Lawmakers interrogated several members of the Board of Education on Tuesday over the decision not to retain schools Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi, and demanded to know what prompted the call for a leadership change.
The contract for Matayoshi, who has held the title of superintendent since 2010, is set to end June 30. Despite receiving positive annual performance evaluations, the board announced in October that Matayoshi’s contract would not be renewed and has convened a search committee to find her replacement.
Given her track record — which has included improvements in standardized test scores, increases in the state’s college-going rate and a drop in the number of public school graduates needing remedial courses in college — lawmakers said they were troubled by the board’s move.
Four of the board’s members who attended a joint budget briefing before the House and Senate money committees were called up one by one to justify the decision.
The board is charged under the state Constitution with formulating statewide educational policy and appointing the superintendent of education as chief executive officer of the public school system. There has been speculation that Gov. David Ige, who has appointed all but one of the board’s nine voting members, was behind the decision, but the governor and individual BOE members have denied any influence from him.
“I’m going to ask what … probably a lot of people in the state want to ask,” said Rep. Sylvia Luke, chairwoman of the House Finance Committee. “What kind of performance is the superintendent performing or not performing that is pushing, motivating the Board of Education to not renew her contract and fire her?”
She took issue with an explanation from some members that the board had already explained its decision.
“You can stand there and say we have one position — that’s not good enough,” Luke said. “You don’t get to stand behind this cloak, behind whoever the Geppetto is. You have a responsibility to the public to make it very clear what your problem with the current direction is, what the department is not doing a good job with, what you’re planning to change.”
Brian De Lima, the BOE’s vice chairman, acknowledged that Matayoshi has been an “exceptional” superintendent.
“It’s the view of the board that at this point — in terms of a new strategic plan — that we wanted to search for an education leader that will look at things with a different set of eyes and a different energy level to the point where we believe we can move together … in a way that we can build on the momentum that we have been able to achieve thus far,” De Lima said.
Luke called the explanation generic and asked De Lima whether he was implying that Matayoshi is sluggish, which he denied.
Under further questioning, De Lima said the achievement gap between students categorized as high-needs — those receiving special-education services, those who are economically disadvantaged and English-language learners — and their peers has been an ongoing concern for the board. (High-needs students make up 58 percent of public school students.)
In recent years there’s been a roughly 30-point gap between the math and reading test scores of high-needs students and those of their peers. De Lima said the board included language in the DOE’s recently updated strategic plan to ensure that closing the achievement gap is a priority.
BOE member Bruce Voss also praised improvements under Matayoshi but added that the board wants to move public education in a new direction under changes afforded by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act and the revised strategic plan.
“Our job is to not just look at what the superintendent has done under any particular circumstances, but to try to look forward,” Voss said. “The changes in federal law, the strategic plan, what we hope to do — empowering schools, giving teachers a sense that they control curriculum, that they decide what is best to teach the kids in their classroom — that is the direction that the board wants to take. And it’s the board’s decision, and my own personal view, that that would be best with, as Vice Chair
De Lima said, fresh eyes, fresh energy to, in particular, close the achievement gap.”
Luke warned that board members should resign if student achievement drops under a new leader.
“I wish you good luck, because if you go find somebody and the test scores go down or don’t improve, then I would think I wouldn’t see any of you folks in this hearing room next year,” she said. “For you guys, that would be an embarrassment if you decide to change direction and somehow the kids suffer. … You better not even be around when that happens.”
Both Luke and Sen. Jill Tokuda, chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said after the hearing that they weren’t satisfied with the responses from board members.
“I was really looking for, How does this decision to change the superintendent line up with their budget request and ultimately the governor’s budget priorities? And right there you see a misalignment,” Tokuda said. “You’re talking about closing that achievement gap, and yet the budget priorities and the requests do not show support for closing that gap, for supporting schools, for supposedly empowering schools.”
