Pool of candidates for schools job limited

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

The search for someone to take over Hawai'i's complex and troubled school system is likely to lead the Board of Education to a shallow pool of qualified candidates at best, experts say.

Hawai'i's new superintendent will inherit a department rich in problems: shortages of teachers and textbooks, bleak hope for additional money from a sometimes combative Legislature and increased pressure to reform the special-education system.

So who would want the job?

Former Superintendent Paul LeMahieu's $90,000 salary, unless it is substantially raised, would virtually limit the choice to someone inside the Department of Education — and therefore someone who has never headed a large district like Hawai'i's that serves 183,000 students, said Prof. Thomas Glass of the University of Memphis School of Education.

But Hawai'i needs more than that, he said.

"If you put someone in charge of over 180,000 kids, you're going to have to steal the best superintendent from someone else," said Glass, who conducts research for the American Association of School Administrators. "I would say the pool isn't excellent. But you could come up with 15 good candidates and five very good candidates. You just can't put an ad in Education Week and expect excellence."

The possibility that a federal judge could take over the system's special-education programs would reduce the number of good candidates even more, according to education experts.

"I don't know of a real good candidate who would want to come into a situation with that kind of pall hanging over your head," said Bobby G. Malone, an associate professor in the department of educational leadership at Ball State University in Indiana. "You're going to be reacting to what the federal court tells you to do on top of what the board of education tells you to do. There's not going to be a vision for what needs to be accomplished."

LeMahieu, the department's primary advocate for reform and accountability, unexpectedly resigned Thursday night. In two weeks, Federal Judge David Ezra is scheduled to decide whether to take over the Department of Education's special-education program.

LeMahieu served almost exactly three years, matching the job expectancy in a large urban district nationally.

Since 1990, the country's 30 most prominent urban districts have seen 147 separate superintendents, or an average of almost five each, Glass said. Among the 10 biggest urban districts, the most senior superintendent has been on the job since only1999.

One district in Indiana, known as "the graveyard of superintendents," has gone through 11 superintendents in 22 years, Malone said.

Between now and 2010, American schools will have to replace half of their superintendents because of retirements, said Barbara Knisely of the American Association of School Administrators in Arlington, Va.

"There's a lot of stress," Knisely said. "You have community pressures, there may be fractious relationships with the board. It's a very political position."

The irony is that superintendents need years to repair problems that plague big school districts, Malone said.

"They didn't get that way overnight, and they're not going to change overnight," he said. "We have unreasonable expectations of people when we hire them. We want substantive change, but we don't give them the time."

Malone believes the job market leaves Hawai'i with either ambitious candidates looking for their first superintendent job, or older veterans heading toward retirement.

"There's an outside chance you may get someone who is really qualified who sees this situation as a challenge and they consider it their quest in life to succeed," Malone said. "But I think it's kind of remote for someone who has been through the rigors of the superintendent's job elsewhere."

The cost of recruiting and flying candidates back and forth to Hawai'i will be expensive for a job that pays far lower than similar school positions around the country, Glass said.

"It would not shock me to see a $200,000 bill" for recruiting, Glass said.

When the board hired LeMahieu in 1998, his salary was $50,000 less than the average for superintendents of similarly sized districts nationally.

The Legislature authorized the Board of Education to raise LeMahieu's salary to as much as $150,000, although it never did. Even at that level, "it will be interesting whether or not we can attract top candidates," said Winston Sakurai, first vice chairman of the board. "That's still below the national average."

There are some good candidates within the department, he said, particularly acting superintendent Pam Hamamoto, the former McKinley High School principal who has been in charge of improving special education services.

Even if the board pays the new superintendent $150,000, the problems remain, said Carl Takamura, a LeMahieu supporter who is also executive director of the Hawai'i Business Roundtable.

"The set of circumstances that made the job Paul was trying to do so difficult, they're still there," Takamura said.

Advertiser Education Writer Alice Keesing contributed to this report.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085. Reach Alice Keesing at akeesing@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8014.