Schools official won't be punished
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
State Schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto said yesterday she won't reprimand her spokesman for sending disparaging e-mail about Gov. Linda Lingle's education consultant to the consultant's boss.
Hamamoto said Greg Knudsen, communications director for the state Department of Education, was not acting on behalf of the DOE or the state Board of Education when he sent two e-mails criticizing William Ouchi, to Ouchi's dean at the University of California at Los Angeles. Ouichi is a professor in corporate renewal at UCLA and a consultant to Lingle.
Knudsen sent the e-mail from his home computer and, while he noted his official title at the DOE, Hamamoto agreed with Knudsen that he did so only in the interest of full disclosure.
"Greg was exercising his First Amendment rights," Hamamoto said. "We're not considering a reprimand."
In a letter to the BOE on Friday, Ouchi asked for an inquiry into whether Knudsen was acting on his own or at the direction of the board or the DOE when he sent the e-mail. He also asked that Knudsen be reprimanded for his behavior, which Ouchi described as "shameful."
BOE chairman Breene Harimoto yesterday said he would inform Ouchi that the board did not direct Knudsen to send the e-mail but would leave any other statement to Hamamoto.
Knudsen's e-mail, to Bruce Willison, dean of the Anderson School at UCLA, said Ouchi was receiving free trips to Hawai'i from the governor and claimed that Ouchi was giving the university a "black eye" for his work on education reform. Ouchi, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, is advising Lingle on her push for a new weighted student formula and locally elected school boards.
Ouchi was also the co-author of a report to the governor that claimed that less than half of the money spent on education in Hawai'i reaches the classroom and that the DOE, as it is structured now, could not implement a new student spending formula. The DOE has challenged the report as distorted.
Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
