Bright Spot: Michelle Payne-Arakaki, Pāhoa Reads
All images courtesy of Pāhoa Reads.
“I strongly believe that early childhood education is the foundation for lifelong learning.” - Michelle Payne-Arakaki.
Michelle Payne-Arakaki is a former public elementary school principal, now leading Pāhoa Reads for the Pāhoa Promise Partnership. Pāhoa Promise Partnership is a collective effort to bring together partners from healthcare, family safety and security, early childhood education, public schools, and the County (see the full list of partners at their website linked above). Their shared mission is to ensure all keiki in Pāhoa are healthy, safe, and thriving.
Michelle started on the work two years ago as a representative for Pāhoa Elementary School. After retiring as principal, she took on the Pāhoa Reads leadership kuleana because she believes in the work and in serving her community. Pāhoa has many economically challenged families with young children, and limited access to high quality early care and learning. According to the Pāhoa Partners website, there are over 46 infants and toddlers in the community for every registered childcare seat. Preschool availability is better, but still needs to double in order to have space for every keiki. Situations like these are unfortunately relatable to many other communities on our island and throughout the state.
Pāhoa Reads
Pāhoa Reads prepares young learners for success in school and life. Their efforts promote access to child developmental support, medical care, childcare, and early learning. It also links early childhood educators with kindergarten teachers so that they can learn from and collaborate with one another.
A young reader enjoys The Very Hungry Caterpillar with family.
And, of course, there is a focus on developing young readers so that they go into school prepared and excited to read and learn more. The goal is to help as many keiki as possible thrive in their kindergarten transition, to set them up for long-term success in and out of school. Gaps in academic readiness can lead to gaps in achievement, affecting downstream markers like education attainment, earnings, and health. Early exposure to reading is an important aspect of school preparation, especially with system-wide concerns about academic benchmarks like reading fluency. Reading comprehension is also related to critical thinking and media literacy, which are important skills for our modern world.
Early learning is important, but so are early intervention and prevention. About ⅓ of young children in their area are overdue for regular well-child exams. Additionally, child abuse and neglect prevention emphasizes early family strengthening and identification of issues because exposure to violence and risky environments can have immediate and lifelong effects.
Overview of programs:
Keiki and adults watching a presentation at the library.
Pāhoa Reads covers over 1,000 keiki in the rural communities of Hawaiian Paradise Park, Hawaiian Beaches, Ainaloa, Nanawale, Pāhoa Town, Leilani Estates, Black Sands, ‘Opihikau, Seaview, and Kalapana. Michelle and her partners especially seek to help families facing economic hardship.
Pāhoa Reads connects educators, community, families, and service organizations. They work with providers and educators to improve services, as well as directly with families. Michelle helps to coordinate between groups, making plans and partnerships while facilitating the ongoing use of local data. Collecting and tracking data are important to monitor how well keiki and their families are doing, as well as documenting the efforts of their partners. You can see some of the data on the Pāhoa Promise Partnership website.
Pāhoa Reads also offers professional development and cross-training to help the early learning workforce learn from and support one another. Preschool and kindergarten teachers get to learn from and talk to one another to better support their students in transitioning between schools. Trainings have covered topics such as developmental screenings and risk screenings, to help address health and learning challenges as early as possible. Promoting professional development helps keep up high quality childcare and early learning by equipping providers with best practices and information on resources available to help them best serve families.
On the public-facing side are events, activities, and outreach to families and their keiki. These efforts aim to support early reading and other forms of early learning, along with family bonding, health and safety, and more.
Program Highlights:
Classroom poses with Pāhoa Reads backpacks and books
Pāhoa Reads has done an impressive amount of work and reached many, many families in just a short time. Book-related achievements include distributing over 500 books to families of newborns in just over a year, in a partnership with YWCA. They’ve also worked with various partners to give out over 4,000 books under a program called “Books from Birth.” At the school level, the “Read, Return, Repeat” Book Bag Program provides easy access to books in pre-k and kindergarten public, charter, and private classrooms.
In order to ease the transition between school levels, Pāhoa Reads works with two public school classrooms to provide attendance incentives for summer programs that help incoming kindergarteners prepare for their first year of elementary school. The backpacks they give out have plenty of books for the keiki, while the caregivers get gift cards to reward families for getting the kids to school consistently.
For family-strengthening, Pāhoa Reads empowers their partners to enhance play-and-learn activities, promote ʻohana engagement, and provide essential resources. They also support Pāhoa Promise Partnerships' “New Parent Kaiaulu” groups to help families feel connected. In these groups, families receive both peer and professional guidance, building trusted relationships they can lean on.
Pāhoa Reads also partners with the Kaʻū-Keaʻau-Pāhoa Complex Area on family events, including last year’s Puna Pre-K Play Day and Community Resource Fair. A few dozen families attended the inaugural event. Community members went home with bags of books and other educational content, while classroom teachers got professional resource toolkits. A follow-up event for this year is to-be-announced!
Mahalo to Partners
These community efforts build a strong foundation for children’s school readiness and long-term success. Of course there is Pāhoa Promise, and Michelle is also grateful to partners like Family Hui, Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, Partners in Development’s Tutu & Me Traveling Preschool, Easter Seals, Pāhoa Public Library, and the YWCA. Friends of the Future oversees implementation of the plan.
Baby and parent exploring and learning together with toys and books.
Support the Work & Learn More
Although websites and social media are not yet available specifically for Pāhoa Reads, you can learn more by visiting Pāhoa Promise, including this page that shows the different aspects of Pāhoa Reads’ program model.
You can reach out to offer collaboration, in-kind donations, and volunteer service.
And you can donate funds via Friends of the Future, their 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor nonprofit.
Pāhoa Reads logo
