Homeschooled Hawaii children might be required to appear periodically in public school if an idea discussed Wednesday by a legislative panel trying to prevent child abuse is realized.
Several Hawaii lawmakers participated in a briefing to review child welfare service operations under the state Department of Human Services a year after an audit revealed deficiencies, and one focal point of the meeting was homeschooling as a means to hide child abuse.
“How do we ensure that the child is seen by a mandated reporter to ensure that the child is still OK,” asked Sen. Joy San Buenaventura, chair of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, who arranged the briefing.
Teachers, like health care workers and people in certain other professions, are mandated to report suspected child abuse, and there have been tragic deaths in recent years of Hawaii children subjected to abuse after being removed from school.
Heidi Armstrong, deputy superintendent for academics at the state Department of Education, said the DOE doesn’t have the power to personally check on homeschooled children to assess academic progress and make other observations.
“We don’t have the authority to go into a home and check on a homeschool student, because they’re not our students,” she told members of the committee and a few other lawmakers participating in the briefing at the state Capitol.
Representatives of the state Department of the Attorney General said they could review what public school jurisdictions in other parts of the country have in place to assess homeschooled children, and then recommend what the Legislature might be able to do in Hawaii, including potentially having homeschooled children visit a school once a year or at some other frequency to take tests to demonstrate academic progress with educators present.
Sen. Kurt Fevella (R, Ewa Beach-Ocean Pointe-Iroquois Point) said he intends to introduce a bill along those lines next year.
San Buenaventura, a former family law attorney, expressed support for such a bill.
“Give us a suggested approach,” said San Buenaventura (D, Puna). “I’m sure Sen. Fevella is going to introduce a bill. If not, I will.”
Incidents of Hawaii children whose deaths have been attributed to parental abuse after being removed from school appeared to underlie concerns raised by some panel members, who referred only generally to tragedies reported in news accounts.
In one case, 10-year-old Geanna Bradley was found dead in the Wahiawa, Oahu, home of her foster parents in January 2024 bound with duct tape, severely injured and starved. A medical examiner’s report said Bradley died of “multiple effects of prolonged child abuse and neglect” and “starvation, blunt force injuries due to multiple assaults, prolonged physical restraint and immobilization, pneumonia and medical neglect.”
According to a lawsuit, Bradley’s foster parents, Brandy Blas and Thomas Blas Sr., were awarded legal guardianship of the girl in 2018, and in 2022 removed her from Iliahi Elementary School “under the guise she was to be homeschooled.”
According to longstanding DHS policy, foster parents are not allowed to remove foster children from public school for homeschooling. Family court, however, does have the authority to allow such moves.
Armstrong said DOE previously did not have a good system to track homeschooled students, but a couple of weeks ago converted filed paper reports into a computer system where educators can easily track such status and academic levels.
Parents are required to report academic progress to DOE every semester, and a lack of progress for two consecutive semesters can be a cause to report potential neglect. Reporting requirements also include submission of standardized test results, though DOE does not know if the student produced the test results submitted by parents.
Fevella criticized DHS for vetting foster parents that end up harming children, and noted that he attempted to care for three Native Hawaiian siblings as a foster parent but was rejected because his home had only two available bedrooms for the three children.
“This is where the problem is,” he said, referring to vetting. “It is falling through the cracks.”
In March, Sina Pili of Laie was arrested and charged with manslaughter for allegedly torturing and neglecting her 11-year-old adopted daughter, who died in December 2023, two months after adoption.
The victim, Azaeliyah Pili-Ah You, was in school up until the day before she died, and had multiple injuries from child abuse, according to police.
In another tragic case, 6-year-old Isabella Kalua, who was born Ariel Sellers, died in 2021 after allegedly being abused and murdered by her adoptive parents, Lehua Kalua and Isaac “Sonny” Kalua III in Waimanalo, Oahu. According to a lawsuit, Lehua Kalua had a drug and criminal history, and Isaac Kalua had a criminal history of terroristic threatening and assault; both also had substantial financial debt.
DHS representatives did not reference or comment on any individual child welfare cases, but said the agency has been making progress to improve operations.
DHS Director Ryan Yamane, a former lawmaker who took over the job in May from Cathy Betts, said what had been a high job vacancy rate has been getting smaller in part due to recruiting efforts, pay differentials for new hires and planned pay differentials available for performance.
The state audit said the Child Welfare Services Branch of DHS in February 2023 had 402 funded positions and that 129, or 32%, were unfilled, representing the agency’s highest vacancy rate in five years.
As of Dec. 1, Yamane said CWS filled 23 positions but still had 122 vacancies.
“We are making progress,” he said. “We actually have been filling more than we have been losing.”
Yamane also said the agency has improved training, and two weeks ago kicked off a new “Kako‘o Program” for workers to visit foster caregivers and children in their care with the main purpose of offering them additional resources if needed.
Laurie Tochiki, a member of the Malama Ohana Working Group established by the Legislature in 2023 to help recommend improvements to Hawaii’s child welfare system, told the panel that progress to date is a good start but that not enough is being done.
“I guess I’m going to sit here and call foul a little bit,” she said. “I don’t think that the things that have been put in place are enough.”
