Trade group asked to endorse education reform
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
A senior adviser to Gov. Linda Lingle, eager to salvage the governor's plans for local school boards, has appealed to an influential trade group to endorse Lingle's ideas and sponsor an advertising blitz the day after Lingle speaks at an education summit this month.
Lenny Klompus, the governor's communications adviser, stressed the urgency of an endorsement in a letter to the Building Industry Association of Hawai'i, which represents the state's leading home builders and contractors. The letter also asked the group to run full-page advertisements in The Advertiser, the Star-Bulletin, and four other state newspapers on March 28.
The letter does not say why that date was chosen, but Lingle is scheduled to speak the day before at a summit called by state schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto to address education reform.
The BIA endorsed Lingle, a Republican, in her campaign for governor, but its membership includes people with ties to lawmakers from both political parties.
Russell Pang, a spokesman for the governor, said the BIA has not made a decision on education reform. Top BIA officials were either on vacation or not immediately available to comment.
The appeal is a brief glimpse inside the aggressive campaign Lingle and her advisers have made for local school boards, and it hints at the frustration of not getting public support from important interest groups.
"Given all the attention currently focused on education, we believe this is the critical time to bring about meaningful reform," Klompus wrote. "With support and an endorsement by BIA, the people of Hawai'i would have their voices heard and ultimately would be able to vote for a constitutional amendment on education in November.
"Please let me know as soon as possible if this request is approved. Of course, we would work closely with you on the production and placement details" of the ads.
Dan Mollway, executive director of the Hawai'i State Ethics Commission, while not addressing this specific letter, said such appeals would likely have to involve some type of coercion or quid pro quo — a promise of favors — to raise suspicion.
Politicians routinely reach out for help from allies and community groups on public-policy issues, and Lingle has sought support from a variety of sources for what one adviser described last fall as "all out, no-holds-barred" reform.
The March 3 letter notes that the Maui Chamber of Commerce has endorsed local boards, but it was sent out the same week that the Hawai'i Business Roundtable, made up of the chief executives of the state's largest corporations, chose not to back the governor.
Lingle's advisers and Republican lawmakers pushed hard for the roundtable's support, several people familiar with the discussions say, and had hoped that it would help offset opposition from the teachers' and principals' unions and the state Department of Education.
The governor has said that it would take grassroots momentum from the public to get state lawmakers to put a question on local school boards on the ballot.
But without a major endorsement, the governor has been unable to demonstrate that there is broad public support for breaking the DOE into seven districts with elected school boards.
Halfway through the legislative session, the state House has voted twice against local boards, and state Senate leaders have only promised to hear, not vote, on Lingle's plans.
"Anything is possible," said Senate Minority Leader Fred Hemmings, R-25th (Kailua, Waimanalo, Hawai'i Kai). "But if the vote were held right now, I would say that we wouldn't make it."
Majority Democrats are instead drafting a reform package with a new student spending formula — a component of Lingle's plan — and empowered versions of existing School Community Based Management councils at every school.
In public statements since the House votes, Lingle has described the Democrats' proposals in increasingly brutal terms, while her advisers have stressed that there is no real agreement with Democrats on the new formula.
People who have followed the debate closely in the past several months say that upcoming House and Senate elections in November are causing both sides to look for even the smallest of political advantages.
U.S. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawai'i, who supported local school boards when he was in the Legislature and believes the question should go before voters, said the issue has become too politicized.
"It's a pure power struggle between legislative Democrats and the Republican governor. It's too bad," Case said. "I hate to say it."
At the DOE, Hamamoto has had her political role elevated since her "State of the Schools" speech to the Legislature in January. The superintendent, who did not want her remarks to come across as "education speak," hired public-relations consultants to help her prepare for the speech and to organize the March 27 summit at Kapolei High School.
Several business leaders involved with education have said privately that they are frustrated that the debate has centered so much on local school boards when a range of other issues are at stake. But many also believe the political clash could force change at public schools that might otherwise not have happened.
David Heenan, a trustee at Campbell Estate and a member of the governor's education advisory committee, said he has seen previous incarnations of reform falter once reaching the Legislature.
But Heenan thinks that, this time, it is possible for lawmakers and the governor to agree on getting more financial power from the DOE to school principals through the new spending formula. "That would be a major victory," he said.
Reach Derrick DePledge at 525-8084 or ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com.
