Posted on: Sunday, June 1, 2003

EDITORIAL
Decision on kupuna makes perfect sense

School Superintendent Pat Hamamoto was both courageous and correct in her decision to exempt some 250 kupuna from the strict quality-control provisions of the new No Child Left Behind education law.

That law imposes rigorous credential or training requirements on all who interact with children in the classroom, including paraprofessionals and assistants.

And on paper, that makes good sense. If we wish to hold our students to the highest standards, we should do the same for those who teach them.

But the kupuna fall into a category that was not readily recognized by the federal law. These are generally older folks, many retired, who share deep knowledge about Hawaiian culture with public school students.

What they know cannot easily be taught in college or in an education training program.

Hamamoto had sought an exemption for the kupuna program from the federal Education Department, but with no success. On the Mainland, some school districts that use Native American cultural professionals sought similar waivers.

With no answer in hand, Hamamoto simply reclassified the kupuna as "cultural resource" specialists and told them to keep at their work.

That was a common-sense decision that best serves both the kupuna and the thousands of children they serve.

No Child Left Behind is a reality that local educators, policy-makers and legislators will have to deal with for some time to come. It was designed so that an individual school district could work out its own approach to its overall goals.

In this case, well-intended one-size-fits-all regulations just didn't work, and Hamamoto went ahead and recognized that fact.