EDITORIAL
Even pragmatists reject seven school districts

That the Hawai'i Business Roundtable won't back Gov. Linda Lingle's call to break up the state Department of Education suggests that we are not looking at a partisan turf war over education but rather a larger philosophical dispute.

As chief executives of the state's largest corporations, roundtable members have a huge stake in improving the education system. Presumably, they want to see an educated workforce rather than a bottomless pool of candidates for hotel and restaurant jobs.

"The actual or perceived condition of Hawai'i's public schools is both our state's biggest social injustice and biggest business problem," Mitch D'Olier, chairman of the Business Roundtable, wrote in an Advertiser op-ed column last month.

"Make no mistake about it: Education system redesign is needed, and needed now."

But clearly, the plan to divide the DOE into seven school districts with elected school boards hasn't passed the common sense test of Roundtable members.

Trust us, these are pragmatic folks, not bureaucrats hanging on to their turf.

Hopefully, their call for compromise will reach such seven-district stalwarts as the governor and her supporters.

Any change in our education system must be measured against this goal: Will it get more resources to the classroom? Will it improve the student's ability to read, write, solve problems and will it improve the learning environment?

Strangely enough, we can thank the red-hot debate over seven school boards for breaking the inertia on school reform. In response to Lingle's initiative, Democratic lawmakers have come up with their own proposals to reform the system that include:

• Smaller class sizes.

• An expanded school board to represent more geographical areas.

• Local governing boards similar to School/Community- Based Management councils but with true financial clout.

• Principals with more autonomy, resources and accountability.

• A weighted student formula, which bases student financing on student needs rather than enrollment.

The interesting thing is that many of these ideas, or at least versions of them, are part of the education package being pushed by the Lingle administration. For instance, on Thursday, the Senate voted to approve a reform package that contains the new student spending formula that Lingle has been pushing for.

This funding mechanism is based on the reality that not all students are equal. Thus, a school serving a large population of students with special needs might get more money while another school with few special-needs students might get less, and that makes sense.

However, if all the loopholes are not firmly closed, this system can be gamed. Under the formula, per-student spending can vary from as little as $3,000 for a typical third-grader with no special needs to as much as $10,000 for a student with exceptional needs.

Clearly, some schools will feel like losers under the new system and might be tempted to stretch the definition of special needs. The devil will most certainly be in the details of this new spending formula.

In the final analysis, however, we're moving in the right direction. And much of that can be credited to the tempestuous debate over breaking up the DOE. The issue has pushed policymakers and opinion shapers to really learn about the complexities of a public education system and look for solutions.

Now that we're somewhat the wiser, let's keep what works and junk what doesn't. Hawai'i's children cannot wait forever.