David Y. Ige

HONOLULU — The Hawaii State Department of Education (HIDOE) has successfully started processing payments to vendors after restoring its Financial Management System (FMS), which had been undergoing maintenance.

“The Department sincerely thanks our vendors and business partners for their understanding and patience during this outage,” said Amy Kunz, Assistant Superintendent and Chief Financial Officer. “Please be assured that we are working diligently to bring this critical system back up and running properly. We are making every effort to expedite payments once the system is fully operational.”

On Oct. 6, the FMS underwent a critical upgrade, which encountered complications and resulted in a disruption of service. Primarily, payments to vendors are being affected by the outage. Employee payroll and school food services were not affected.

Over the weekend, the Department processed and mailed out approximately $320,000 in checks to various vendors. The Department also will be sending out nearly 2,000 checks totaling approximately $15 million in payments.

FMS has been partially restored, and HIDOE has implemented a plan to expedite payments in three priority areas — school facilities, Workers Compensation claims and special education services. From there, the Department will phase in access to all schools and offices to begin processing Purchase Orders and payments. These important steps are being taken so as not to overwhelm the system and to also ensure all aspects are functioning properly.

“As part of our effort to modernize the Department’s systems, including FMS, we have been working to upgrade our programs. This is a complex initiative due in part to the age of some of these platforms,” said Brook Conner, assistant superintendent for HIDOE’s Office of Information Technology Services. “Our goal is to enhance these systems to better serve our students, schools and community partners to minimize this type of disruption going forward.”

Vendor-related questions or concerns may be directed to the school or office listed on the Purchase Order.

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About the Hawaii State Department of Education

The Hawaii State Department of Education is the ninth-largest U.S. school district and the only statewide educational system in the country. It is comprised of 256 schools and 36 charter schools, and serves about 180,000 students. King Kamehameha III established Hawaii’s public school system in 1840. To learn more, visit HawaiiPublicSchools.org.

Derek Inoshita
Communications Specialist
Phone:  (808) 586-3232
E-mail:  [email protected]