State Sen. Russell Ruderman is asking the Legislature to fund a higher education distance learning center in Puna. ADVERTISING State Sen. Russell Ruderman is asking the Legislature to fund a higher education distance learning center in Puna. A center would
State Sen. Russell Ruderman is asking the Legislature to fund a higher education distance learning center in Puna.
A center would provide “greater access to secondary education” in Puna, which Ruderman says is the “fast-growing” and yet “poorest district in the state.”
“The Puna District is the size of Oahu, and yet there’s not one single classroom of higher education,” Ruderman said Wednesday. “I don’t think that situation exists anywhere else in the state.”
Senate Bill 826 requests a $610,000 appropriation: $275,000 for four, full-time equivalent positions, $150,000 for a feasibility study and $185,000 for current operating expenses such as utilities, supplies, advertising and equipment rentals.
The center, as proposed in the bill, would operate under the University of Hawaii at Hilo.
Ruderman said it could be implemented similar to the North Hawaii Education and Research Center in Honokaa, also an extension of UH-Hilo. He said it probably would operate with “one or two classrooms” and conduct “mostly online courses.”
He said a likely home would be the district’s new regional library when built, though a feasibility study would determine possible sites.
The idea garnered approval from UH-Hilo Chancellor Donald Straney, who in an email Thursday said he thinks a Puna center would bring higher education into an “underserved area” and would “compliment” the NHERC and Hawaii Community College’s Palamanui satellite campus.
There’s still “planning, community input and design work” that needs to happen before more is known about what the center would look like, Straney said in the email.
Ruderman’s bill is co-sponsored by state Sen. Josh Green, D-Kona, and state Sen. Lorraine Inouye, D-Hilo. It’s slated to be heard Tuesday by the Senate Committee on Higher Education.
Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
