Public education should be both mirror and model in the society it serves, and should strive toward both equal opportunity and freedom of choice. Both are integral to the pursuit of happiness. Logically, then, taxpaying parents should expect fair value from our public education system regardless of what kind of public school their child attends.

In Hawaii, that seems to be missing.

Public charter schools - self-governing schools largely independent from the Hawaii Department of Education - are right now enduring a 10 percent funding reduction, while the DOE reported a $7.7 million shortfall, less than a 0.04 percent funding reduction. These shortfalls from the last legislative session are completely unrelated to the currently proposed DOE budget cuts, yet both resurrect enduring questions of understandable fairness in public education spending.

Unfortunately for public charter schools and their students, misperceptions have caused significant confusion at the Capitol, resulting in a real and measurable funding drop of nearly $1,000 per pupil. While it is true that the total public charter system received more money year-on-year, the Legislature failed to recognize that public charter schools are seeing a 27 percent increase in enrollment, from 6,131 funded students to an expected 7,810 this year. It's basically like slicing a slightly larger pie into more, yet smaller pieces; the money doesn't necessarily “;follow the child.”;

In a way, leaping enrollment numbers have made charter schools victims of their own success. Demand for enrollment in Hawaii public charter schools has created some waitlists twice as long as the school's enrollment ceilings. In spite of unconventional school facilities, parents, teachers, students and collaborations within the community have given rise to self-made schools because facilities funding does not come from additional appropriations - it comes out of the per pupil allocations.

Meanwhile, DOE enrollment has declined steadily from 1997 to 2007, from about 189,000 to 172,000 today, yet that decline is not reflected in its budget. Charter school enrollment, on the other hand, has increased dramatically, while funding lagged by some $7.7 million, coincidentally the same amount the Board of Education lamented as the shortfall in the DOE budget. Clearly, there is a need to balance funding without regard to what kind of public school is involved.

Frustration among public charter school parents, teachers and administrators still simmers with this deepest of all budget cuts in the entire state. The way they see it, lawmakers at the Capitol were unable (or unwilling) to appreciate the budget dilemma, and could not (or would not) sustain funding at the per pupil level established by the 2007 Legislature.

To make matters worse this year, as the DOE attempts to cut 4 percent of its spending across the system, it also chose to include the $1.8 million for direct support to charter schools for student services coordinators, a mandatory position closely bound to a previous special- education lawsuit. This cut might only represent approximately 0.075 percent of the total DOE budget, but for the charter schools it equates to more than 3 percent of the total charter school budget, and accounts for 6 percent of the DOE's total proposed package of cuts.

Powerful keystones like a fair and broadly understandable “;per pupil”; allocation could be a way to fund all public school children more equitably, or at least keep legislators from believing that charter school funding went up, when in fact financial support at this particular kind of public school shrank 10 percent, with significant additional cuts looming.

Meanwhile, public charter schools are nationally recognized as a viable parental choice in providing quality education, and we are hearing pledges from both presidential candidates, and the federal government to boost public charter school funding.

It is my best and most sincere hope that during the next session, the Legislature works earnestly with public charter school leaders to come up with a fair, understandable - and ideally innovative - budget methodology that is not necessarily bound lock-step to habitual thinking.

Perhaps all sides might end up slightly unhappy after deliberations; maybe that is as close as “;truth”; will get. Ultimately, if it restores the focus on our children and the quality of their education, regardless of what type of public school they attend, then it achieves a worthy goal. Grown-ups' problems should never become kids' problems - and the bottom line here is whether or not public education shapes democracy by example and in practice.