Lingle's plan for principals debated

By Lynda Arakawa and Gordon Y.K. Pang
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

Gov. Linda Lingle's proposals to pull school principals out of their union and lift requirements that charter school employees must belong to a union are meeting resistance from labor officials and at least some employees who say education problems cannot be pinned on them.

She also said charter school employees — from teachers to janitors — should be allowed to decide whether they want to join a union, form a new union or not be members of one. Neither idea is entirely new. Former Gov. Ben Cayetano didn't think principals should be in the union, and had also proposed that charter schools be free from collective bargaining rules. The Legislature disagreed.

Milton Shishido, president of the Hawai'i Government Employees Association Unit 6, which represents principals and other educational officers, said that principals' union membership is not the problem.

"The fact is that for some time now, the authority of the educational officers has eroded," said Shishido, principal of McKinley High School. "We're not able to run the schools the way we think would be in the best interests of the students. Give us back some of our authority and give us some of the necessary resources, and some guidance. We need to get some leadership and some guidance."

Lingle's proposal to remove principals from the union would set up a system where school boards would negotiate and enter into a four-year, "performance-based" contract with a principal. The board would review each principal's performance and consider teacher and parent input as well as student achievement, and decide whether to renew the principal's contract.

Principals would keep the tenure they earned as teachers but not as principals, and they would be able to go back to teaching if they are fired, said Lingle's senior policy adviser Randy Roth.

Roth said the proposal assumes an education system made up of local school boards — another Lingle proposal this session — and that if local school boards are not established, then the statewide school board would handle the negotiations. While the bill only addresses principals, Roth said Lingle believes that vice principals should be removed from the union as well . He said Lingle will probably request they be included in the bill.

There are about 280 principals and 255 vice principals in Hawai'i's public schools.

"What we're saying is that local school boards ought to be able to seek out the person of their choice to hold accountable, to accomplish certain specific results and if they don't accomplish those results that school board ought to be able to fire that principal and bring in someone who can get those results," Roth said.

"No one likes the idea of losing his or her job, but we're talking about the future of our children, we're talking about about the public education system which simply isn't getting the job done now, and so these changes are needed.

Roth noted, however, that the board would have to recognize "considerable restraints" on principals' ability to manage schools the way they want.

Other principals said getting them out of unions would not accomplish the goal of improving schools but would instead demoralize an already overburdened corps of executive school officials.

Pearl City High School principal Gerald Suyama questioned the governor's position that taking principals out of the union would help solve the ills of public schools.

"There's no more dedicated bunch of people than principals," Suyama said. "They want to see students learn, they want the schools improved. After all, it reflects on them if they're schools are not doing well. And we have enough pride in ourselves that we want to see things getting better. To say that they're going to improve the schools because we're not going to belong to the union I think is a false premise. And I think it's an insult to us, to be honest."

Further, the school superintendent has a process to remove a principal already, he said.

Former schools Superintendent Herman Aizawa also said he doesn't think removing principals from union membership will improve their performance. "If you look at the professionalism of the principals, they're not going to make decisions because they're in a union. They do whatever is good for the students."

As for lifting the union requirements on charter school workers, Roth said the intent is to free the schools from hiring "people who are subject to very restrictive work rules."

The bill would exempt charter school employees from state collective bargaining rules, essentially removing them from their current union, but employees would be allowed to join or form a union, Lingle administration officials said.

The bill also includes provisions establishing charter school employees as employees of the school's governing board rather than the state, although they could choose to participate in state benefits such as health and retirement plans.

Removing the employees from the state appears to address concerns from at least some charter school administrators, who complain of the state's bureaucratic hiring process.

Twenty-five of the 283 public schools are charter schools. There are about 3,350 charter school students.

Hawai'i State Teachers Association president Karen Ginoza said there is more union flexibility than people assume and that each charter school board negotiates a contract with their teachers, which includes hiring practices. She added that unions are essential in for protecting employees' rights.

Roth said there are various employment laws designed to protect the right of any employee, including management.

But Ginoza said that without collective bargaining, the only recourse for employees would be the court system.

At least some charter school officials doubted employees did not want to belong to their union, and said various state bureaucratic requirements, rather than just union protocols, are cumbersome.

"I think the employees want and deserve the protections that the union provides," said Jim Williams, board chairman of Voyager School. "Whether there's different ways of doing that, that could be discussed.

What holds back charter schools, he said, are financing, a lack of support for facilities and being tied to the state bureaucracy.

Both Williams and Donna Estomago, principal of the charter Lanikai Elementary School, described a bureaucracy that involves obtaining hiring lists from the state and other processes that sometimes slows the filling of positions.

"These kinds of things are intended to ensure equity across the board, but for a small independent school, it becomes a big road block," Williams said.

Estomago said it may help to give employees the choice of whether to belong to a union so long as "it's not forced down people's throats."

"Having all the rules and regulations of the unions makes everyone just very careful about dotting their I's and crossing T's," she said.

"That does not bring break-through thinking.

"I haven't had the experience for myself but some of the administrators around me talked about the tremendous amount of time it takes to take care of a teacher who is a problem and the hoops they have to jump through for a marginal employee."

But Estomago, who is a union member, acknowledged the protections that unions provide.

"The unions have come out of the mistakes that happened and sometimes the abuses that can go on," she said. "People have to be vigilant in their community to make sure that they are being fair to everyone."

Aizawa said he doubts employees would want out of a union.

"With a union, you have particular rights versus if you were an appointee which means if you're in one day, you could be out the next," he said. "If I had the option, I would want some protection."

Aizawa said the only way a non-union job could be more attractive is if significant incentives were used to sweeten the pot such as higher pay or benefits.

Reach Lynda Arakawa at larakawa@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070 and Gordon Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8070.