This is a critical year for Hawaiʻi’s keiki. Let’s prioritize our children and families, not cut the programs and services they depend on. Together, we can create a Hawaiʻi that our keiki deserve — where all are healthy, safe, and ready to learn.
This sixth annual Hawaiʻi Children’s Policy Agenda, published by Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network Speaks!, reflects the input of 44 Community Champion members. These organizations, coalitions, and individuals are committed to improving the lives of our keiki by promoting public policy changes that benefit children’s health, safety, education, and economic security.
The Agenda contains 12 priorities for the 2021 Hawaiʻi State Legislative Session. These are the top priority issues of our Community Champion members. Additionally, the membership is also in agreement that core services to children and families should be maintained in the state’s budget.
HCAN Speaks! respects the diversity, expertise, perspectives, and priorities within this community of advocates and is honored to advance the work of our peers in children’s advocacy. HCAN Speaks! supports all of the items in the Agenda. Each initiative lists a lead organization that serves as the primary point of contact for advocacy.
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Economic security and equity for children
Universal paid sick days
To combat the public health crisis and allow employees to take the necessary time to recover from illness and prevent spread in their workplace and community, and to care for family members who are sick, Hawaiʻi needs to adopt paid sick days legislation. By allowing all employees who work over 80 hours in a year in the state accrue 56 hours of sick leave, we will see a decrease in community spread for viruses like the flu and COVID-19, and prevent an economic crisis caused by workers getting sick and going without a paycheck.
Lead: Hawaiʻi Working Families Coalition
Implementation of Hawaiʻi’s new Access to Learning Law
In 2020, the state adopted legislation requiring all 3 and 4 year olds have access to a preschool program by 2032, in addition to other robust changes to early learning. To ensure we meet that ambitious goal, let us work together to ensure we have the systems and resource in place.
Lead: Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network Speaks!
Progressive revenues to avoid furloughs and budget cuts
HB 3/SB 56 (personal income tax, corporate, capital gains), HB 283/SB 785 (REITs), HB 441/SB1302 (offshoring), HB 445/SB1300 (estate tax)
Before making budget cuts, the state should raise significant new revenue from those in our community who are fortunate enough to be able to afford it. Raising progressive revenues from profitable corporations and wealthy individuals can help our state avoid budget cuts, strengthen our recovery, and help reduce inequality.
Lead: Hawaiʻi Tax Fairness Coalition
Paid family leave
Paid family leave, or family leave insurance, allows workers to take paid, job-protected leave for family emergencies, such as the birth or adoption of a baby, elder care, or to care for loved ones with a serious injury or illness. A bill establishing a family leave program in Hawaiʻi to provide 16 weeks of partial wage replacement would prevent working families from choosing between the health and safety of their family or their ability to pay rent and put food on the table.
Lead: Hawaiʻi Working Families Coalition
Child safety and welfare
Credentialing of school psychologists
Properly licensed school psychologists provide effective services to help children and youth succeed academically, socially, behaviorally, and emotionally by providing direct educational and mental health services for children and youth. Additionally, they work with parents, educators, and other professionals to create supportive learning and social environments for all children. School psychologists have a particularly critical role in supporting the most vulnerable children, including those struggling with issues like gender identity or sexual orientation, integrating from another place of origin, autism, or fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
Hawaiʻi is the only state without certification or licensure for school psychologists. Without requiring licensure, we cannot ensure that its school psychologists are uniformly qualified to deliver the appropriate standard of services. Additionally, licensing of school psychologists would allow Hawaiʻi to seek warranted reimbursements from the federal medicaid program for the services provided by school psychologists in an educational setting.
Lead: Hawaiʻi Association Of School Psychologists
Health and wellness
Family Planning Program funding
Fully fund the Family Planning Program at $2.4 million to ensure all people in Hawaiʻi have access to basic, preventive health care and education regardless of where they live, how much money they make, their background, or whether they have health insurance.
With the COVID-19 pandemic impacting every one of us, we know that, in times like these, it is important to make sure that everyone has the ability to promote their health and economic security. Without adequate funding, many people across Hawaiʻi will not have access to the family planning services they need.
Lead: Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest and Hawaiʻi
Ensuring equal access to the full range of reproductive health care
All people in Hawai’i – regardless of income, gender identity, or type of insurance – should have access to the full range of preventive sexual and reproductive health services at no cost. In 2021, Hawaiʻi should pursue legislation that strengthens and expands state law by requiring insurers to cover a wide range of sexual and reproductive health care services with no co-sharing. In 2021, we will pursue a resolution to request a study to determine the costs and benefits of this legislation.
Lead: Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest and Hawaiʻi
Comprehensive bill to regulate e-cigarettes: flavor ban, impose taxes, restrict online sales, require permitting and licensing
According to the Surgeon General, increasing the price of tobacco through taxes is one of the most effective interventions; it especially helps to keep youth from picking up this deadly habit. Unlike traditional cigarettes, the e-cigarette industry is largely unregulated, including loopholes allowing youth to purchase online, leading to astronomical levels of youth vaping in Hawai‘i. In order to reverse this alarming trend, Hawai‘i must enact policies that create uniform regulations across all tobacco products. Following decades of progress in youth addiction to cigarettes, e-cigarette and tobacco companies are hooking a whole new generation on nicotine with sweet flavors to mask the harsh taste of tobacco. With 97 percent of youth who vape saying they use a flavored tobacco product*, it’s clear that in order to reverse the youth vaping epidemic, we need to eliminate the sale of the flavors that entice them.
Lead: Hawaiʻi Public Health Institute
Establish a fee on sugar-sweetened beverages to generate revenue and improve health
A fee on sugary drinks is an investment in health. Not only does it encourage people to choose healthier drink options, but it raises revenue for important public health programs.
Lead: Hawaiʻi Public Health Institute
Education
Access to summer learning opportunities to address COVID learning loss
With so much valuable in-person instruction time lost due to the pandemic, students need even more support to make up for learning loss and widening achievement gaps. Projections from researchers predict that by Fall 2021, students could lose 3 to 12 months of learning based on the quality of their distance learning and how quickly they return to the classroom. Not only does this create immediate issues around achievement gaps and student success, but significant learning loss could cause long-term consequences with an increase in high school dropouts rates and lower annual and lifetime earnings. Quality summer learning programs allow for more time for kids to engage in learning, provide new ways to explore material and ideas, and reduce learning gaps between high- and low-income families. Increasing the funding for summer learning programs ensures that all students, especially the most vulnerable, have access to high quality summer programming to address learning loss.
Lead: Hawai‘i Afterschool Alliance
Mandate the Hawai‘i Department of Education and Board of Education to convene a working group on the full-service community school strategy
Community schools is a strategy where a school becomes the hub of its community and coordinates relationships and resources through the school to accelerate equitable outcomes in health, education, and employment. The need for community schools is even greater in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as schools are struggling to address the huge inequities, learning loss, socio-emotional, and mental health needs of their students alone. With a whole-child, evidenced-based, and equity-focused approach, community schools are able to ensure that no student falls through the cracks, and will be more efficient and nimble to care for their families’ changing needs and address barriers to success. Hawai‘i should implement a working group convened by the Department of Education and Board of Education to explore the full-service community school strategy and identify opportunities to leverage new and existing funding streams to implement community schools as a strategy for equitable, high-quality education.
Lead: Hawai‘i Afterschool Alliance
Maintain funding levels for the REACH afterschool program at $500K per year
Since its creation in 2013, the REACH program has been a positive impact on students’ lives. REACH, which stands for “Resources for Enrichment, Athletics, Culture, and Health,” is an afterschool program for public middle and intermediate school students throughout the State. In addition to facing more demanding academics, middle school youth are dealing with the challenges of transitioning from elementary school to middle school and then high school. Peer pressure, academic demands, exposure to new social environments, and physical changes are added distractions to an already new and sometimes overwhelming time in their lives. Having a safe space to go afterschool where they can learn skills and tools to be successful is critically important. All middle and intermediate school students must have a safe and engaging place to go during the afterschool hours.
Lead: Hawai‘i Afterschool Alliance
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About HCAN Speaks!
Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network Speaks! (HCAN Speaks!) is a nonpartisan 501(c)4 nonprofit. Our movement is fighting to ensure all keiki are healthy, safe, and ready to learn. HCAN Speaks! gives you the tools you need to make informed voting decisions, hold leaders accountable, and change systems and policies.
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