Emotions were high Thursday as some teachers and parents from four schools in Lāhainā voiced their frustrations with the Hawaiʻi Department of Education's response to the deadly Aug. 8 wildfires on Maui.
The Board of Education heard dozens of testimonies from impacted educators — some who flew to Oʻahu from the Valley Isle — and received more than 90 pages of testimony.
DOE employees described a lack of communication from the department, as well as a need for immediate crisis counseling and community input.
Victoria Zupancic, Curriculum AP Testing and Title One coordinator at Lahainaluna High School, said she couldn't give teachers concrete answers when they ask if the education department is providing housing and other resources for them.
"No one has asked if we're prepared to drive through Lāhainā daily, watching the number of crosses grow on the road," she said. "No one has asked if they need bereavement time because their families have died."
The timeline for Lāhainā teachers and students to return to their schools remains unclear.
West Maui public schools — Princess Nāhiʻenaʻena Elementary, Lāhainā Intermediate, and Lahainaluna High — remain closed until they are deemed environmentally safe. But the fires destroyed King Kamehameha III Elementary beyond repair.
Keith Hayashi, superintendent for the DOE, displayed photos at the meeting, saying the department needs to "clean damages from wind, ash and soot and to mitigate water contamination issues related to the Kula fire."
"We know there is always room for improvement, and we pledge to strengthen our lines of communication," he said.
The DOE recently announced that students and staff in Lāhainā will relocate to temporary sites in Kīhei. But educators said the change is taking them away from their community, and traveling across the island is challenging.
Teachers have asked for a temporary location at Kanaʻapali or the Kapalua area to keep students together.
The department will hold a community meeting on Aug. 30, but Lāhainā educators and parents are skeptical if the department will listen.
Osa Tui Jr., president of the Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association, said there should've been more community input from the beginning.
"Lāhainā feels like they're already being ignored," he said.
"And if the community meeting next week Wednesday is to just tell people decisions that have been made without their input, that won't go down well. There has to be an openness to changing whatever plans are in place if the community says otherwise."
He added that two days of mental health training will not be enough for teachers to handle students' trauma.
Lahainaluna High teacher Ashley Olsen said she didn't have access to news reports or social media until she attended a meeting in Kīhei by the teacher's union.
"It should have been clear to the meanest intelligence that we would not be able to return to school for weeks at the least," Olsen said.
"And yet closure information was dribbled out two to three days at a time."
Before the Maui wildfires, Lāhainā schools had a student enrollment of 3,001.
According to a DOE report, 976 students have re-enrolled in other public schools or the State Distance Learning Program. However, the remaining 2,025 students have not re-enrolled.
All Lāhainā staff have been accounted for, Hayashi told the board. DOE staff will be on paid administrative leave until Friday.
Hayashi said the department has responded to 80 media inquiries, sent 18 updates by text messages for Lāhainā principals to send to their families and staff, sent seven staff email related to the fires and that 170 voicemails have been retried and nearly all have been responded to.
But Olsen said that "sending HTML-rich emails to people who had no way to access them was a prime example of cluelessness."
BOE members emphasized that more community input is needed and offered whatever support the department and Lāhainā community needs.
"Everybody is trying to figure out how to address this, and I think listening to the people who have gone through it, sitting with them experiencing that is what we need to be able to make better decisions," board member Kahele Dukelow said.
