This article originally appeared in Civil Beat.
During a rainy recess at Kaaawa Elementary, students in grades kindergarten through six swarmed the schoolyard, splashing through puddles and racing each other on the field.
Principal Jennifer Luke-Payne greeted the children by name, kicked a soccer ball to some students and allowed others to retrieve playground equipment from her office. When a toddler passed by with tears in his eyes, Luke-Payne offered him a hug.
“They’re all my babies,” Luke-Payne said.
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Just over 120 students attend Kaaawa Elementary. On average, Hawaii’s elementary schools enroll about 450 students.
It’s financially difficult to run a school with fewer than 250 students, Luke-Payne says, because enrollment plays a big role in determining how much money schools receive each year. Small schools like Kaaawa Elementary struggle to fund key teaching positions when operating with annual budgets of about $1 million or less, she added.
Since 2013, the number of students in Hawaii’s state-run public schools has steadily declined. Some neighborhoods have an aging population with fewer young children, while other families have enrolled in charter or private schools.
The number of small schools with 250 students or fewer has grown from 19 to 35 over the past decade. At these schools, annual budgets have come under greater pressure, forcing school principals to cut back on teaching positions or eliminate classes such as music or physical education. delete.
Lawmakers recently approved $6 million to supplement the budgets of small and geographically remote schools next school year. But the extra money is only good for a year, and principals say small schools need more permanent funding sources to stay afloat.
Alternatively, DOE has moved to consolidate or close small schools in the past. These closures have sparked strong community opposition, but they are sometimes necessary when schools are so small that they cannot provide a full range of academic and extracurricular opportunities, said Roy Takumi, chairman of the Board of Education.
Takumi expects the issue of school closures to come up in the board during his tenure, but it is up to the department to initiate the discussion, he added.
“By design, schools should have a useful shelf life,” Takumi said.
Funding shortfalls
Kimberly Kaai runs Maunaloa Elementary on Molokai on a budget of about $890,000 a year.
The school doesn’t have enough money to pay for a teacher for every grade, so the school combines kindergarten and first grade, as well as fifth and sixth grades, Kaai said. As of September, Maunaloa Elementary was the second-smallest school in Hawaii and had an enrollment of 43 students.
The DOE allocates school funding using the so-called weighted student formula, a calculation based primarily on the number of students enrolled on each campus. Schools also receive extra money for students with certain characteristics, such as low-income students or gifted students.
“That amount from the weighted student formula is absolutely not enough to adequately staff our schools,” says Kaai.
Luke-Payne and Waiahole primary school principal Alexandra Obra estimate that small primary schools need an annual budget of at least $1.38 million.
Last summer, a DOE committee studying the weighted student formula identified eight small schools, including Waiahole, Kaaawa and Maunaloa Elementary. All eight schools enroll fewer than 150 students and had projected budgets of $1.3 million or less as of June.
Under the new state budget, the eight schools will receive an additional $250,000 for the 2024-2025 academic year. Six geographically remote schools on the Big Island, Maui, Lanai and Molokai will also receive additional funding.
At Waiahole Elementary, Obra said she plans to use the extra money to hire a librarian for the first time. Currently, Obra added, she is responsible for checking books in and out and cleaning the library on weekends.
But small schools are not guaranteed the extra money next year, which could make it challenging for principals to attract and hire teachers, said Marlene Zeug, a consultant who has studied small schools and will publish a report on Kaaawa in 2022 and Waiahole Elementary has published. They are doing their best to raise money and work with local organizations to provide more opportunities for their students, she added, but they need a more consistent source of money.
“There are no easy answers,” Zeug said.
Small elementary schools, Honolulu and Windward districts
Small schools enroll 250 students or fewer.
Kate Stanley, who served on the 2023 DOE committee that evaluated the weighted student formula, said middle and high schools typically don’t face the same funding challenges as elementary schools because they have a larger student population. But some high schools still face tight budgets while enrollment is low.
At Jarrett Middle School, Principal Reid Kuba said he had to cut a teaching position when enrollment was particularly low around 2013. But since then, he added, Jarrett Middle has used its low enrollment to its advantage, encouraging more families to send their children to the school. the school because of the small classes and the close-knit community.
Jarrett Middle is still the smallest high school on Oahu, with 287 students, but Kuba said he has not had to reduce staff in recent years.
“We embraced our status as a small school,” he said.
The debate about closures
Frederick Reppun remembers hearing third-grader discussions about closing Waiahole Elementary in the 1990s. The school remained open and celebrated its 140th anniversary this year, but conversations about consolidation and closure continued.
Amid budget cuts in 2008, DOE produced nearly a dozen reports examining the effects of closing and consolidating elementary and secondary schools across the state, including Waiahole’s partner school, Kaaawa Elementary.
Kaaawa Elementary was spared, but the department closed three elementary schools in 2011: Wailupe Valley in East Honolulu, Keanae Elementary on Maui and Queen Lydia Liliuokalani Elementary in Kaimuki. Keanae had not enrolled students since 2003, but community members came out in full force to oppose the closures of Wailupe and Queen Liliuokalani Elementary.
Randy Moore, who served as an assistant superintendent at DOE at the time, said closing the schools was not an easy decision. The department was tasked with assessing the quality of small schools’ facilities, the academic options available to students and which campuses families would visit if their current school closed.
Moore, who rejoined DOE last week as interim deputy superintendent, said he would be surprised if the department did not resume assessing small schools and the value of keeping them open.
In Kailua, Rep. Lisa Marten said her district could potentially benefit from consolidating schools.
Kaelepulu, Enchanted Lake and Keolu primary schools are within a 10-minute drive of each other. All three are small schools, with between 91 and 250 students.
As more families grow older or send their children to private schools, Marten says, it makes sense to close the smallest school, Keolu Elementary, and send students to Enchanted Lake, where enrollment has halved in the past decade decreased. Marten said she worries that the two schools are struggling to offer important classes such as music, art and physical education.
“When the population drops, you have to adapt,” Marten said. She added that school closures may not work in rural areas where families have fewer educational options.
But Enchanted Lake principal Noel Richardson said consolidating with Keolu Elementary would be difficult. Keolu Elementary currently provides breakfast and lunch to nearby schools, Richardson said, and finding another campus with the kitchen capacity to produce more daily meals could be a challenge.
“In an effort to save some money, you’ve created a bigger problem,” Richardson said.
At Kaaawa Elementary, Luke-Payne said there is no shortage of learning opportunities, despite the school’s small size. Behind the school, Kualoa Ranch has donated a small piece of land where students grow kalo and pound poi at the end of the year. Across Kaaawa Beach, students have been growing native plants that help combat beach erosion.
The community comes together to support the school, and every child feels valued on campus, Luke-Payne added.
“I ask them, ‘Who loves you?’, and they point to me,” she said. “They know.”
Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.
This story was originally published in Civil Beat.
