The purpose of this commentary is to provide the strongest possible advocacy for the state Senate to not change school principals from 12-month to 10-month employees. This would harm students because it would result in the loss of exceptional school leadership, on which the future of Hawaii's education system depends.

Changing principals from 12-month to 10-month employees will result in excellent principals and excellent vice principals leaving our public schools at a time when Hawaii public education desperately needs quality leadership—and at a time when we need to retain the very best of principal leaders and attract and recruit the very best teacher leaders into school administration.

If the intent of this bill is to have the Principals Performance Contract implemented, then the solution is to deal with the cause of the problem.

Let me be very clear: Hawaii school principals have gone above and beyond the call of duty to support the implementation of the performance contract. School principals are not the cause of this problem.

In 2004, I served on the Act 51 Performance Contract Workgroup. I participated in every meeting of the Workgroup, as did all school principals who were members. As principals, we dedicated ourselves to many all-day meetings to collaborate with all stakeholders: the state schools superintendent, personnel specialists, business leaders, higher education leaders, union representatives and parent representatives—and we completed our work and submitted our full report and a draft of a proposed performance contract to the superintendent. However, it was not implemented.

Thereafter, principals repeatedly questioned the Department of Education: When and how would the Principals Performance Contract be implemented?

In 2007, the issue again was raised. In response, the DOE decided to do a pilot of the performance contract with principals of the Mili- lani Complex. The decision to not implement the recommendations of the Workgroup was confusing, as was the decision to implement a pilot totally unrelated to the recommend- ations approved by the Workgroup. Again, the principals of the Mililani Complex did what was asked of them. Again, no performance contract was implemented.

Principals should not be blamed and held responsible—nor used as pawns in a legislative chess game—for the DOE's failure to implement the Principals Performance Contract. School principals continue to provide the leadership to guide Hawaii schools through the stormy waters of No Child Left Behind and the demands of a challenging governance system. In spite of all of the confusion and distractions caused by ever-changing directions, ever-moving targets, unfunded mandates and the recent budget crisis, the strength of the public school system and of the DOE is the leadership provided by principals, vice principals, teacher leaders and classroom teachers.

This ill-conceived proposal only serves to do the following things:

» Destroys the morale of hard-working school principals.

» Forces exemplary principals to retire early and leave public education and the service of its students.

» Discourages exemplary vice principals from continuing in administration.

» Discourages exemplary teacher leaders from school administration.

» Takes punitive actions against principals for something they had no control over.

The single most important thing that senators can do to improve public education is to provide the foundation and capacity for a system that attracts, recruits and retains the most talented, skilled and visionary school leaders.

I urge you not to change principals from 12-month to 10-month employees.

Darrel Galera has been Moanalua High School principal for 10 years; he has been a public school educator for nearly 30 years and a school administrator for almost 20 years.