There's a movement afoot in Hawaii to do away with the elected school board. That according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:
Parents, school officials, students, business leaders and even a current school board member used their Sunday morning to urge voters to replace an elected Board of Education with one appointed by Hawaii's governor.
The source of frustration, according to the group leading the anti-Board charge, Children First, are Furlough Fridays, a cost-cutting measure that the Board of Ed said would save over $400 million over two years, but also gave the Aloha State ?the fewest instructional days in the nation? last year.
Hawaii, of course, has the only statewide school district in the nation, and with nearly 180,000 students, it's a bit like doing away with Philadelphia's Board of Education (if?Philly had a Board of Ed;?its ?schools were taken over by the State in 2001.)
Even though Governor Linda Lingle and Board of Education Chairperson Garrett Toguchi announced last May that they were discontinuing the furlough program, Children First doesn't want to take any chances and is calling for a constitutional amendment to kill the board.
[P]ublic education in Hawaii has fallen about as low as it can go. Despite the best efforts of dedicated teachers, principals, staff and parents, our public schools are simply not accomplishing their purpose anymore: to educate our youth and prepare them to be contributing members of our community. THEREFORE, we must stand up, be counted and act! Future generations are depending on us.
For a variety of reasons, the system we have now with 1) a Board of Education selected in elections in which blank votes total hundreds of thousands, 2) a governor who controls the money but is at odds with the board, and 3) a superintendent hired by the BOE but not even a member of the governor's cabinet, is a recipe for continued infighting and disaster.
During the first Race to the Top round last spring, Andy Smarick concluded that ?the teacher provisions of Hawaii's RTT application? rival[ed] Connecticut's for placement at the bottom of the list..?
So, maybe Children First has a point.? As they say inside the Beltway, Pomaika`i.
?Peter Meyer
