By David Shapiro

Last year, when they had a Democratic governor who opposed breaking up Hawai'i's statewide school system, House Democrats passed a constitutional amendment to split the state Board of Education into seven local school boards.

They angrily criticized senators for killing the measure, saying our schools are so hopelessly broken that we have nothing to lose by making a change.

This year, they have a Republican governor who supports creating seven local school boards, and guess what? House Democrats have squashed the measure early in the session at the behest of public worker unions with barely a hearing.

As was so often the case during the eight-year term of former Gov. Ben Cayetano, lawmakers shot down the governor's proposal without advancing any significant reform measures of their own.

And they wonder why they're so often accused of playing endless games of political contrariness at the expense of getting anything useful done.

Local school boards are the centerpiece of the agenda for education reform Gov. Linda Lingle was elected on. By deferring the measure, House leaders effectively killed it for the session unless their members revolt or the bill is revived in the Senate.

It's alarming that the House sees no urgency to improve our schools after voters made it so clear in last year's election that they want action. Voters want change so badly that an Advertiser poll shows overwhelming public support for raising taxes to fix Hawai'i's schools.

In the face of these cries for a new direction, House Education Chairman Roy Takumi says efforts to reform school governance will have to wait for the pressure of another election year. Since the constitutional amendment wouldn't go on the ballot until 2004, he said, there's no rush for the Legislature to act this year.

That's exactly wrong. The measure died last year because the House passed it too late in an election-year session, leaving inadequate time for an informed public debate on a complex issue of such vital importance.

Our schools will have to live for a long time with the decision we make on governance, and advocates on both sides of the issue need all the time they can get to educate voters and make their arguments.

Governance isn't the only school-reform issue, and local school boards aren't necessarily the only answer, but other important education issues — dedicated funding for public schools, improved facilities, better classroom resources and reduced class size — also appear stalled until direction on the central issue of governance is decided.

The governor has put her prestige and perhaps her political future on the line behind local school boards, and the idea had the enthusiastic support of the House and most of the Senate less than a year ago.

With nobody willing to put similar weight behind any competing ideas, it's difficult to argue that more study is needed. Lawmakers studied it intensely last year before coming down squarely in favor of local school boards. All that's changed this year is that a Republican governor wants it and the unions got to legislators early.

The issue here is accountability. It's well-recognized that the present system will never work because responsibility for education is spread so randomly among the governor, the Legislature and the Board of Education, leaving nobody clearly accountable for results.

The irony is that if lawmakers duck accountability for another year by dallying in the face of unmistakable public support for bold action to improve public education in Hawai'i, they'll put the accountability entirely on themselves when they next face voters.

David Shapiro can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.