Ending School Furloughs

School furloughs should never have happened. When they first began last October, I took the lead to rally my colleagues for a Special Session to end school furloughs immediately and put our students and teachers back in the classroom. I was able to convince nearly half of the House of Representatives to rally behind me and sign a petition calling for a Special Session of the Legislature to put our students back in school. Unfortunately, we were left several votes short of what was needed to take action.

After months of finger pointing between the Governor, the Board of Education, and the unions, in April the Legislature finally had the votes to appropriate $67 million from the dormant Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund to restore instructional days for the 2010-2011 school year. The Governor emphasized that, “Using some of the Hurricane Relief Fund would not diminish our chances to recover from a Hurricane.” The Hurricane Fund was actually created to provide hurricane insurance to homeowners when private insurance companies would not. However, it has sat dormant since 2001, when private insurers took over the market once again. Fortunately, if there was a devastating hurricane to hit Hawaii, and if afterward private insurance companies left the islands once again, it would take only about $100 million to provide Hurricane insurance to Hawaii residents.

We used only $67 million of the $180 million in the Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund to put our kids back in school, so there was still more than enough to cover any future disaster. Later, more money from the fund would be used to balance the state budget without resorting to tax increases, but the Abercrombie administration ensured it was paid back and the fund eventually refilled.

Students from Hui Malama pack into the office

Never Again

To prevent furloughs from ever happening again, I co-sponsored a bill to mandate minimum instructional hours in our school year. House Bill 2486 extends the number of minimum instructional hours each year, gradually adding additional hours each year until 2013, to allow schools time to adjust their calendars and prepare for a longer school year. Contract negotiations between the Governor and unions will be built on top of this baseline, but will never again cause students to lose classroom time because of a budget shortfall.