HI to make preschool available for 3-4 year-olds

Hawaii put forward a plan Tuesday to make preschool available to all 3-to-4 year-olds by 2032, which if it's successful would put the state in a rarified group of states managing to provide pre-kindergarten education to most of its children.

Senate President Ron Kouchi said the state's top reason for the effort is to educate Hawaii's children. The state estimates there are about 9,200 children whose parents want to send them to preschool but aren't able to. It's targeting its plans at this group.

The state plans to have 80 new classrooms ready for use in 2024, each of them serving 20 students. Hawaii has already identified 50 classrooms at existing public elementary schools and 30 in publicly-funded charter schools that it can convert for use. At the end of a decade, it anticipates needing 465 more classrooms for pre-K than it has today. The state will draw on $200 million the Legislature appropriated for this purpose last year.