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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, May 5, 2004

EDITORIAL
Reinventing education: It's worth a sincere try

The next phase of the long education reform debate in Hawai'i will be about whether the "Reinventing Education Act of 2004" effectively advances that agenda.

This ambitious bill becomes law now that Gov. Linda Lingle's veto of it has been overridden by the Legislature.

We can't agree with critics, including Lingle, who say this new law, sponsored by the Legislature's Democratic majority, has come up empty.

Significant changes mandated by the bill include:

• Conversion to a weighted student formula, in which funding is distributed to the schools based on specific needs of their students.

• Community councils at each school, which will play a role in each school's academic and budget governance.

• Substantially more authority for principals, including oversight of no less than 70 percent of education operating funds spent at the school level (it's now less than 15 percent).

Republicans and other critics disparage the new law for many reasons, including:

• It doesn't include the governance solution they have demanded: smaller school boards.

• Full conversion to the weighted student formula doesn't occur until the 2006-07 school year.

• The local councils would be chaotic, with the potential to overpower a principal and hijack a school's education agenda.

• To give principals real power, they need discretion over 90 percent of their school's funding, not a mere 70 percent.

If smaller school boards are better, why stop at boards that still govern tens of thousands of students? The councils at each school should be the ultimate answer to decentralization — provided they are empowered.

Interestingly, then, Lingle has called for principals to have more clout than the councils. Democrats have moved to accommodate this and other wishes in a new bill expected to pass the Legislature tomorrow.

Democrats have decided, with ample reason, that the Department of Education is not capable of implementing weighted spending by the next school year. The DOE will have its hands full getting a pilot program of 15 or more schools up and running next year.

For similar reasons, Democrats did not give principals control over more than 70 percent of their budgets. The 90 percent figure puts principals in charge of minutiae like school buses, leaving them little time for educating.

Indeed, it appears few principals want — or are prepared for — that much fiscal responsibility.

There is much that can go wrong in putting the "Reinventing Education Act" to work — even if all factions agree to pull together. But the early indications are that there's substance in this new law — if everyone involved gives it a sincere try.

Anything less is a betrayal of the public's expectation.