Felix inquiry will not stop
By Alice Keesing
Advertiser Education Writer
Legislators continued their search for answers into the soaring cost of special education yesterday and said they will not stop their investigation despite warnings that it could hinder efforts to avoid a federal court takeover.
The joint Senate-House investigative committee met for the second time yesterday and Rep. Scott Saiki said it intends to continue "full speed ahead" in spite of a request that it suspend activities until Nov. 1 when U.S. District Judge David Ezra will decide whether to appoint a receiver over the special education system.
Attorney Eric Seitz, who made the request, has said the Legislature's investigation is a distraction to the departments of education and health, which are now racing to meet the Nov. 1 deadline.
"I'm trying to find ways that all of us can work together as opposed to wasting time working at cross purposes," said Seitz, who represents the families of disabled children in the Felix consent decree.
Seitz also has asked the committee to convince the governor to settle the teachers contract, which he said is another impediment to complying with Ezra's orders.
But that is not within the committee's power, said co-chair Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, who defended the Legislature's role.
"I can't see how we are the cause of this so-called non-compliance and that if the judge puts them into receivership it's because of us," said Hanabusa, D-21st (Kalaeloa, Makaha). "If the judge puts them into receivership it's because from 1994 to now the departments have not been able to comply with what they were supposed to do."
The state has been under Ezra's oversight since 1994 when it signed the Felix consent decree, agreeing to improve special education services for Hawai'i students as required by federal law. The cost for special education for the next two years is more than $700 million and legislators say they want to be sure the money is getting to the children for whom it is intended.
Department of Health Director Bruce Anderson yesterday told the committee that in the rush to comply with the consent decree and in the absence of qualified personnel there often has not been the luxury of going out to bid for services.
"It's not a matter of finding the lowest cost, but finding anyone who can deliver the services at any cost," Anderson said. "This is not business as usual."
The committee spent much of the morning going over stacks of financial and contract documents provided by the Department of Education. Some legislators appeared frustrated that the department was unable to provide all that was requested and unable to outline exactly how and where its money is spent.
Schools chief Paul LeMahieu told them it will take up to three months to retrieve some information from the individual schools or archives. That includes contracts for less than $25,000, which schools are free to grant without state-level supervision, he said. LeMahieu disagreed with the committee's suggestion that that implies a lack of accountability in the system.
For more than two hours the committee also questioned Doug Houck, who has helped lead Felix efforts at the DOE. Houck told the committee he believes that on a statewide basis, Hawai'i already is in compliance with federal special education law.
Legislators also probed Houck on their concerns about the test the court uses to measure the schools' compliance. There have been complaints from some principals about the service testing, said Saiki, D-20th (Kapahulu, Mo'ili'ili), and he has questions about how it is conducted, whether it uses random samples and "whether or not it's possible that service testing can be manipulated."
"But the whole problem is that we're being blocked from reviewing the underlying data, so unless we have access to the data, we have no way of verifying whether or not these allegations are true," he said.
The committee has yet to set a date for its next meeting.
Reach Alice Keesing at akeesing@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8014
