Harmony elusive at school board
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
Most of the people who were in the audience had gone home, and the reporters had left to file their stories, but the 'Olelo cameras were still rolling late into the night of April 1 when the state Board of Education again tried to resolve a nasty spat involving one of its most outspoken members.
The dialogue was much more restrained than on March 18 in Waimanalo, when several board members turned on fellow member Laura H. Thielen for her public advocacy of local school boards. It was even a little calmer than earlier that evening, when the chairman, Breene Harimoto, slammed down the gavel and quickly called a recess when Thielen insisted on being heard.
For a moment, a security guard even appeared in the board's fourth-floor chambers in the Queen Lili'uokalani Building near the Capitol. "I asked him, 'Are you here to take me down?' " Thielen cracked later.
It was April Fools' Day, after all, but this was no joke.
Articulate and committed, Thielen has had a much higher profile in the education-reform debate than anyone else on the board or at the Department of Education except for superintendent Pat Hamamoto. The state board officially opposes local school boards — which would dismantle the Education Department and abolish the elected board — and the fact that Thielen has been leading the campaign from a seat on the board has led to growing hostility.
After private conversations apparently failed to calm nerves, several BOE members took aim at Thielen in public in Waimanalo for her role in what they perceive as a concerted campaign of misinformation in the push for local boards. While their complaints may sound like hair-splitting and he-said, she-said pettiness to outsiders, some board members are genuinely upset that Thielen continues to broadly paint the DOE as bloated and the board as out-of-touch.
They tried to clear the air on April 1.
"Maybe I went too far and called them half-lies, I don't know," BOE member Denise Matsumoto said of her criticism of Thielen's statements.
But she was not ready to back away. "I'm sorry if I offended you by saying 'half-truths, half-lies,' " Matsumoto told Thielen. "But that's just the standard I have for myself. I shouldn't apply it to you. You have a different standard, obviously."
Harimoto has accused Thielen of violating the board's code of conduct for not always making it clear that she is speaking for herself — as an individual board member, not on behalf of the entire board — when she talks about reform. He told Thielen that members did not want to go public with their complaints but felt they had no other choice.
"I'm in awe, actually, that they had the courage to speak up," Harimoto said.
In several letters to newspapers and on talk radio, Thielen has been lionized for standing her ground — one member of the governor's education advisory committee compared her treatment to the crucifixion — and her ally on the board, Shelton Jim On, said the whole mess was "bordering on being quite ridiculous and quite petty."
Karen Knudsen, a BOE member, suggested that the board "put this behind us."
Harimoto said this week that he wants to let the matter go and prevent an extended back-and-forth with Thielen that "could go on forever."
Thielen, meanwhile, said she still wants a detailed, written explanation of what she did to draw the board's wrath. She also wants the charges of lying and violating the code of conduct withdrawn.
But she thinks that other board members are more disturbed that a fellow member would challenge the status quo than whether she may have got a fact or two wrong or out of context. "I would like the board to recognize that public debate, discussion and even disagreement is a sign of a healthy democracy," Thielen said.
Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
