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“Please Wait. Page Is Loading.”

The sixth-grade girl tugged on her pigtail as she waited — and waited — for the screen to show the standardized test she didn’t have much time to take.

Computers in other classrooms were shut down to eke out a couple more megabytes per second from the sluggish Internet. No staff tech person was around to help; that position had been cut long ago.

And so she sat, staring at the screen on the school computer that was almost as old as she was, waiting for the page to load.

Hana High and Elementary School is one example of how Hawaii’s per-pupil funding formula seems to hammer small schools.

The way the state decides how much discretionary money to give principals each year has been to improve fairness, transparency and simplicity. But the eight-year-old still tends to benefit larger schools with increasing enrollments while inadvertently penalizing tiny schools that cover kindergarten through 12th grade.

Hana has seen its annual budget cut 41 percent over the past five years, principal Rick Paul told Civil Beat days after three of his 21 graduating seniors won prestigious national scholarships. The students won the Gates Millenium Scholarship, which pays for up to 10 years of higher education for each student.

Educators in the rural Maui district have shown innovation and determination in overcoming their school’s financial shortfalls. Indeed, exemplary students have broken free of the fiscal stranglehold, as evidenced by the announcement last month of the three Gates Millennium scholarship winners.

But some in Hana have compared the school’s budget hole with the crater — and they’re starting to question their endurance.

Lawmakers and education officials say it’s time to review the funding formula.

“Some schools have really benefitted from the Weighted Student Formula and others have been struggling,” Senate Education Chair Jill Tokuda said. “You’re not just talking about cutting down on your copy machine costs. You’re talking about warm bodies.”

A urging the Department of Education to do a thorough review of , which created the Weighted Student Formula, passed the Senate but died in the House in March.

Education Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi said in her that while the department lacks the resources to evaluate all of Act 51, the department is looking at hiring a consultant to review the funding formula.

Tokuda, who introduced the resolution, said she hopes to engage the department in the interim on how the formula has panned out.

“It was a real game-changer in the way we looked at educational governance and funding,” she said. “Is it doing what it meant to? Or should we seriously be considering some kind of change?”

The senator said most administrators would agree the current funding formula has not given them the flexibility the law promised.

The Hawaii State Teachers Association would second that. The union strongly supported the resolution, to the funding formula’s noble intent but shortcomings in practice.

The Legislature agreed this year to budget an extra $14 million for the Weighted Student Formula. This is almost $450,000 more than the governor requested just to keep pace with increasing enrollment statewide.

“When it comes to WSF money, that is money that does follow the child,” Tokuda said. “It’s hard to get much more direct.”

Outside a recent Board of Education meeting, Matayoshi acknowledged “small schools have suffered a lot” because of the funding formula’s inexact science.

The state has blamed the recession for education cuts in recent years. But teachers and principals have returned the focus to the funding formula’s impact.

This happened again at the board’s meeting in April when Brian Walsh, Kaaawa School Community Council chair, called the Weighted Student Formula “very punishing.”

“Just being a small school means you’re going to lose a lot of money,” he said, noting Kaaawa’s budget was cut 18 percent. “We can barely survive as it is.”

Back-up Plan Not Enough

In Hana, the school’s annual budget fell from a high of $3.12 million in 2007-08 to an expected low of $1.83 million for the 2012-13 school year, the principal said.

“This does not take into account that the Athletic Director and Health Aide which were not in the WSF funding and paid by the state in 2007-08, but are now in the WSF budget and the school must now pay for these positions (on a per pupil basis),” Paul said in an email.

As a hopeful catch-all, the board in September approved a $3 million WSF Reserve Fund. This was designed for shortfalls at “combination schools, geographically isolated schools, schools with very low enrollment, and other extraordinary circumstances.”

A panel of four complex area superintendents chose how to disperse the money. Hana was earmarked for $200,000, more than any of the other 26 schools chosen for funding but less than requested.

Paul sat on that came up with the new reserve funding plan. But even he didn’t understand the rationale behind the spending, both in terms of how schools were picked and why there was leftover money.

The remaining $580,000 was set aside “to provide additional targeted assistance” to schools with shortfalls caused by lower enrollment than expected, the department said in an email last week. Any extra money will likely be distributed when the September or January WSF allocation adjustment is made, officials said.

Hana school officials say the massive reductions have forced the district to rely on creative accounting and outside-the-box methods to provide the basics required by law. As a result, students are learning foreign languages online and classes are only held Monday to Thursday. Nonprofits are providing supplies while school officials try to fix outdated computers without a staff tech person.

It Takes a Village

Hana has stayed afloat in part because of dedicated community members like Tina Ames.

In 2009, she started to help raise funds for school supplies and other needs unmet under the current budget restrictions. She also chairs the school’s community council, created under Act 51.

“There are kids who are making it, like the Gates Scholars, but it is really hard for even the best student in Hana to transition to college,” said Ames, whose two elementary-age children attend Hana. “We don’t have a lot of class offerings, we have very few teachers. They’re really just hanging in there by the skin of their teeth.”

But even Ames says she’ll move her family to another district unless the situation drastically improves by the time her oldest child is ready to enter ninth grade.

“and there’s been steady progress up, up, up,” Ames said. “But the high school is really very much at a bare minimum.”

Others are fighting for change in different ways.

Linda Gravatt has dedicated herself to Hana School since 1988, when she volunteered to teach Raffi songs in her daughters’ classes. Ten years later, she became school counselor to help more kids go to college.

The principal and other educators, like mentor and writing coach , credited Gravatt for helping students earn thousands of dollars in scholarships.

Individual successes aside, Gravatt envisions more robust school offerings.

“Our band room has been turned into a testing room for elementary children,” she said. “Some of our teachers have to do many different things, making it impossible to focus on one. This detracts from having an excellent program.”

‘Rob Peter to Pay Paul’

The Weighted Student Formula is working for “probably 98 percent” of schools, the Hana principal said.

Paul pointed at Kilohana Elementary, Lanai High and Elementary, and Molokai Middle to explain the challenges.

Kilohana lost an estimated 25 percent of its budget in one year, Paul said, noting the school is extremely small and isolated on Molokai.

“Lanai and Hana are both small, rural, K-12 schools but Lanai is almost twice the size as Hana and probably reaches the magic number that will provide the necessary funding,” he said. “I believe the K-12 schools that have 180 students in grades 6-12 have enough students to generate the funding for a full complement of staff. If you have less than 180 students in grades 6-12, you will have to rob Peter to pay Paul because the small number of students do not generate the necessary funding.”

Hana, which is going through an accreditation process, has no vice principal this year or faculty technology position, school officials said.

Here’s how it breaks down for Hana, in specifics:

“I need a minimum of six high school teachers to provide all the courses required for graduation (no matter how small the school). At a student/teacher ratio of 26.15, our 75 high school students would generate the funding to buy three teachers,” Paul said. “For high school I would need the additional funding to purchase three teachers at $56,000 per teacher or $168,000.

“I would need a minimum of five middle school teachers to provide all of the requirements for a middle school (no matter how small the school),” he said. “Our 58 middle school students would generate two teachers at a 26.15:1 ratio. I would need three teachers at $56,000 per teacher or $168,000. If we do not include Article VI teachers (non-WSF, provided by the DOE), we would need two elementary teachers at $56,000 per teacher for a total of $112,000 for elementary.”

Click through to read and ‘s complete testimony.

Making It Work

The budget cuts have forced Hana to be creative in building schedules that allow students to meet state graduation requirements, Gravatt said.

Hana operates on a unique Monday through Thursday class schedule with Fridays optional for students. The school has the same instructional time as elsewhere in the state; Hana just does it in four days.

This has been a mostly positive experience, Ames said. She highlighted how the infamous Furlough Fridays did not impact Hana, and how teachers utilize the day to collaborate and plan.

She said the unique schedule is likely why absenteeism is down and test scores are up, noting the personal attention students can get if they come in Fridays.

“We’ve really risen to the occasion,” Ames said, both in the community raising money and implementing alternative ideas.

Hana has also relied on its roots, Gravatt said.

“We have an amazing kumu hula which gives them the opportunity to write about their experience with their traditional dance and chant. We have a brilliant Hawaiian teacher who reminds them of their roots and the importance language plays in any culture,” she said. “So, despite limited opportunities, we work with what we have and it turns out to be enough.”

But it’s not over yet.

Ames is readying more ideas to for students. And Paul is preparing for the loss of more special education positions and possibly school bus funding.

While the state decides how and when to review the Weighted Student Formula, hard-hit schools like Hana and Kaaawa will be searching for ways to uphold their standards despite financial handicaps.