2024 has challenged public and private funders to speed up the facilities and needed workforce to teach 3-4-year-olds in our universally accessible preschools across the state. The initial joy in seeing the legislature respond generously to the cry for physical facilities for the 50% of children unable to access quality preschools has given way to, in 2023-2024, the bleak reality of an all-too-small teaching workforce. The facilities, funded in part by the last of the flood of federal COVID-19 larges in 2021-2022, have been followed by more intractable problems related to insufficient compensation, a lack of university and community college faculty to teach the all-too-small numbers of new educators, so common in the continental US, has plagued Hawaii.
     The Hawaii State Legislature has mandated that Hawaii complete its implementation of public preschools by 2032. During that time, we must create incentives and new ways of attracting an accomplished workforce to a field where the sector has carried the overwhelming number of schools for decades and must persist as the source of much of our state’s curricular diversity. Given the century-old state prohibition against using public funds to fund private preschools, the funding of private preschools, dependent on private philanthropy and tuition and fees, was never certain. While that uncertainty of funding continued through 2024, the public faced the challenge of maintaining the private preschools while establishing two systems that are or can be complementary.
     The Castle Foundation, a traditional funder of teacher education and high-quality professional development for existing teachers, became perhaps the most essential programmatic effort in 2024. Able partners in higher education included the University of Hawaii system, with community colleges, four-year colleges, and graduate schools receiving an annual grant of $125,000. In addition, the private and often innovative Chaminade University, a Marianist university, continued to receive a yearly grant to support undergraduate and graduate students in 2024. The traditional focus on scholarships continued but was augmented by substantial additional funds for licensure, CDAs, continuing education, and professional development. Wherever possible, we co-funded with our excellent partners, Kamehameha Schools and the Hawaii Community Foundation.
     The emerging sense is that the Castle Foundation while supporting scholarships and the University of Hawaii stipend program we helped to initiative in 2022-2023, may mean we front-load more funding for two-year community colleges where entry is most accessible and where course completion for students working multiple jobs to pay tuition is more feasible. Obtaining teaching licensure without sacrificing needed quality might best be done through flexible alternative education, supplemented by additional funds for continuing educational and professional development, which may be part of the solution. Our trustees want all preschool teachers to obtain a four-year academic degree but realize we may need intermediate steps initially. The key to success is funding ongoing and new professional development through intensive cohort work and individual online CDAs and PD. Obtaining licensure to speed teachers into the classroom is consistent with the plans of the Governor and LTG’s initiatives in our field.
     Just as crucial to the Castle Foundation is ensuring our invaluable and experienced private sector continues to receive funds to obtain accreditation or to maintain it, funds for capital expansion and minor capital repairs, funds for teacher training, funds for curricular innovation and evaluation, improvement to k-readiness, etc. Working with preschool administrators, teachers, and advocates state-wide, we crafted requests for proposals that allowed us to target grants and speed up the application process. We continue to emphasize grants for accredited preschools with the greatest chance for kindergarten readiness. However, we also assist preschools seeking NAEYC accreditation or other key accreditations for the first time. IN 2024, we provided nearly $300,000 in low-income tuition assistance; since 2007, we have provided over $2,000,000 to encourage attendance in private preschools. Moreover, our partnership with the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools has expanded our professional development opportunities throughout the state.
     2024 brings back memories of the 1940s when the Castle Foundation helped develop the Territorial public kindergartens. This decade-long effort led to a sizeable public kindergarten system available to every state citizen. It complements the continuing private kindergarten system, even if more minor, which provides the needed diversity and pluralism for our early education offerings.
     As we head toward the final weeks of 2024, I am especially mindful of the Castle Foundation-funded initiative at Chaminade University. This initiative brings DHS and early education professionals to plan for a high-quality training program for teachers on toddlers (two-year-olds). Under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Park, the Castle Foundation has provided program planning funds and ample scholarship funds to encourage initial enrollment. The community’s need for certified teachers of toddlers is substantial and increasing rapidly as many preschools in Hawaii are considering adding toddler programs to existing preschools. Our Foundation will follow Dr. Park’s planning team with great interest and ensure that funding is prioritized for community education and developmentally appropriate efforts.
     Finally, 2025 will bring leadership changes that have been carefully planned for many months. My cousin Dr. Kitt Baldwin, a pulmonologist in Seattle, Washington, will retire next year. He has accepted the critical position of Foundation president starting January 1, 2025. He will work closely with me to ensure that the Foundation’s 19th-century charter continues to thrive in its service to Hawaii. Dr. Baldwin is a descendant of the famous medical missionary Dr. Dwight Baldwin of Maui. Dwight Baldwin is renowned for his substantial medical missionary work, the many lives he saved from smallpox in the 1853 pandemic, and how much he did to establish Western medical practices in the early Hawaiian Kingdom. Our new president is the grandson of businessman and developer Harold K.L. Castle and a great-great grandson of the philanthropist Mary Tenney Castle. Our trustees are grateful for his continuing commitment and his more significant involvement in the many projects and programs that the Foundation invests in. In 2025, we will also welcome a new trustee to our ranks. Dr. Theresa Lock is a well-respected researcher, educator, and professor at the University of Hawaii’s College of Education. Dr. Lock has worked on policy and procedures related to preschool workforce development and has been an influential expert on everything from Head Start and private preschools to the rapidly developing universal access preschool system. Dr. Lock will add the always-needed dimension of the theoretician combined with a proven innovator and practitioner.
     As we bid a fond aloha to our president, Dr. Robert Peters, I am also looking forward to his continued commitment to the goals of the Foundation as a member of our informal community advisory group. Dr. Peters and I have worked tirelessly to further the goals, educational opportunities, and equity in Hawaii. I look forward to our continued philanthropic partnership in all the forms that might take.

Alfred L. Castle
Executive Director and Treasurer
August 1, 2024