Editorial
LeMahieu wounded by longtime school ills

It will take some time to fully understand why School Superintendent Paul LeMahieu crashed and burned this week with his sudden and unexpected resignation as head of our statewide school system.

But even as controversy — and a fair amount of mystery — swirls around the resignation, some things are clear:

A good part of LeMahieu's frustration and disappointment is directly attributable to a problem that has plagued the Hawai'i public school system for years: No one, and everyone, is in charge.

This was most vividly demonstrated in recent weeks. LeMahieu was reporting to, and dealing with, an increasingly antagonistic Board of Education, a disaffected governor, a suspicious Legislature, an unhappy group of school principals and a unionized workforce still shattered by a three-week strike.

The task of being in charge of Hawai'i's huge centralized school system would be tough under the best of circumstances. With that many bosses and that many competing stakeholders, it becomes nearly impossible.

It seems clear that LeMahieu's offer of resignation was the product of frustration rather than an overwhelming desire to leave. He quickly offered to come back to the job, if he could get a commitment of support from all of the players involved.

That doesn't seem likely. And even if his immediate boss, the BOE, did decide to reject his resignation, he would come back as a severely wounded administrator.

This leaves up in the air the work LeMahieu was doing and how it will proceed. This matters on several fronts:

• First, there is the matter of trying to get the school system in compliance with the so-called Felix consent decree, which demands a certain level of services to special education students. If satisfactory compliance cannot be reached by next month, the system faces a possible takeover by the federal court.

• Second, there is the reform program launched by LeMahieu that was slowly beginning to get some traction. This was an ambitious effort that set new standards for our schools, developed a means of testing intended to see whether those standards were being met and put in place a scheme of accountability to deal with those who could not or would not meet the standards.

It was an enormous challenge to get the system to understand this effort, let alone buy into it. Slowly, however, teachers, administrators, bureaucrats and policymakers were coming around. Will this momentum be lost?

• Finally, there were charges of conflict of interest made during legislative hearings on the Felix program that must be resolved, no matter what happens next. It would be unfair to send LeMahieu on his way without getting to the bottom of those accusations.

If he is innocent of the conflict charges, as he insists, then there might be a further role for LeMahieu here even as the search for yet another superintendent begins. He has momentum on the Felix case and might have an important role to play in bringing us finally into compliance.

In the matter of standards and accountability, LeMahieu could comfortably shift back to his role as consultant to the new administration if it concludes — as we have — that this was an important effort for our public schools.