School board vote
is important
IN the long run, the Nov. 7 election of school board members could have more effect on your tax bills, as well as on your child's welfare, than any other contest.
Candidates for the Legislature -- Congress and even the White House -- have acknowledged education's importance by declaring it the No. 1 issue.
Yet many of us continue to assign minimal importance to choosing the people who will actually be making the education decisions.
It is the Board of Education, more than the planners and policy-makers and budget committees, that determines what the long-term future will be.
School board members are the only officials we've got whose sole responsibility is designing the future. They carry it out by shaping the kind of citizens who will populate the state and be making its decisions in 20 or 30 years.
A Board of Education member is far from the powerless, innocuous position many assume it to be.
This year's election is of particular importance: We elect not just the usual six or seven members, but nine of the 13 members comprising the board. That means we could elect a new majority that might be almost anything: an indecisive, deferential group poised to accomplish almost nothing of its own; a radical majority out to slash and burn; a reactionary majority resolutely set to return us to days said to have been far better.
Here are just some of the decisions that a majority on the board could impose:
It could inform itself as to what it would take, and lay the groundwork for expanding Hawaii's economy with a technologically prepared future work force or it could continue the policies that have produced a dropout rate of almost one in five, who are destined to remain a permanent drain on the economy.
It could insist that a single ethnic perspective dominate public schools, with its beliefs and values serving as the only ones that can be taught Hawaii's children.
It could make a good superintendent leave -- either by out-and-out firing him, or more subtly by making his job more difficult or even by making it impossible for him to carry out his program.
Conversely, it could retain a poor superintendent long after it has become apparent to all that, in the interests of the schools and children, he should go.
It could decide that the essence of preparing citizens consists of indoctrinating a particular set of beliefs, while holding that teaching youngsters to examine our history critically is to teach them to be subversive rather than patriotic.
It could waffle and avoid difficult decisions, adopting a policy, then withdrawing and reconsidering it, then letting matters hang without a decision -- as has been done on the decision to bar the harassment of youngsters in school by classmates who judge them to be insufficiently macho or feminine.
It could determine that all children must be taught reading by the same method and make it impossible to select methods on the basis of the needs of particular children and groups.
It could decide that discipline is the solution to Hawaii's school problems and insist on its imposition to the point where more and more youngsters are kicked out or pushed out of school.
It could emphasize the improvement of education for "at-risk" or "disadvantaged" students, who now constitute 45 percent of the public school population or it can continue to support the policy of serving well only students who come to school already achievement-minded.
It could deny that teachers should have any input whatsoever regarding the curriculum they are to teach, relegating them to the role of hired hands.
It could, like the Kansas State Board of Education, reopen the whole creationism debate and decide that evolution could no longer be taught in schools or that equal time must be allotted the biblical account of the world's creation.
It could choose to ignore in its policy- making even overwhelming evidence -- as in the case, for example, regarding the urgent need to downsize Hawaii's large schools. While breaking large schools down into separate schools within schools would simultaneously cut the risk of violence, enhance academic learning for all students and double the chances for school success for disadvantaged youngsters, it could decide no such action is taken.
It could end school-by-school adoption of textbooks in the interests of statewide textbook decisions to be made by the board.
It could decide that the encouragement of self-expression and the development of opinion by children is an unnecessary indulgence and undesirable, and that no personal vows or perspectives or outlooks can be sought from them.
It could lead, with the introduction of bold and important policy measures, or it could defer school leadership to the Legislature by assuming a largely reactive stance and introducing no real initiatives.
Selecting the members of a body empowered to do these things is of no casual significance. It is rather enormously important -- for our children and for the rest of us as well.
So ask hard questions of those who are running: What has a candidate contributed to our community in the past? What does the candidate know about public education and the issues that surround it? What organizations are supporting a candidate, and why?
And for heaven's sake, vote. And do it wisely. If a candidate hasn't set forth a fairly clear idea of what he or she wants to do as a Board of Education member, then you can't vote wisely. Vote for someone else.
Mary Anne Raywid chairs the Education Committee
of the League of Women Voters of Hawaii.
By profession, she is a specialist in education policy.
