Transforming Hawaii’s Educational System

Our goal should be to give our kids the best education we can. This will require an smaller class sizes, sufficient resources and training, an efficient administration, and quality teachers who are eager to teach to the best of their ability. Fixing Hawaii’s system of education will take time, but in addition to ending furloughs, there were several important bills to begin laying the groundwork for the next step: reforming our system of public education.

• House Bill 2486, mandates minimum instructional hours in our school year. Contract negotiations between the Governor and unions will be built on top of this baseline, but will never again cause students to lose classroom time because of a budget shortfall.

• House Bill 2376, gives the Governor the authority to appoint members to the Board of Education. This is a necessary first step to end the cycle of blame between the Board, the Unions and the Governor, and bring accountability for education reform to one authority.

• Senate Bill 2589 lifts the cap on the number of charter schools in Hawaii, allows the Department of Education to transfer vacant schools to charter schools, and reworks their funding formula.

These measures alone are just the first step in a wholesale effort to make education a real priority for the state. Voters recently approved the constitutional amendment allowing the Governor to appoint the Board of Education – it now falls on the Governor and the Legislature to take action. For the first time in 40 years, the finger pointing and blame over who is responsible for education has finally come to an end, and the buck now stops at the Governor’s desk, where real action can be taken.

More Must Happen

Unfortunately, other important bills did not pass. House Bill 2423, which I co-sponsored with several of my colleagues, would bring transparency to the Department of Education (DOE) budget. It is called zero-base budgeting. Instead of automatically starting with last year’s budget, the DOE would build their budget from zero so everyone knows exactly what is being paid for. Zero-base budgeting will help the DOE evaluate programs for their cost effectiveness and impact on academic performance. Even though the bill did not pass, the DOE supports the idea and I will be working with them to move ahead anyway.