House votes down bill to create local school boards
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
State House lawmakers voted late yesterday to reject a bill favored by Gov. Linda Lingle that would break up the state Department of Education into local school districts with locally elected school boards.
The vote came just before midnight after a heartfelt if often tense debate over whether local school boards are an essential element of education reform, which both the Republican governor and Democrats who control the state Legislature have made a priority this session. The bill was a constitutional amendment that would have let voters decide in November whether to support local boards.
While the bill could still possibly be revived in both the House or state Senate, the 30-20 vote, with one member absent, was a major roadblock for Lingle, who had her education plans stopped last session by Democrats and has since waged an aggressive campaign for reform.
"The majority of members felt that governance wasn't the real issue," said state Rep. Roy Takumi, D-36th (Pearl City, Palisades), the chairman of the House Education Committee. "The real issue was getting resources to schools."
Lingle was in Washington, D.C., for a National Governors Association meeting and was not available for comment, but Republican lawmakers were frustrated and disappointed.
State Rep. Mark Moses, R-40th (Makakilo, Kapolei, Royal Kunia), when asked whether the bill would be brought back in some form, said: "I don't think it can.
"We'll just have to wait and see what the voters decide," he said, referring to House and Senate elections in November. "They can't vote on this, but maybe they can vote on something else."
Earlier yesterday, lawmakers voted to advance a handful of other constitutional amendments on education, including two proposals backed by Democrats as alternatives to Lingle's plans for local school boards.
Democrats want to expand the state Board of Education from 13 to 17 voting members to make it more geographically representative of the state. They also want to create local boards at every school through the expansion of existing School Community Based Management councils.
Lawmakers also voted to move ahead with amendments that would give the BOE more autonomy over school operations and to allow 16-year-olds to run for seats on the BOE. Lawmakers sent a bill that would have removed the governor's line-item veto over school spending back to committee, essentially killing it.
The votes were the first major hurdles on education reform.
Lawmakers yesterday passed the Democrats' broader reform bill, which includes a new student spending formula that would allocate money to schools based on student need instead of school enrollment and turn more power over to school principals.
Earlier yesterday, schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto defended Hawai'i's statewide system at a news conference, arguing that it provides equity to schools but is flexible enough to meet the needs of individual schools.
Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
