ISLAND VOICES
School boards must be financed

By Tim Buckley
Waikiki resident

In the movie "Jerry McGuire," one of the most famous scenes is the one where Cuba Gooding Jr., who plays an NFL receiver, tells his agent, the title character, played by Tom Cruise, "Show me the money, Jerry!"

When it comes to decentralization of Hawai'i's public school system, there will be no successful change until lawmakers not only show elected district boards of education the money but give them complete control over the funds.

The current public school decentralization legislation trudging through the Legislature (HBs 2033 and 2037 and SBs 2102 and 3018), if signed into law, arguably would be the most sweeping reform of any failing state school system, if not any state-run bureaucracy, in the nation.

With traffic cam reform grabbing the majority of the headlines this session, many in the public may be of the notion that bigger concerns that affect the future of the state are being ignored by lawmakers in just another do-nothing Legislature.

Just don't tell that to Republican state Rep. Guy Ontai, who sits on the House Education Committee. "Quit whining and give local elected boards the money to fix the problems that haunt the schools in their own neighborhoods," he demands of his colleagues, making no qualms about it.

"That will bring accountability," he continues, "and, if there are still problems at the public schools, the residents of the communities will have no one to blame but themselves and those ... they elect."

Rep. Ontai, a former U.S. Army major and West Point physics teacher who represents Mililani in the state House, has been spearheading the unprecedented bipartisan sweeping school reform legislation on behalf of the Republican representatives in the House.

He Ontai has made the education of Hawai'i's children No. 1 on his agenda, and he should also get some of the credit for having House Education Committee Chairman Ken Ito quipping out remarks about the "former Board of Education" at public hearings.

In all fairness, some of the current officials who run Hawai'i's schools are darn hard workers and should receive all the credit due them for trying to do the best they can with such limited resources from which to work and state funds that are due for another chop from lame-duck Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano's axe.