and that's my fault. I I'll absolutely take the blame for that. I just find that hard because you know I look at every way in which I can save a buck right I mean and if I don't think of it right this minute I'll think I'll sleep on it you know I think about it in mashar and then finally it'll come to me and you know why can't we do this why can't we do all the bills that you guys see on the table that's how we figure it out right >> yes ma'am >> we dream about it now um but yeah it's like and it's not just you you have a like but you have 12 people I don't know how many people you
203had Nine, eight plus me. Not right now. >> You don't have to take tanks. Okay. >> I have some very smart people. Yes, ma'am. Um and we were just pursuing other solutions to try to get the entire >> I think that's the problem with tunnel vision. You only want to see one way without saying, you know, let's what about other ways of doing it in the meantime? What a band-aid approach in the meantime. You bandaid everything anyway. You know what? >> I don't disagree with you ma'am. It that's my fault. I didn't think of it. So, but we, you know, we are going to pursue it now and we're going to isolate and find out how many kids that are the only kid at the school that are receiving related services in an IEP and
204try to manually claim for them. >> Can you manually claim the others and hire somebody in the meantime and claim the others? Because it's a matter of just splitting them apart and putting in the right numbers, right? >> Uh, it would be determining which of those students are one to two, one to three or one to four. And because it fluctuates throughout the day, I do not believe we have the capacity to do that manually. When I say manually, it's it's a piece of paper for every kid, for every service received every day. I mean, it it's it's a lot. >> So, you find another system though one to one, one to two, one to three. What is the service? You're finding a direct group. This is the service. These are the services they need
205and you you get it approved and then you could do the onetoone one to two thereafter everything so that you can't get it through. Well, the thing is so you have one nurse and one student, right? So when you were one to two, now you have one nurse and two students. Yes, ma'am. >> So now she has two pieces of paper. >> So he's going to break down. Okay, I worked with this kid for 15 minutes. Okay, I worked with two of them for 30 minutes. Okay, now all of a sudden got another student. Okay, that's the third piece of paper. She don't have she doesn't have 1500 in one time. She doesn't have 25 at one time. She might have four. Okay, she have four pieces of paper that she has to fill out.
206those four then goes on to the next therapist. I mean I I just don't understand how that cannot be manageable for a short period of time >> and we will explore that. Um the the team is planning to resume the direct service claiming manually for the oneto ones by March. um simultaneous >> consultant for this hiring consultant. >> We hired a consultant for the quality assurance um >> because you know I could easily be a consultant until you guys do it manually. I mean that's the thing you know it's like >> understood >> but there seems to be a culture that >> you don't want to do anything unless there's an app unless there's something you can do online unless you can hire a consultant. I think the days of people doing things manually is
207just like not not even in the realms. It's like what manually? No. >> Understood. Right. >> Yes ma'am. >> Have you reached out to counterparts on the mainland to see how they address this issue? >> Yes ma'am. Um and uh through name which you attended one year with us. Um yes ma'am we we do and and we are anywhere that we can quite frankly steal an idea from somebody that's already been doing it or or as you said some states that are much more advanced than ours we do and and we we work with them to try to come up with solutions. They however do not have the same nursing setup that we have the the unique way that we do the nursing in Hawaii and that fact that they're all consultants right now is
208uh very very unique to Hawaii. >> I allow you to steal my idea. >> Yes, ma'am. Then you can ask me anytime. >> Yes, ma'am. >> So, anything else? >> Yeah. When are you folks uh expecting to have a system in place that you can electronically document move on? >> They can't even do overp payments. >> I'm sorry. I didn't remember. >> It's it's anticipated that we >> will have a system or an add-on to our existing system and and have the um and it's it's um I'm going on a limb giving a date, but it is our goal that we want to resume billing for our um existing services that we build for and additional services by January 2027. So, >> so more than just nursing, you're going to add the rest. Yes, ma'am.
209But that is the goal. Um, that does require many internal changes, consultations, um, and union involvement. Um, because it does change the complexity of the work of our union members. So, we will have to go through that process. >> Why does it change the work of the union members when it just requires a physician? it the it it it's the physician's note isn't on them. How they record their services and matching the service to a Medicaid code. >> Shouldn't that be part of it, John? >> Well, that's the discussion that we will be having. >> How do they do it? Now, they don't put a code. >> They take they take they don't need a code to match to medic. They haven't needed a code to match to Medicaid, but they do record um their
210service um provision is in the IEP and then they do record what they do each session. >> We're not changing their work their work. It's just how document documentation >> it's documenting it in a medical model rather than the school-based model that they're doing. And it does agree that's the conversation we'll have. >> But you don't need an approval by the you just have a conversation. >> We'll have a consultant. So, does it mean you're going to need more um employees, more bodies >> um >> to do it? >> We already for the for the service. We already have a need for additional bodies. But about this whole thing with the union because it doesn't the law doesn't say you have to get their approval, right? Well, we do need to go through consult and
211confer because we are changing, >> but I mean we can move forward because >> but if it it includes adding more bodies, I don't think the unions would mind because they're going to be being more bodies. >> Correct. They just said they >> No, she's saying that that the bodies were for other for more services, but for this reporting, it's just because they're they now have to link it up with the number and so forth. But that should be part of the documentation that it's like now all of a sudden you no longer have you don't longer have um typewriters, you have a computer, all of a sudden you have to go consult. >> You know what I mean? It's like come on these are things that change on how you report stuff, >> right?
212But um lensure um of course our related services are licensed. >> So are you are you contracting out for those services or you you have people on board for those services? What are you saying when you say you have to >> we we have both we have uh it depends on or differs from service type to service type nursing is entirely consulting it or contracted we don't have our own uh >> okay so who do you have board that you have to consult with their documenting in a different >> there are occup every other related service has department of education staff and contractors >> so what what are you talking about when you say these positions are going to have to document by learning a new code or putting a new code in. But it's
213the same service that they're documenting. Is that not right? >> Yes, ma'am. It it should there's some addition in order for the medical model. There's a few additional steps that have to take. We have to prove medical necessity. That's the doctor's signature. Get a diagnosis and a referral. >> You don't do that now for any of your services. >> It's not required under IDEIDA, ma'am, except for nursing. >> That's not required, but you could. Yeah. You see the thing is I think you folks box yourself in by already saying oh my god there's going to be changes and so now they go you just say no it's not changes it's just a little technical addition that's it I mean you know what I'm saying it's like we we make build a um >> I don't
214disagree and then of course the union is going to say yes you're changing it or we need to you know re reestablish the position and change the salary >> the consult and confer timeline is built into the January uh 2027 seven. It also gives us time to do the quality assurance. >> So, I'm just saying that. >> Anything else before we end? I said four o'clock and it's four o'clock. So, thank you all very much. It's been a long day. A lot of information and hopefully beginning of us turning the corner on some of the things that we need to be accomplished. We are