Hawaiʻi Library Association Advocacy Committee

My top three priorities are:

1. Build a stronger, more self-sufficient Hawaiʻi economy so local families can afford to live here and parents have more time to be involved in their children’s education. When parents must work multiple jobs simply to cover housing, food, and energy costs, families lose the stability children need to learn and thrive. A thriving local economy also provides the jobs students will need once they graduate.

2. Restore strong educational foundations: literacy, mathematics, science, civics, discipline, practical problem-solving, and parent involvement. Schools, teachers, and libraries should help every child become a capable reader, independent learner, and responsible citizen.

3. Expand career and technical education, paid apprenticeships, and industry-recognized credentials for the careers Hawaiʻi needs, including skilled trades, construction, health care, teaching, technology, agriculture and food production, manufacturing, and entrepreneurship. Students should have clear pathways to productive, living-wage careers here at home.

A healthy educational pipeline begins with stable families, equips students with essential knowledge and character, and connects them to real opportunity in Hawaiʻi.

Reliable high-speed internet is increasingly necessary for education, work, health care, and small businesses. The State has a legitimate but limited role: identify underserved areas, remove unnecessary barriers to deployment, coordinate with providers, and ensure that any public funding produces measurable improvements in reliability, coverage, and affordability. Taxpayer spending must be transparent and tied to results. The State should not displace private providers.

Schools, libraries, and community colleges can also help residents build practical digital skills, including online job searches, access to services, basic cybersecurity, and privacy protection. No resident should be shut out of opportunity simply because of where they live or lack of basic digital skills.

Government’s role is to ensure that public libraries provide broad, reliable access to information while serving the public with transparency, accountability, and respect for intellectual freedom. Taxpayer-funded collections should not be managed as political or ideological tools.

Libraries should offer a wide range of lawful materials and viewpoints so residents can learn, research, and reach their own conclusions. At the same time, libraries have a responsibility to maintain age-appropriate children’s collections and to give parents clear information and a meaningful role in decisions affecting their children.

Collection policies and challenges should be handled openly, consistently, and with due process, not through censorship or political pressure. The goal should be public trust: libraries that welcome inquiry, protect families, and serve every community fairly.

I support ensuring that every public-school student has meaningful, regular access to a qualified school librarian. Librarians strengthen literacy, research skills, responsible use of online information, and support for teachers and students.

However, I would not support an unfunded, one-size-fits-all staffing mandate that ignores differences in enrollment, geography, and school needs. The State should establish clear expectations for student access, provide adequate funding, and allow schools reasonable flexibility in how they meet those expectations, including shared staffing where appropriate.

Resources should go first to the people and services that directly improve student learning, not to additional bureaucracy. Every staffing requirement should be transparent, financially responsible, and evaluated by whether it improves literacy and educational outcomes.

I am, in many ways, a product of libraries. I remember the public library’s Summer Reading Challenges fondly, and when my mother was studying to become a teacher, she would drop my siblings and me at the university library while she was in class. Those experiences made reading and independent learning a regular part of my life.

Public libraries are educational infrastructure, not a luxury. I would prioritize funding to keep existing libraries safe, open, well maintained, and useful: qualified staff, core collections, reliable technology, and the repairs needed to prevent facilities from deteriorating.

That priority must be balanced with other essential state responsibilities, including classrooms, roads, water systems, public safety, and health care. I would not support treating libraries as a blank check or allowing administrative costs and costly new projects to take priority over maintaining the services residents already rely upon.

The State should review spending line by line, eliminate waste, and direct resources to measurable public benefit. Well-run libraries support literacy, lifelong learning, job seekers, small businesses, and families, especially in communities with few alternatives. They deserve dependable funding within a fiscally responsible state budget.

The last book I read was Cancer as a Metabolic Disease by Professor Thomas Seyfried. I found it mind-blowing. Building on the work of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Otto Warburg, Seyfried argues that cancer should be understood more seriously as a metabolic disease and examines the potential importance of reducing glucose availability.

I would recommend it to anyone willing to question conventional assumptions and look more deeply at the connection between metabolism, nutrition, and disease. It is a provocative book that encourages readers to study the evidence, ask better questions, and think differently about cancer.