"We've done site-based management for 150 years," says Joseph J. McHugh, the new Catholic schools superintendent. He is a Jesuit scholar and former priest brought here March 1 after a national search.
His job is "90 percent putting out fires," he says, because principals are key to the Catholic system. They report to and can be fired by whoever hired them - either a church parish for most of the system's 41 early learning centers, elementary schools and high schools, a religious order for a few and the diocese itself for a few more.
They hire and fire teachers, oversee curriculum in accord with a variety of established and well-accredited standards, oversee admissions and are charged with keeping their budgets in the black.
Their schools operate on shoestrings yet are neat and clean, kept so in large part by their students. The students wear uniforms most days and like it. They are pushed hard to study. They turn up better test scores than the public schools and have less delinquency.
I visited two high schools, Damien Memorial and Maryknoll, that consider themselves college prep schools, send most graduates on to four-year colleges and some to the best colleges in America.
A Wall Street Journal editor commented in July: "Catholic schools challenge the public school monopoly, reminding us that the neediest kids are educable and that spending extravagantly isn't the answer."
Catholic school tuitions in Hawaii range from $1,800 to $6,800, with each school setting its own. All enroll some needy youngsters free. Just as tuitions vary so do the schools. "We don't want the schools to be all alike. People aren't all alike," says McHugh.
But he does want all the schools to teach personal responsibility and be leadership academies in moral values, family life and integrity. Catholic schools generally are stricter than public schools.
There are relatively few Catholic brothers or sisters still in the system. However, in a four-school visit I met two who are principals - Brother Karl Walczek at Damien Memorial High and Sister John Joseph Gilligan at St. Theresa.
Most staffers are devoted lay Catholics willing to take somewhat less pay than in other schools. Lay principals and teachers are the wave of the future, McHugh says.
THE schools can make fast decisions. Two years ago teacher Bill Wiecking wanted Damien to open the World Wide Web to all Damien students by hooking into the Maui Supercomputer as soon as it became available. Sure, if you can do it with shoestring funding, Brother Walczek said. Damien led the signups. Wiecking, who taught at Punahou and in the public schools, finds Damien the most exhilarating place of all.
Beyond freedom from bureaucracy, students, teachers and staff seem to enjoy togetherness. A teacher who is at Maryknoll from 6 to 5 daily told me: "I just love it. It is a joy for me to come to work."
As we try to trim the cost and musclebound-ness of our public schools - where talented and dedicated people also work - our Catholic schools deserve a closer look.