School funding problem should not slow progress

THE ISSUE The schools superintendent wants to hold off on implementing a new funding formula until officials can review how it should be applied.

HOLDING OFF on a new method of financing Hawaii's public schools could turn down the heat that has been generated in the struggle to find an equitable way to distribute insufficient education funds.

However, the suspension should not be used to negate a legislative mandate intended to direct money to students most difficult to educate.

The Board of Education must not allow school officials to step away from the plan, even though the board, too, has found implementation frustrating and difficult.

Schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto, dissatisfied with the latest proposal for funding as well as the current formula, has asked that the matter be set aside until she and her staff can analyze what works best for student achievement and examine methods used by the schools that are succeeding.

The idea of the formula was to fund schools by assigning "weights" based on the needs of their students. Children historically more difficult to educate, such as those from low-income families or whose English-language skills fall short, would have heavier weights and thus a greater amount of funds would flow to their schools.

But while the formula would have increased money to schools with greater numbers of such students, it also took away so much from smaller and isolated rural schools that administrators contended it would impair their students' achievement and force them to cut services from counseling to janitorial operations.

The formula pitted school against school and though it was revised to provide a base amount of money for each, Hamamoto questions whether it would be effective in reaching its goal.

Hamamoto contends that without an assessment of what produces achievement and how much that costs, the formula is being applied in a vacuum. She suggests that the formula begin by determining how much it costs to educate an average student, then add weights to each one with further needs.

The formula is a component of the 2004 Reinventing Education Act that hoped to steer more money into the classrooms and allow more flexibility for individual school operations. The law required the formula to be launched this year, but lawmakers provided no new money to go along with it.

When the first funding plan saw some schools crippled by lack of money, the Legislature approved $20 million to stabilize budgets until a revised formula could be charted. But neither the board nor Hamamoto is satisfied with the rewrite.

Both agree with an independent study that the school system is underfunded by almost $300 million and that equitable funding will continue to be difficult without more money.

Hamamoto may be correct to delay the plan to get a better handle on the problems. Nonetheless, the mandate remains and should not be disregarded.