An AI generated and office reviewed report summary.
In January 2016, Governor David Ige announced in his State of the State speech that he was working to cool 1,000 classrooms by the end of the year. That May, the Hawai‘i Legislature approved $100 million in general funds to cool 1,000 public school classrooms by the end of that calendar year. The department’s plan would later be referred to as the “Cool Classrooms Initiative.”
Three years later, the State’s heat abatement efforts changed course with the Department of Education’s (DOE) introduction of its School Directed AC program, which unlike the Cool Classrooms Initiative, gave schools the authority to air condition classrooms themselves, with minimal DOE involvement.
Report No. 25-09, An Update on the Department of Education’s Heat Abatement Efforts is an extensive review and assessment of the legislative and funding history of this initiative to account for the $100 million. We also reviewed DOE’s subsequent heat abatement effort, the School Directed AC program.
Learn how:
· The Cool Classrooms Initiative’s rushed planning and poor decisions early on contributed to DOE moving forward with expensive and complex solar-powered air conditioning systems that ultimately didn’t work very well.
· DOE was unable to provide an accounting of the $100 million, requiring the Office to estimate the amount spent through contract documents and other records, some of which were incomplete and missing.
· The Office was able to estimate that the Cool Classrooms Initiative cooled 838 classrooms at a cost of about $105 million, an average of more than $120,000 per classroom.
· DOE provided minimal structure and oversight over its School Directed AC program, which followed the Cool Classrooms Initiative. The department’s knowledge of and involvement in the program to be so incomplete and limited that the Office was unable to assess it.
Read the full report here:
https://files.hawaii.gov/auditor/Reports/2025/25-09.pdf
Report summary:
https://files.hawaii.gov/auditor/Overviews/2025/25-09AuditorSummary.pdf
Thanks for listening. You can find this and other reports at: auditor.hawaii.gov
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