• Education and the Legislature Education and the Legislature Watch for education to be the key issue in the upcoming session of the Legislature. That’s the word from Gov. Linda Lingle, who spoke to a gathering of editors and reporters
• Education and the Legislature
Education and the Legislature
Watch for education to be the key issue in the upcoming session of the Legislature. That’s the word from Gov. Linda Lingle, who spoke to a gathering of editors and reporters in her executive chambers on Tuesday.
The meeting marked Republican Lingle’s first anniversary in office. A later meeting with State Sen. Joe Souki of Maui and State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa from Leeward O’ahu, both Democrats, confirmed Lingle’s prediction. The two Democrats said both sides of the House and Senate will be focusing on how to solve Hawai’i’s education problem, and that a lot is at stake politically for both Lingle and Legislators in solving this problem.
Lingle is pressing for putting an amendment to the state constitution on the fall 2004 general election ballot that would give the voters a chance to create local school boards in each major Hawai’i county. The governor also wants to give her office the power to appoint the statewide Board of Education, a board that is now elected by voters across the state in a somewhat complex manner.
A big difference apparent in the approach Lingle and the Democratic senators are taking in fixing Hawai’i’s broken education system is money. Lingle is working to reallocate the funds the Department of Education is now receiving so more is applied to the classroom. A report issued by the Lingle administration last week claimed less than 50 percent of state education dollars reaches the classroom, showing how top-heavy the state education bureaucracy is, according to the report.
The Democrats are for raising funding for education, while reforming the system, but don’t think the voters will go for county-based school boards. Lingle’s report highlights the fact that the structure of Hawai’i’s Department of Education is a carryover from Territorial Days, for we are the only state in the Union that has no local school boards.
It is good that the education issue has become political dynamite, and like dynamite once the system is blown up by change it can be for the good or might be destructive. However, change is needed and this political push will bring change in the near future.
The Democrats have a good point in showing the good that exists in our current system, while saying we need to adjust things. That path will lead to a slow pace of change, which may be what is needed.
Taking a faster track, and one that is more sweeping, as suggested by the Lingle administration, is an attractive choice to those fed up with poor schools. Her aim could work well and may get us closer to what is needed in educating our children for the rapidly changing world, and economy, we live in. The downside is the chance that Lingle’s choice is driven in part by political expediency for the first-term governor who is trying to make her mark without control of the Legislature.
Next month should be the start of a lively session of the Legislature, with the 2004 fall elections just months away, and a hot issue to fuel debate and reform already on the platter.
