Posted on: Monday, March 4, 2002

SECOND OPINION
School board plan worthless

By Cliff Slater

The Legislature now proposes education reform by scrapping the state Board of Education and replacing it with 15 locally elected school boards.

"We want now to have more public input, we want clear lines of accountability, we want clear lines of authority, we want clear lines of responsibility," the House Education Committee chair informs us.

Parsing the first phrase tells us that he wants our input now whereas he didn't before.

Then he talks about "accountability," "authority" and "responsibility." In the hands of elected officials, these words are meaningless.

An example: At the time of annexation, our public school system was considered on a par with the Mainland. By 1960, it was considered superior.

Today, Hawai'i's latest National Assessment of Educational Progress reading scores (reading ability precedes all other educational accomplishments) show that our public school students are the worst readers of any state in the nation — scoring less than even Mississippi and Louisiana. In math we are the fifth-worst state and in science and writing the third-worst.

Given this deplorable situation, name one single person who has been held "accountable" or "responsible" for such a dismal failure. Name just one.

As for the 15 locally elected school boards proposal, this is just another Titanic deckchair rearrangement. If you want to know the effects of this proposal, think about the impact it will have on education's "evil empire": the leaders of the Hawai'i State Teachers Association, the Hawai'i Government Employees Association and the United Public Workers union.

None; their stranglehold on public education will be undiminished.

If you are in doubt, follow the money. Will these 15 local boards have control of the money? No. Supposedly they will select their own local superintendent.

However, collective bargaining and civil service rules, closely monitored by the HGEA, will effectively narrow the selection down to just trusted insiders.

In essence, these local school boards will have all the power of Honolulu's neighborhood boards, which is to say, none. But we will all feel better about this wonderful change for the better. Just as we did following the passage of School/Community Based Management (SCBM) legislation. Remember that?

And some thought should be given to the fact that this proposal is being championed by the House Education chair, who has spent his entire life working for the government dollar, most of it as a union member with the DOE; it might have had some effect on his thinking.

It must amuse the "evil empire" to toy with us, to move the shells around the table while the pea remains in their pockets. But those of you who are alert to it will know when real education reform is happening. It will be when the 15 (more would be better) school boards are given their own budget — 100 percent of it — and when the Legislature encourages our charter schools by giving them the full 100 percent of the tuition money they are due — and when the DOE is reduced to a mere auditing function under the eye of the state auditor.

As long as the money is controlled at the center, as long as the DOE bureaucracy controls from the center and as long as the union leaders control from the center, nothing will change.

Cliff Slater is a regular columnist whose footnoted columns are at www.lava.net/cslater