If Hawaii abolishes the statewide Board of Education in favor of local boards, it will come to regret the move, an official with a national state boards association said. Time running out for
school board reformLegislators scramble to meet a
deadline tomorrow for the
text of any amendmentBy Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.com"We predict that you will change your mind after five years," said Jim Bogden of the National Association of State Boards of Education, based in Alexandria, Va. "That you would come to recognize that a state board does have value over and above local boards ... (and) that you would probably reinstate the state board."
"Look at Minnesota," he said in a telephone interview. "It abolished its state board about three years ago and now they're in considerable turmoil and some legislators there are having second thoughts about abolishing the board. There have been proposals made to reinstate the state board."
In Hawaii, a legislative push to replace the board with 15 elected school boards has made it to the final stages of the legislative session, with the heads of the Senate and House Education committees both supporting some kind of change in the way the Department of Education is managed.
A Senate proposal to create seven district boards to support the statewide board has not passed the Senate Ways and Means Committee. But Senate Education Chairman Norman Sakamoto said that when House and Senate members meet to set a final draft of the bill all ideas are up for consideration.
"I'm not wedded to a particular proposal, but I do believe education needs improvement and one area is how do we deal with issues of state board or boards that can address problems more quickly," said Sakamoto (D, Moanalua-Salt Lake).
The proposed changes in Senate Bill 3018 would require a constitutional amendment, meaning it needs approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate, with voters having the final say in the general election.
Sakamoto said time is running out to come up with an agreement on the proposed constitutional changes. That's because tomorrow is an internal deadline when the governor must be given notice of the final language of proposed constitutional amendment ballot questions.
"I don't see how, when the Senate's position is to have a state board, the House position is to have only local boards, (and) then within the Senate many members still have concerns," Sakamoto said. "I'm not confident that by Thursday the Senate will be able to be all on board."
But House Education Chairman Ken Ito (D, Kaneohe) said he is already working on a compromise proposal that he plans to present when the committee is scheduled to reconvene at 2:15 p.m. today.
Proponents of so-called governance reform -- to change the way Hawaii's public schools are run -- say they want to give more power to those who have most at stake, the communities.
"Right now the state board is so far away that a lot of people feel alienated from the board," Ito said. "This way it's in your community, like Kaneohe, we all live there and we have a stake in our kids' education. We'll make sure our board members are going to be the best we can find and they're going to be held accountable."
"What do we have to lose?" asked House Minority Leader Galen Fox (R, Waikiki).
Fox said abolishing the board "is the most important step to get to a situation, where teachers and principals of each school actually run the school themselves."
"We know it works elsewhere. We know our school system is not working very well. It's too big, it's too bureaucratic. The whole budget runs from top down, the whole money trickles down to the schools. We need to turn that around. We need to do bottom up."
But board Chairman Herbert Watanabe questions the educational benefits of the reform, saying community-based schools -- in which parents, students, teachers and administrators work with principals to help formulate budget and curriculum -- have not shown improvements in test scores.
"I don't know how much more you can say is closer to the schools," he said. "In all of these bills they have introduced ... nothing is aimed at the child."
Karen Ginoza, executive director of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, said the proposal for local boards "has some merits" because neighbor island residents have felt "very far removed from the decision-making process."
But Ginoza also said more time is needed study things like accountability and consistency, especially as the state begins to address performance standards mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
She said the union is also concerned about the proposal to let the schools superintendent, who would be appointed by the governor, set statewide policy.
"Education is of concern to everyone, and when you do that you take away the power of the people to decide policy for education," she said.
Policy making is now done by the elected state board.
Bogden, who wrote a 1996 governance study for the state boards association, said two-tiered systems of state and local boards seem to work best.
"State boards are like the orchestrator," he said.
State boards, he said, ensure that policies are aligned with curriculum and standards, while local boards can best address school discipline and day-to-day operations of schools.
"There's a reason why it's the most common governance structure," he said.
Bogden further said it is crucial to have a state-level policy making body of people from diverse backgrounds because it can serve as a buffer to the political system.
The now-defunct Minnesota state board was the victim of its political system, said former board member and Minnesota state lawmaker Bob Brown, who is now a professor of educational leadership at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.
Legislators "ultimately agreed to abolish the board ... each for their own political reasons and not for philosophical issues. ... (and now) they're talking about re-establishing a board because they're not happy with what has happened since," he said.
"The only significant lesson is (that lawmakers) should look at what is the purpose of the structure of education ... and build it around the purpose," Brown said. "We have not done an effective job of that here and hope you will do a better job than we are."
Star-Bulletin reporter Crystal Kua contributed to this report.
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