PTSA wants isle
kids to stay put

Officials urge parents not to
transfer kids out of low-
performing Hawaii schools

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By Treena Shapiro
tshapiro@starbulletin.com

Parents should not rush to pull their children out of low-performing public schools, says Carol Nafus, president of the Hawaii State Parent Teacher Student Association.

Parents have been looking to the PTSA for advice after learning that students at 85 high-poverty schools across the state must be offered the opportunity to transfer to higher-performing schools under federal law.

Instead of jumping at the option to transfer, "We want to go and educate the parents so that they stick with the school and they stay there to help the school get better," Nafus said.

The PTSA is still waiting for guidance from the state to bring to its training sessions this weekend so that parents can better understand the federal No Child Left Behind Act, Nafus said.

Practically speaking, transferring will not become an issue for most students until the 2003-2004 school year because the state Department of Education is still struggling to establish guidelines and determine which students will be eligible to transfer or receive other supplemental services, such as tutoring.

The state will only have about $6.6 million in federal funds to comply with the law -- and because some of that money will go toward transporting students to and from the schools, "It cannot be a free-for-all," said Assistant Superintendent Katherine Kawaguchi, addressing some of the compliance issues last week.

Highest priority for transfer or tutoring services will be given to the lowest-performing students in the lowest socioeconomic brackets, Kawaguchi said. The students will not be ranked until September, when the state receives scores from last spring's statewide standardized tests.

This could create complications in many transfers this year, particularly when moving a child from a school with a traditional calendar to one with a modified year-round calendar, where the school year generally starts a few weeks earlier.

"We cannot set up parameters that students will not achieve simply because they have not had enough days of school," Kawaguchi said.

Additionally, because the tests were only given to students in grades 3, 5, 8 and 10 last school year, only those students will be considered for transfer this school year, Kawaguchi said.

Students who already attend a school other than their home school under the state's current geographic-exception law will be allowed to stay at those schools until they graduate.

About 7,000 to 8,000 geographic exceptions are approved each year, with preference given to students wanting to enroll in a program of study not available at their home school, who have siblings attending the school or a parent who works there, or to students who live in the district but have a legal residence elsewhere.

However, next year the law will be revised to give low-performing low-income students first priority to transfer, Kawaguchi said.

Whether these students are able to transfer to the school of their choice is a capacity issue, she said. Schools will not be asked to increase enrollment because that could compromise the quality of instruction, Kawaguchi said.

"Just because you say you want to go there is not a guarantee that you can get in there," Kawaguchi said.