Principals in eye of reform storm
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
MILILANI — Bruce Naguwa has to laugh sometimes when he hears people talk about public school principals as CEOs.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
Like when he's in the parking lot at Kipapa Elementary School every morning, opening up car doors as his students arrive to make sure traffic flows smoothly. Or when he's carrying boxes of supplies to temporary classrooms to help teachers during the school's renovation. Or at lunch — especially at lunch — when he often watches over students as they tear through their meals.
Kipapa Elementary School principal Bruce Naguwa gets a laugh out of second-grader Justina Clanton after helping her class move into a renovated classroom. Naguwa says spending time with teachers and students is essential.
It would be nice to have the money, power or prestige of a corporate CEO, but what Naguwa really wants is more time to spend with his teachers and students.
"My goal this year was to get in the classroom more, but I just haven't been able to do it as much as I wanted," he said. "We're finding ourselves with less and less time."
Principals are at the center of the state's debate over education reform, with Gov. Linda Lingle and Democratic leaders both recommending that principals have more power over money and curriculum through a new spending formula that would send money to schools based on student need instead of enrollment.
Principals would be placed on year-round performance-based contracts and held accountable for student test scores and school progress, either by local school boards under Lingle's plan, or by expanded School Community Based Management councils favored by the Democrats.
Deeper issues cited
Several principals interviewed in the past few weeks said they are preparing for change but are concerned that the governor, lawmakers and even some officials at the state Department of Education may be minimizing deeper issues, including a lack of parental involvement and a shortage of essential ingredients — from up-to-date textbooks to qualified teachers — to meet rising demands.
Some are apprehensive that local school boards or empowered SCBMs, whose members may not have much grounding in public education, will use new oversight power over schools to meddle with or even harass principals in the name of reform.
Others challenge the wisdom of simultaneously moving to a new spending formula and a new governance structure, both of which could be massive undertakings, at a time when schools are just starting to feel the weight of the federal No Child Left Behind act.
The law requires that schools make annual progress toward having students proficient in core subjects by 2014. Sixty percent of Hawai'i's public schools failed to make their goals last school year.
Leroy Ching, principal at Pearl City Highlands Elementary School, said lawmakers need to be careful not to overload principals without giving them the tools to make reform successful.
"I worry that we may not have the personnel to do this," Ching said.
"I think change is going to happen," said Clyde Igarashi, principal at Lunalilo Elementary School. "But the question is what form is it going to take and will it impact what we're doing in the schools to make a difference?"
Even before No Child Left Behind took effect, education leaders had real doubts about whether principals were ready or had the right training for the new demands.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, in independent audits of 47 of the state's most troubled schools released last week, found that a lack of strong leadership by the principal was a factor in the poor performance at 28 of the schools.
State schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto has said that principals need more training in finance and administration if they are to become like true CEOs.
The DOE has a Professional Development and Educational Research Institute, which includes an academy for new principals, and Democrats have called for an expanded academy to train principals on the new spending formula.
Karen Beaton, the president of Local 37 of the Alberta Teachers' Association in Edmonton, a city Lingle is using as a model for reform, said principals there made the transition to a new spending formula without extensive training.
Some had the natural skills to handle the new responsibilities, Beaton said, while others did not, and either learned or eventually found different jobs.
"It's not something you would send principals to school to learn," said Beaton, who has been paid by Lingle's supporters to come to Hawai'i and speak to educators about her experience. "It's not rocket science."
Reaction mixed
The Hawai'i Government Employees Association, the union that represents principals, has endorsed a new spending formula but opposes local school boards.
Most principals who have chosen to speak out publicly about reform have taken aim at local boards, although Lingle's advisers believe some principals support the idea but are reluctant to cross their union or the DOE.
Naguwa, at Kipapa Elementary, welcomes the new spending formula, which could provide a lump sum to a school based on the characteristics of its students, with higher weights for special education students or students learning English.
But Naguwa said that unless technical issues — such as contracts, hiring and procurement — are simplified or handled at the district or state levels, principals who are strapped for time may find themselves even further bogged down and separated from the classroom.
"They never seem to talk about curriculum and instruction," he said.
Busy schedule
Naguwa was the Leeward deputy district superintendent when he asked for an elementary school assignment a few years ago as his wife was about to give birth to twins.
Now with three young children, he has to balance work and family life better than he did as principal at Nanakuli High & Intermediate School, when 12-hour work days and appearances at after-school performances and sports events were common.
He still typically works 10-hour days and wouldn't think of skipping school activities. An average school day is layered with meetings — with his leadership team, his operations crew, or off campus with complex-area or district officials — along with talks that arise with teachers or students.
After school, much of his time seems consumed with making sure Kipapa follows the federal Felix court mandate that schools provide for students with physical or mental disabilities.
Naguwa said he has told the school's SCBM council members that their roles soon could expand if reform becomes reality.
"Parents who don't come to schools usually are the ones who have the most complaints," Naguwa said. "But it also seems like it's always the same people who are committed. The same people who get involved. We need more people to get involved."
Posts difficult to fill
Yet more community involvement also could have drawbacks for principals.
Local school boards, under Lingle's proposal, would have the authority to hire and fire principals, which troubles many who have had first-hand experience with unreasonable parents or civic activists with political agendas.
The thought of potential infighting with a school board or aggressive SCBM might discourage some educators from considering the job.
The DOE has had some difficulty persuading teachers and other school staff to move up as vice principals, which is generally the first step on the principal track.
Phyllis Unebasami, an educational specialist at the DOE, said the reasons include salary — vice principals are not paid that much more — and the increasing strain of the job.
"It's been harder to find people to enter the vice principal position," Unebasami said.
Vice principals also are becoming principals sooner than the five or six years they used to have to spend getting ready for the top job, as more principal vacancies crop up because of retirement or burnout.
At Kipapa Elementary, teachers have been working with a consultant for several years to help improve the school's reading scores and, this school year, Naguwa has brought in a math consultant.
Overall, Kipapa students met the state's reading and math goals last year, but the school did not make adequate yearly progress because a subgroup of low-income students fell just under the benchmark in reading.
Naguwa asked what a local school board would do with schools that are making progress, but not enough to meet the expectations of No Child Left Behind.
"If you're going to expect kids to jump up to that level overnight and hold principals accountable, then you are going to have to hire a new principal every two years," Naguwa said. "You're not going to have many principals left standing.
"What teacher in their right mind would want to be a principal under those conditions? They say, 'I see what you guys are doing, why should I?'"
Reach Derrick DePledge at 525-8084 or ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com.
