How safe are your keiki from a fire in school? That was the State Board of Education discussed on Thursday. They got a progress check from the Department of Education that 15 schools have resolved the issue.
HONOLULU (Island News) – How safe are your keiki from a fire in school? That was the State Board of Education discussed on Thursday. They got a progress check from the Department of Education that 15 schools have resolved the issue.
Island News told you about this when it first came up in April. There are 266 public schools that the state Department of Education has to maintain fire alarms for.
First, the good news. In the last six months, the DOE removed 15 schools from a fire watch list, including three schools on manual fire watch plans for over five years.
Over 60% of Hawaii public schools have fire alarm issues
Those are Baldwin and Kalaheo High Schools; Konawaena Elementary & Middle; Moanalua Middle; Heeia, Kahaluu, Kainalu, Kapalama, Kaumualii, Keoneula, Koko Head, Kuhio, and Laie Elementary; and Olomana School.
Interim Deputy Superintendent of Operations Randy Moore said, “The department has made really good progress since April in focusing on getting the systems back up and running.”
Now, 106 schools have operable fire alarms that are under 20 years old with readily available replacement parts, and the DOE has funding to fix nine more schools next fiscal year.
Now, the challenging news.
“If you assume a fire alarm system will last 20 years, that’s 13 schools per year that need to be replaced. And the replacement cost in round numbers is $2.5 million a pop. So, there’s $30+ million a year we need to spend in perpetuity to keep our fire alarm systems operable,” summarized Moore.
There’s already a long list of alarm systems that don’t work, or are so old there aren’t replacement parts. (Click here to see that list.)
Kahele Dukelow, the BOE member representing the County of Maui, asked, “Do you have a way of prioritizing how you will catch up the ones that aren’t operable? I saw one that’s 44 years old. I was like, whoa,” she noted.
Moore says he can’t predict when the DOE can ever catch up to fix this current list because it depends on what funding the state legislature wants to allocate.
“The appropriations will go up and down for reasons that have nothing to do with need,” he explained.
In the meantime, the department says it’ll continue to prioritize schools on the fire watch list. It also plans to start a pilot program at Kealakehe High School where staffers wear devices and can manually report fires
