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The classrooms at Farrington High School in Kalihi are furnished with the usual desks and cabinets, but several come with a bonus: dirty mops, buckets, ladders and ceiling tiles covered in mildew.

For the last three years, three of the school’s buildings have suffered from bad roof leaks, affecting about two dozen classrooms, said Vice Principal Ronald Oyama.

“You wouldn’t believe the additional damage we face with all the heavy rains,” he said. “And you’re talking about kids learning with buckets of water around them.”

Two years ago, the school put in a request for money from the Hawaii Department of Education to fix its roofs, which are priority No. 1 right now at Farrington. The roofs are just one example among $392 million dollars worth of backlogged school maintenance requests throughout the state. And if the sentiment at Farrington High School is any indication, long waits and substandard classroom conditions have become accepted as the norm.

Two bills making their way through the state Legislature this year attempt to change that, though. and propose creating a trust to rent and develop underused school land for a variety of commercial and residential purposes. The revenue generated would help upgrade or replace old school facilities.

Under the current system, schools make a list of repair and maintenance needs and send them to the Department of Education. The department then uses its own criteria to rank the requests from all 257 schools in the system.

The department says it tries to address safety concerns first and repairs to state and district offices last. In any given year, the department is usually able to fund Farrington’s top two out of 10 repair requests, the vice principal said.

Schools in the Honolulu District are on average almost $2 million behind on building repairs — the highest average backlog of all seven districts — according to from the department. The district’s long repair list is due in large part to the age of its 53 schools. They were the first to be built when education became an institution of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

“The Honolulu District is the oldest by far,” said Public Works Administrator Duane Kashiwai at a legislative briefing on Feb. 17. “The Leeward District, on the other hand, is the youngest, and its schools have an average backlog of just over $1 million. As the schools get older and older, the backlog continues to grow and the schools get more expensive to maintain.”

More than half of Hawaii’s public schools are more than 50 years old, and 16 percent (41 schools) have passed their 100th anniversaries.

Source: Hawaii Department of Education

The repair requests for each district reflect the age of their schools.

Source: Hawaii Department of Education

Farrington

At Farrington High School, the repair backlog for the World War II-era campus is more than triple the $2 million average for its district. The school, described by many of its students as “ghetto,” awaits more than $7 million in repairs.

“Our facilities are just really old,” Vice Principal Oyama said during a tour of the circa 1936 campus. Most of the classrooms don’t have air conditioning, the football players went three years without hot water in their locker rooms and the now-defunct swimming pool has had standing water in its deep end for so long that it resembles a swamp, complete with weeds and algae.

Rust has eaten away large chunks of a concrete ramp leading from the athletic fields to the main campus. Students troop up it without seeming to notice.

As Oyama led the way up the stairs of one classroom building, he had to raise his voice to be heard over road noise coming from the freeway barely 50 feet away. The noise level is about the same inside the un-insulated classrooms, he said.

“These kids are so resilient,” Oyama said. “I say all the time that when you graduate from Farrington High School, you will have proved that you can learn under any conditions, no matter how bad. But the kids don’t deserve that, you know? They deserve better.”

The quality of buildings matters, says Oyama. They make up half the equation when considering all the different environmental factors that impact students’ learning.

“Facilities are so important, because they can optimize learning,” Oyama said. “Not only do good buildings make it easier for students to focus, but they also help attract the best teachers and make it so the students want to come to school.”

Legislators said the department is largely to blame for not thinking ahead enough when prioritizing repairs. Oyama says he doesn’t blame anyone in particular.

“Times are just hard with the budget,” he said. “Yeah, we wish all of our top 10 requests were taken care of, but I don’t blame the repair and maintenance process or the department. What it really comes down to is that their hands are tied by the budget.”

Campbell High School

At Campbell High School in Ewa Beach, the vice principal told Civil Beat many students avoid drinking from all but the two newest water fountains and request to go home to use the restroom. Campbell is in the Leeward District, where schools are $1 million behind on maintenance and repairs, on average.

“Students have said there’s only one water fountain they feel safe enough drinking from,” said vice principal Elton Kinoshita.

The older fountains on campus are rusted around parts of the mouth piece, and at least one has an unidentified black substance caked onto its surface.

Campbell student Shaila Toyama said that the only places students drink water is in the office or the band room.

“The other fountains are warm and dirty and sometimes there are a lot of ants,” Toyama said. She said bathrooms could also use improvement. 

Several school buildings don’t even have restrooms, and the bathrooms that do exist often suffer from the effects of vandalism and sheer age, Kinoshita said.

Back at Farrington, Oyama said he believes Department of Education administrators empathize with schools’ needs.

“I really think they understand what we’re going through and they’re doing the best they can with what they have,” he said.