Lingle adviser named to education role
By Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Capitol Bureau
Gov. Linda Lingle will try to boost her education reform efforts by seeking community support and comment and by tapping one of her senior advisers to help lead the way.
The governor's Citizens to Achieve Reform in Education committee, a group of educators, community and business leaders and others aimed at generating grassroots public support for Lingle's plans to reform public education, will begin touring the state next month. Lingle's proposed reforms include establishing local school boards.
ROTH
Chairman Stan Kawaguchi, manager of the Pacific area for Parsons Brinckerhoff, said the committee will probably hold at least nine town meetings beginning in November on every island except Lana'i and Moloka'i, but he noted that those exceptions may change.
The committee also is discussing setting up an interactive Web site to describe the reform proposals and collect public comment.
Kawaguchi said the committee is looking for constructive, rather than emotional, input to help form the best possible proposal for next year's legislative session.
The committee will work closely with Randy Roth, who is leaving his post as Lingle's senior policy adviser to become her senior adviser of education, the governor's office said.
Roth, who is on loan from the University of Hawai'i and will be on sabbatical next semester, will serve in his new post until next fall, when he is scheduled to resume teaching at the university's William S. Richardson School of Law.
"He's going to really focus his entire attention on that one issue, and I think it's going to increase our chances of having success in this session," Lingle said. She said education reform is her No. 1 priority.
Lingle last session proposed placing the local school board question on the 2004 ballot, but the initiative failed in the Democrat-controlled House and Senate.
House and Senate leaders proposed their own ideas to change the public school system, but in the end they could not agree.
Roth, who last November was granted paid leave from his $90,000-plus job for a year to work for Lingle, said that over the course of the year, he realized that the administration needed a position focused on schools.
"It's almost like the administration doesn't have anybody in the area of education," he said. "The other areas that are important, we've got a department, we've got a Cabinet member. This one we don't."
Roth will be replaced by former city finance director and businesswoman Linda Smith, who will become Lingle's senior policy adviser Nov. 1.
Smith's salary will be $90,000, said Lingle's press secretary, Russell Pang.
Smith owned and managed Pacific Allied Products Ltd., a diversified plastics manufacturing company in Kapolei, from 1989. She sold the business earlier this year. Before that, she served as Honolulu's finance director.
Reach Lynda Arakawa at larakawa@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8070.
