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Schools boss: Needs
By Crystal Kua
must rule budget
Star-BulletinState schools Superintendent Paul LeMahieu is about to embark on a review of all instructional and support service programs in hopes of focusing the public school system and its budget on his educational agenda of standards-based reform.
"You need to wrestle with it as a whole," LeMahieu said yesterday. "It will attempt to challenge all programs."
LeMahieu said he would like the program review to enable the department to fashion an operating budget that will reflect the needs of the department as it aims to improve student performance through achievement of the Hawaii Content and Performance Standards.
"It's starting to move in the direction of a needs based, programmatic kind of budget," LeMahieu said.
Board of Education members said they liked the idea of having a plan first and then building a budget around that plan.
"It's been a long time in coming," board member Denise Matsumoto said.
"We have to focus our resources," board Vice Chairwoman Karen Knudsen said.
Discussion of the program review at yesterday's Budget and Fiscal Accountability Committee meeting came as a result of a request by the state House Finance Committee for the department to scrutinize its supplemental budget request to come up with ways to reallocate money to help fund higher priority items.
But LeMahieu said he would prefer to look at programs in a holistic approach to see which ones are focused on goals instead of targeting individual programs in a piecemeal method. "We're not trying to help fund certain things by cutting others."
LeMahieu suggested, and members agreed, that the board should continue to support its entire supplemental budget request to state lawmakers and have them shift priorities within the budget when deciding what to fund. "We have to stick by our guns," board member Herbert Watanabe said.
LeMahieu's review would look at programs targeted for a specific purpose, such as environmental education and peer tutoring, to see if they continue to support the standards. It also would look at programs that involve specific allocations such as monies to special needs schools to see if those resources are being used well and are on the standards mark.
Programs that don't measure up could be asked to come up with ways to improve or their resources could be reorganized or redistributed.
LeMahieu said the review could begin within a month and take about three to five months to complete. It would be done by the new Planning, Budget and Resources Development Office. He also asked board members to have the budget committee take up a review of all fees at its next meeting.
