Despite having her plan to decentralize management of public schools killed by the Legislature in past sessions, Gov. Linda Lingle yesterday said school reform would remain one of her top initiatives if she's re-elected next year to a second term.

"It's not easy to make change. Nothing is accomplished in a single year," Lingle said after talking about school reform at the 2005 annual meeting of the Academy of Management at the Hawai'i Convention Center.

Lingle said a second term in office would allow her administration to brainstorm on a new school reform model that she hopes could be agreed upon by a new set of lawmakers.

"So many of them are on record as opposing it, maybe a variation of the same approach would be best," she said.

The Legislature's Democratic leadership has been critical of Lingle's efforts to decentralize the state Department of Education and grant school principals greater budget authority.

Lingle's initial reform proposals last year included allocating 90 percent of educational money directly to schools and breaking up the state's centralized public school administration — which she called "the quintessential bureaucracy" — into regional districts.

What was enacted, over Lingle's veto, was a sweeping plan that gave schools 70 percent funding and included other measures such as performance standards for principals.

"Our success, as I said, was limited," Lingle said. "That other 20 percent would really make a difference."

This year, Lingle set aside her original reform plan and focused on expanding access to preschool and boosting the number of charter schools. The Legislature approved more money toward the schools but kept a cap on their numbers.

William Ouchi, a professor at UCLA and an advocate for decentralized school systems and giving principals more control over funding allocated to their school, said it was "really strange" that state lawmakers opted out of Lingle's plan, given its envisioned benefits.

Two years ago, Ouchi served as a volunteer adviser to Lingle's education reform group.

Ouchi said state lawmakers and the teachers' union welcomed the proposal during private talks he had with both groups, but said that their support got corrupted by politics.

"It turned into this partisan food fight," said Ouchi, adding he would be happy to once again help Lingle push her school reform plans as he has done in the past.

The proposed system has been implemented in public schools in Edmonton, Alberta, and is now being copied in large part and with reported success in school districts in Houston and Seattle.

Pilot programs also have been adopted in schools in New York, Chicago and Boston, Ouchi said.

Ouchi, who called the status of Hawai'i's public schools "terrible and not getting better," said people in Hawai'i may be more willing to accept change if Lingle re-introduces the plan.

"The unions were very interested and very supportive," he said.

Richard Riordan, a former two-term mayor of Los Angeles who is now retired, said decentralization gives power to individual schools, which then have more responsibility to increase performance.

"The higher up you get a government, the harder it is to make things happen," said Riordan, who also served as California secretary of education.

"Nobody though about giving power and accountability down to the school level."