Posted on: Monday, January 26, 2004
EDITORIAL
School reform should start with agreement
At this point, there appears to be a fair amount of skirmishing and positioning surrounding school reform efforts at the 2004 Legislature.
While some of that is to be expected, the game of political one-upmanship does little to help the cause of true school reform to move forward.
Gov. Linda Lingle is expected to push hard for her reform plan when she addresses a joint session of the Legislature today. A key part of the Lingle plan is dissolution of the single statewide board of education and the creation of seven smaller elected boards around the state.
The idea would be to put education policy-makers closer to the people.
The Democrats have responded with their own plan, which would be to boost the number of state school board members from 13 to 17. The idea would be to get a closer relationship between board members and the community, particularly Neighbor Island communities.
The Democratic plan would be coupled with a proposal to beef up existing School/Community-Based Management councils.
At this point, it sounds as if the two sides are talking about essentially the same thing: get local communities more involved in decisions being made about their local schools.
It's possible both ideas could end up on the ballot in November as proposed constitutional changes. That would be confusing for many voters.
A more fruitful approach would be for the Democrats and the Lingle administration to work first on those areas where there seems to be general agreement.
One area of potential agreement involves shifting school funding to a need-based formula as opposed to a strict per-capita formula.
Another would give individual principals more authority over their own budget and academic management of their schools.
If the two sides could hammer out strong, constructive ideas on those two areas early in the session, then success would already be in hand. And who knows? With partial consensus, other pieces of the puzzle might start falling into place.
