Recent revisions to a federal financial aid form promise to significantly increase the number of students in Hawaii who get help paying for college, but the effort could backfire this year because of issues with the rollout.

The new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which has been streamlined to be shorter and easier to complete, opened three months later than usual. Even now, the online form remains open only intermittently. The challenges could impact when colleges, including the University of Hawaii, send out financial aid offers. 

“On paper, it’s going to be a really good thing,” said Frank Green, a financial aid outreach specialist at the University of Hawaii West Oahu. “It’s just really frustrating because it doesn’t work.” 

In 2021, Hawaii students left $12 million in federal grants for college on the table by choosing not to complete the FAFSA.

The U.S. Department of Education that roughly 1,880 additional Hawaii students could be eligible for federal grants under the “better FAFSA.” The simplified form automatically inputs applicants’ tax return information, saving families from manually filling out the information themselves. 

Last school year, 56% of Hawaii seniors completed the FAFSA — far short of the state’s pre-pandemic goal of getting 90% of students to submit the form. 

Some students don’t fill out the FAFSA simply because they don’t plan on attending college. But others leave the FAFSA untouched because they’re confused by the application or automatically assume they can’t afford a college education, said David Sun-Miyashiro, executive director at HawaiiKidsCAN.

“It blows their minds, what they’re missing out on,” Sun-Miyashiro said, adding that he believes more students would consider higher education if they completed the FAFSA and saw how much aid they could receive. 

A Possible Decline in Applications

Students may not complete the FAFSA for a number of reasons, said Gus Cobb-Adams, a college application and transition specialist for Hawaii P-20 Partnerships for Education. Students from low-income families may prioritize working after high school. , more graduates have also been taking gap years before entering college, he added. 

But the FAFSA can help students better understand what options they might be able to pursue after graduation. For example, Cobb-Adams said, low-income students who complete the FAFSA could receive over $7,000 in federal grants, which could easily cover the costs of tuition and books at a local community college. 

There are currently 13 states that require high school seniors to complete the FAFSA. While students can also submit an opt-out form, the laws work as a “light nudge” in encouraging students to consider their options for attending and financing college, said Peter Granville, a fellow at The Century Foundation. 

When California’s FAFSA requirement took effect last academic year, it resulted in an outpouring of additional support for families struggling with the application, said Shelveen Ratnam, the communications and public affairs coordinator at the California Student Aid Commission. The FAFSA completion rate for the class of 2023 in California hit 74%, Ratnam added — up 6% from the previous year. 

As current high school seniors navigate a new FAFSA application and face a shortened timeline for completing the form, Ratnam said he’s optimistic that support systems created last year will prevent California’s completion rates from declining. 

In 2021, Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz introduced a that would have made the FAFSA a graduation requirement by the 2023-24 school year. The bill did not pass. 

Cobb-Adams said he believes all Hawaii seniors should complete the FAFSA. But he said making it a state law could put an additional strain on counselors who are already stretched thin. 

At Kohala High School on the Big Island, seniors are required to submit a FAFSA or complete a worksheet showing their basic knowledge of the application, said school counselor Erin Henderson. She attributes this requirement, in addition to the school’s popular financial aid nights, to Kohala High’s FAFSA completion rate of 68%, the sixth highest in the state last year. 

Even with these supports in place, Henderson added, she’s worried the delayed release of the FAFSA could reduce the number of students submitting the form this year. The intermittent availability of the online form, combined with its late release, may frustrate some students to the point of giving up, Henderson said. 

“I hope that it won’t result in a reduction, but I do fear that it might,” Henderson said. 

College Uncertainties 

Even if students complete the FAFSA this year, many can expect delays in receiving their financial aid packages, which help families understand how much they will pay for a given college. 

Many students won’t receive their financial aid packages until March or April, Green said. In years when the FAFSA was released on time, colleges began sending out packages in early February. 

This year, Green added, some students may need to make a decision for the fall without receiving financial aid offers from all of their colleges. 

“They may very well be in a position where they’re going to have to make the call without the numbers,” Green said. 

These delays could ultimately affect Hawaii’s college-going rates, Cobb-Adams said. If seniors, especially those who are low-income, are still waiting for financial aid packages in the spring, they may prioritize other pathways like working or joining the military, he added. 

For smaller schools, like Chaminade University, recent changes to the FAFSA may have less of an impact on their abilities to issue financial aid packages, said Chaminade President Lynn Babington. Chaminade’s smaller applicant pool allows the university to process its FAFSA forms more quickly.

Chaminade has hired more representatives to visit high schools across the state and help families complete their FAFSA applications in 2024, Babington said. 

Typically, the University of Hawaii Manoa has encouraged students to submit their college and FAFSA applications by a priority deadline in early February. Students can still apply after February, but less funding for financial aid may be available, said Nikki Chun, vice provost for enrollment management and interim director of admissions at UH Manoa. 

UH Manoa hasn’t changed its priority deadline yet but it’s considering moving it back to later in the year, Chun added. In the past, the university aimed to send out its financial aid packages between January and March. This year, Chun said, the university may start issuing financial aid packages in March at the earliest.   

UH Manoa will continue to encourage new students to enroll by May 1, but the university will be understanding of the delays students are facing this year, Chun added.

“We’re in a mode of just trying to be flexible,” Chun said. 

In the long run, the revised FAFSA looks promising for high school students, Green said, adding that he recently completed his own test application in 10 minutes. In past years, he said, the application has taken him around 30 minutes. 

But, he added, it will take time to work out the current challenges with the FAFSA, and the class of 2024 may pay the price. 

“I think the parents and the students are going to experience new levels of frustration that they don’t deserve,” Green said.

Sen. Lorraine Inouye was confident Hilo High School would have a new parking garage for its gymnasium by the end of 2024. The school, which is over 100 years old, already lacked sufficient on-campus parking, Inouye said, and having a garage was essential in case the gym needed to serve as an emergency shelter during a tsunami or fire. 

An architect had begun drawing up plans for the garage before Inouye learned around November that the Department of Education the $7.4 million allocated for the project — along with over $450 million intended to improve facilities at other schools statewide.

“It’s kind of a crazy situation,” Inouye said.

DOE has over $2 billion in unspent capital improvement program funds at school facilities, but it remains unclear how — or when — the buildup of money will result in campus improvements.

DOE has roughly $880 million obligated in contracts for ongoing projects and another $1.2 billion that will lapse by 2026, . 

DOE leaders have proposed that the Legislature , but the department has until June to spend the money. Some lawmakers have argued that unfinished school projects should take priority in the new year. 

“Before you embark on new projects, you’ve got to take care of the old projects,” Sen. Donna Mercado Kim told DOE leadership at a recent . 

On Oahu, Farrington High School is losing out on over $57 million that would have gone toward the construction of a new gym, music building and other campus facilities. The lack of resources for schools, like Farrington, that serve low-income communities only increases families’ distrust of public schools and encourages flight from the public education system, said Rep. Ernesto “Sonny” Ganaden, who represents the Kalihi district. 

“For many of us who represent Title I schools, the CIP list isn’t pork barrel, it’s not pet projects,” Ganaden said. “These are necessary updates to infrastructure.”

While CIP funding for schools has increased in recent years, DOE’s spending has been unable to keep pace. The Covid-19 pandemic only worsened matters, introducing additional delays in the permitting and construction process for school projects. 

At this time, the department has approximately 180 projects under construction and an unspent $130 million in planned projects that it was unable to start over the past three years.

Increasing Funds, Declining Expenditures 

While senators recently criticized DOE’s limited oversight and communication when it comes to handling CIP projects, legislative appropriations may have also contributed to the department’s buildup of funds over time. 

Since 2016, the DOE’s CIP appropriations have steadily increased, with the department receiving nearly $1 billion in the 2021 to 2023 fiscal years. 

Many legislators want to fund attention-grabbing CIP projects, such as new gymnasiums or auditoriums, for schools in their districts, said Cheri Nakamura, director of the He’e Coalition. But, she said, as appropriations for new CIP projects accumulate, it can make it more difficult for DOE to manage projects that are ongoing.  

With approximately 20% of Hawaii schools over a century old, the state needs to better prioritize facility projects, especially when some campuses are to broken bathroom faucets or leaking roofs, Nakamura added.

Legislators also need to balance their own priorities with the DOE’s capacity for construction and project management, added Rep. Amy Perruso. Currently, DOE’s office of facilities and operations has just over 70 job vacancies.

“We do need to make sure that we have the capacity and (the projects) are truly what the school leadership needs and wants, and legislators are not supplanting DOE work with our own projects,” Perruso said. 

As CIP appropriations rose over the past several years, the department’s spending fell. Up until 2018, the department typically spent 70% or more of its appropriated CIP funds. But in the following years, the department spent less and less of its CIP budget, until it spent less than 1% of its appropriations in the 2023 fiscal year. 

Several factors have contributed to the recent spending slowdown, said deputy superintendent Curt Otaguro. In particular, the Covid-19 pandemic created supply chain shortages and delays in the permitting process, he said, adding it could take a year and a half to receive a permit for a school CIP project.

DOE faced another roadblock in spending CIP funds earlier this year when legislators denied the department’s request for nearly $150 million in project completion funds. While these funds help to cover unexpected costs that may arise in the construction process, the Legislature appropriated no money in the 2023-25 biennium budget.   

House finance chair Kyle Yamashita said in an emailed statement that the decision stemmed from legislators’ concerns that the department had too many inefficiencies and improper project planning when it came to building school facilities. DOE’s CIP budget already far surpassed the funding allocated to other departments, he said. 

“The denial of the funding aligns the DOE with other Departments in executing its capital improvement projects in a prudent and consistent manner,” Yamashita said. 

Potential Solutions 

Not all state departments have faced the same challenges with spending their CIP funds in recent years. 

During the pandemic, the University of Hawaii went “gangbusters on construction,” said Jan Gouveia, vice president for administration. With the exception of two projects, the university plans to encumber the entirety of its CIP budget totaling over $300 million, Gouveia said.

“We don’t lapse money,” Gouveia said, although she acknowledged the university has seen a decline in its CIP appropriations in recent years. 

Gouveia attributes the university’s success to the reorganization of its facilities and procurement offices in 2016. Before the reorganization, Gouveia added, there was no way to easily track the status of ongoing CIP projects and appropriated funding. 

DOE now faces similar considerations around its possible reorganization. 

In last month’s Senate briefing, Otaguro said no one in the department is responsible for overseeing CIP projects from beginning to end. Senators pointed to DOE’s lack of central organization as contributing to the department’s struggles to spend its CIP funds. 

At the briefing, Ways and Means Chair Donovan Dela Cruz said senators may introduce legislation in the coming weeks proposing changes to DOE’s office of facilities and operations. 

But some officials are more hopeful about the department’s ability to improve.

Over the past few months, DOE has worked on a comprehensive review of its facilities and real estate assets, said Board of Education Chair Warren Haruki. From this review, the department can revise its processes of encumbering and spending its CIP funds as necessary, Haruki added. 

“It’s going to take a long period of time to reap the benefits of this,” Haruki said. 

Chad Farias, executive director of the School Facilities Authority, believes his agency can also help to expedite the spending of CIP funds and the completion of school projects in the coming years. 

SFA was created in 2020 with the intention of overseeing schools’ CIP projects. Right now, Farias said, SFA primarily handles construction projects for charter schools . But as the agency expands, it intends to take responsibility for all CIP funds allocated for public schools within the next two years, Farias said. 

He said he plans to revise the process of selecting vendors for CIP projects, using a prequalified construction method that could reduce the time for awarding bids by up to 80%. DOE already uses this process for smaller projects, Farias added, but he’s hopeful that SFA could scale up this approach and apply it to more CIP projects. 

These changes will take time, Farias said. But he believes Hawaii schools have the ability to spend all of the CIP funds they receive from the Legislature.

“I’m not afraid of failing,” Farias said. “I’m only afraid of not getting the opportunity to try.” 

Thomas Dee, an economist and one of the Stanford co-authors, said that it wasn’t yet clear if or when the declines would be reversed, or how families might plan their re-entry into local schools. But a clear line connected remote schooling to fewer kids, he argued.

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“Unsurprisingly, parents particularly didn’t want younger children — kindergarten or elementary-grade kids — sitting in front of a computer all day,” Dee said. “We’ve seen that in the enrollment declines, and what it implies is that some kids were missing out on those early developmental experiences, educational experiences we know can be really critical and have lifelong implications for them.”

According to the study, as a working paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research, kindergarten enrollment fell by 3-4 percent in districts that opted for all-virtual instruction last fall. Elementary school enrollment fell by about 1 percent, while middle and high school enrollment was mostly unchanged.

To reach those conclusions, the research team painstakingly assembled data on student enrollment, as well as grade-level enrollment, from state departments of education, comparing 2020-21 figures with those of the preceding four school years. They also relied on data from Burbio.com, which tracks how school districts are offering instruction during the pandemic. The authors ultimately assembled a sample of 875 districts serving over one-third of all American K-12 students. While about half of those districts opened the 2020-21 school year in remote-only instruction, the other half was divided between those holding in-person classes and those using a hybrid model.

All told, they found that offering all-remote classes led to an enrollment drop of 1.1 percentage points, or roughly 300,000 students. Notably, the scale of disenrollment resulting from all-remote school was greater in demographically identifiable areas, such as rural districts and those serving more Hispanic students. The effects were almost twice as large in districts with lower concentrations of African American students, a phenomenon that could reflect attitudes previously expressed in public polling: Black parents of school-aged children as white parents to say they favored online classes, according to a survey conducted before the 2020-21 school year began.

The Stanford findings dovetail somewhat with those of other recent publications. A released in September by scholars at the University of Michigan and Boston University also detected evidence of significant enrollment drops in Michigan public schools, with coinciding increases in private school enrollment and the rate of homeschooling. co-authored by Dee and University of Hawaii professor Mark Murphy showed a 4 percent decline among K-12 students in Massachusetts between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, with larger effects in smaller districts and those serving more white families. Finally, national data from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools points to a huge increase in charter enrollment last year.

Dee described the initial numbers coming out of states and districts as an imperfect tool, but one that currently offers the best guide to how families across the country have reacted to the unprecedented disruptions of COVID-19.

“I view the enrollment data as a sort of canary in a coal mine: a leading indicator that doesn’t capture the nuance we want in understanding what’s going on with kids, but that has the virtue of being available relatively quickly and comprehensively, representing the whole universe of public schools.”

‘Counts aren’t rebounding’

While education observers are still getting a sense of how many students left traditional public schools last fall, the first inklings about the current school year are already becoming available. And so far, they don’t foretell a mass return of students who sat out last year.

by the Los Angeles Unified School District — the second-largest in the U.S. after New York City — show about 27,000 fewer students showed up for classes this September than last September. That represents a 6 percent decline in total enrollment, even as schools in L.A. have long since reopened for in-person classes.

Disenrollment has also persisted in Hawaii which has already released . Total kindergarten enrollment on the islands — which operate as a single, statewide school district — saw one of the steepest declines in the country during the pandemic, falling from 13,074 in 2019 to 11,103 in 2020. But while some have predicted an early education “” this year as parents finally place their kids in kindergarten, it has so far been absent; kindergarten enrollment is up by about 350, but still remains about 12 percent below the pre-pandemic status quo.

“What we’re seeing is that the fall 2021 counts are not rebounding to what we saw [before the pandemic],” said Mark Murphy, Dee’s co-author on the Massachusetts paper. “I think it’s starting to suggest that what we saw in fall 2020 may occur more commonly in fall 2021 than we originally thought.”

Instead, Murphy noted, the number of first graders has grown — an indication that families who “red-shirted” their children last year may have opted to place them directly into first grade this September. Meanwhile, the two-year decline between 2019 and 2021 is still substantial in grades two, three, and four.

Murphy did reflect that changing perceptions of the COVID threat may still be influencing the decisions of families. The in late summer resulted in a spike in both cases and hospitalizations in Hawaii, which likely preyed on the minds of concerned parents.

“There may be some changes in the response to how families are thinking about enrolling their children given the changing dynamics, and the greater intensity of the Delta variant may impact individuals’ behavior.”