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View Point
AT the Board of Education meeting last week, I was saddened to see the focus of so many crucial decisions to be, "We can't afford it." It preempted discussion on the merits of several proposals. Education and
dollar signsWhile practicality is surely a virtue and must always be a consideration, it ought not be the primary focus for BOE members. Their primary concern is not ways and means. The job they were elected to do needs to take precedence in their deliberations. They are supposed to be determining what constitutes the best education policy.
School board members' concern about dollars is certainly understandable, given the state's inadequate funding of education. But we've elected other officials to look first at guarding the purse -- not BOE members. So if they're not looking first to what is best for education, then who will be?
But the money question has to loom large for everybody. Certainly it is past time for Hawaii to realize that it will have decent schools only if and when it decides to invest in them.
Granted, as the widespread public dissatisfaction confirms, reform is urgently needed. But reform costs money -- additional money, that is, to the essentials of paying adequate salaries and maintaining buildings and purchasing supplies.
The we-can't-afford-it stance is not very persuasive -- especially while the governor tries to extend the school population at both ends, adding pre-kindergartners and college scholarships to current expenditures. Or while he himself proposes aquariums, museums and the conversion of golf courses to parks. The proposals telegraph quite clearly that if something is deemed important enough, the funding will be found.
But it is time we acknowledged that a juggling and reordering of spending priorities is not going to suffice. As a regular, annual item, decent schools just cost a lot more than Hawaii has been allotting them -- not just to meet the crises we've created by ignoring needs ($600 million in backlogged school repairs and who knows how much in special education monies).
Annually, as a regular item, Hawaii's schools require a lot more than they've been getting. And if they want to seriously undertake the reform everybody's been crying out for, that costs even more.
Where will it come from? It will undoubtedly be necessary to seek new sources. There are other places to look.
Hawaii has not even begun to tap what pays half or more of the tab for most mainland schools: property taxes. As a result, property taxes here fall far below the national average.
Hawaii's politicos are given to replying to any such statement with indignation about how unjust property taxes have been in yielding shameful district-to-district disparities. But this is just a digression and a dodge: With Hawaii's single- district arrangement, there is no reason why property tax proceeds could not be dispersed throughout the islands just as equitably as any other funds are. (One might well question just how equitable those arrangements are -- or the reasons why Hawaii's decision makers have so consistently resisted adequate funding for schools -- but those are two other issues and separable from what is being proposed here.)
I realize that to use property taxes for schools would take a constitutional amendment in Hawaii. But that's not impossible. And perhaps it is something the state legislators ought to be considering.
It is their job, after all, to find the funding for programs the public views as vital. Given that property taxes are relatively low here, that certainly seems a place to look. Nor are Hawaii's state income taxes as high as in many other states.
THE point is that the public schools have simply got to have more money than they are getting. It is abundantly evident that new sources must somehow be found to do that, unless we want to continue the annual crazy juggling act -- and, in the process, lose teachers, administrators and, worst of all, kids.
Keep in mind that Hawaii ranks 49th of the 50 states in the money it provides for public education. We have just got to find new funding resources if we want decent schools. If there are better places to look than the two possibilities suggested here, property and income taxes, fine.
Somewhere new sources are essential. Then maybe the BOE can get its priorities straight without being cowed into looking first and foremost to Ways and Means.
Mary Anne Raywid is an Oahu resident and
a nationally recognized expert on education
policy and reform.