Special-ed conflict alleged
By Alice Keesing
Advertiser Education Writer
Legislators yesterday probed a possible conflict of interest involving a Department of Health employee who has a working relationship with a private company that he oversees on behalf of the state and its special-education students.
Yesterday's hearing was part of the Legislature's ongoing scrutiny of the millions of dollars being spent on special education as the state attempts to comply with a federal court order to improve services. The joint House-Senate investigation was sparked by concerns about alleged conflicts and inflated charges to the state.
The committee yesterday turned its attention to the relationship between David Drews, the head of the Department of Health's Honolulu Family Guidance Center, and Loveland Academy, which is contracted by the DOH to provide day treatment and other services to about 25 children with autism.
Drews oversees the guidance center's contracts with Loveland Academy and other private service providers. What drew the committee's attention was his "second hat" as president of nonprofit Central Pacific University, which lists Loveland Academy as its campus site.
The committee's special counsel, James Kawashima, suggested that Drews had received a "personal benefit" from the association and is using Loveland Academy facilities to misrepresent the university's facilities to potential students.
Central Pacific University is a distance-learning university that grants degrees via the Internet in areas such as psychology, computer science, business and music. Launched in August 1999, the university has about 140 Mainland and international students.
While all courses are provided over the Internet, Central Pacific University advertising material on the Web shows parts of the Loveland campus with a Central Pacific University sign hanging outside.
Another photograph shows a classroom full of students. And the text implies that "hands-on" learning experiences are available at Loveland Academy.
"What you really needed Loveland Academy for ... was to be able to suggest that you had a campus," Kawashima said.
Drews said the Web site was not intended to mislead potential students and that "it was always our intention" to add workshops and seminars to help provide much-needed training for Hawai'i.
However, Drews agreed that classroom photographs were "staged" using people who "were around that day" on the Loveland site. "We were a new school starting up," he said. "We had to show something."
Drews told the committee that, while he has hardly used them, he was granted the use of two classrooms at Loveland Academy in return for painting and carpeting them. He has received no money in the arrangement, he said.
And he disputed suggestions that his position at DOH poses a conflict. Drews said he has no authority to grant contracts to Loveland or any other provider. But when pressed by Kawashima, he agreed that he does have some authority over billing and payment matters for private providers such as Loveland.
Drews also provided the committee with an internal DOH investigation that found no evidence of a conflict of interest.
"There may be the perception of a conflict of interest," said Anita Swanson, DOH Deputy Director for Behavioral Health, who attended yesterday's hearing. "But do I think that it impacted the delivery of services to kids or the cost? No."
