Forums to discuss
school systemThe meetings, to start Nov. 4,
will focus on decentralization
A citizens group will hold public forums and take comments on a proposal for a decentralized public school system that Gov. Linda Lingle hopes to submit to Hawaii voters in next year's general election.
The group, appointed by Lingle, also will set up an interactive Web site to inform the public and gather comments, group leaders said.
The steering committee of the 22-member Citizens to Achieve Reform in Education yesterday outlined tentative plans to launch a series of community forums statewide starting Nov. 4.
The group will begin with a "straw man" proposal -- a draft to generate discussion and provoke the creation of better proposals -- which will be guided by key recommendations from past education reform studies and the decentralized system adopted by Canada's Edmonton school district, which has served as a successful model in Seattle and Houston.
Based on comments from the public, educators, lawmakers and other interested parties, the proposal will be refined by the committee into a reform package to be submitted to the 2004 Legislature, said Randy Roth, who was reassigned Wednesday to be Lingle's senior adviser on education.
House Speaker Calvin Say said yesterday he thinks Republican Lingle, who took office Dec. 2, is moving "too quick" with her education reform plan.
"It's only been not even a year she's been in public office and now she wants to delve into public educational policy reforms? That's a little too quick, I would say," Say (D, St. Louis Heights-Wilhelmina Rise) said.
"I would first try to get all the different studies and get all the stakeholders together, rather than having some outsiders come in and say, 'This is how to do it,'" he said.
Say said he doesn't think there should be criticism of the current centralized school system.
"I've always said our public school system is doing a fantastic job with the composition of students that we have, with the resources that we have and the dedicated teachers and administrators that we have," he said. "And you can see it with the awards that we have every year. You can see it ... with the amount of scholarships and grants that our public high school students get."
The standardized test scores of Hawaii's high school students fall below the national norm "because all the bright ones that are in the middle schools ... then apply to private schools," Say said.
Asked to comment on Say's observations, Lingle said: "I think the general public is well aware that the current system is not working well for families and students aren't achieving, and anybody who thinks the current system is OK is simply in denial and not willing to face objective facts."
Roth said he believes the public is behind Lingle.
"If people think as strongly as we think they do, and if we do as good a job as we hope to do in terms of getting out there and helping them to understand the situation and understand the possibilities, I think their elected officials on the Board of Education and in the Legislature are going to get the message and understand what we have now is not acceptable," he said.
Committee member Laura Thielen, a state Board of Education member, said the uniform recommendation of all public education reform studies in Hawaii dating to 1974 has been to decentralize the school system.
Past reform efforts sought to delegate more authority to the schools, "but the authority still remains in the central office and it can be taken back at any time," she said.
