I came to the Hawaii Department of Education with a drive to “fix the system.”

In 2009, Furlough Fridays were imposed on the school system due to budget constraints, a casualty of the economic downturn. My oldest son was in public elementary school, so when schools statewide closed for furloughs, I was right there with other parents and the public calling for more fiscal transparency in our school system and an audit of the books.

Two years later, I applied for and was named HIDOE’s chief financial officer, and went immediately to work on building greater transparency into its fiscal reporting.

It’s important to note: The school system already had in place strong oversight and input on budgeting, including:

>> The Board of Education approves the HIDOE budget for submission to the governor and Legislature.

>> School Community Councils (http://bit.ly/HIDOE-SCC), composed of school staff, parents, students and community members, guide the crafting of the Academic Plans and Financial Plans at the school level to document their ongoing work, and spending.

>> The Committee on Weights, composed of school and state staff and community representatives, meets every other year to collaborate on adjusting the primary mechanism by which we fund schools — the Weighted Student Formula (http://bit.ly/DOEWSF).

HIDOE’s financial statements are audited annually by a third party. Every year, those audits note that our financial statements are clean (see http://bit.ly/DOEbudget). Each year, our auditors do a deep dive on the results with the BOE.

Our budget information is readily available, and our annual audits are clean. So what’s the problem? The problem is the data we provide is based on an accounting system that is more than two decades out of use, with program categories that can’t be easily updated or cycled out of the system because of downstream impacts to schools’ cash flow and budgeting that can last years.

No amount of transparency about our numbers can fix the flaws in the underlying system. A $2 billion enterprise such as HIDOE, with loads of complexities, requires an industry-standard Financial Management System (FMS).

Fortunately, Superintendent Christina Kishimoto has taken an aggressive stance with modernizing HIDOE’s systems. This transformation has included launching the ServiceNow IT management system for easier access to tech support, and partnering with the state to update the payroll system (http://bit.ly/HawaiiPay), which went live for HIDOE last month.

She has initiated the movement off Lotus Notes to Google for Education, starting with email and calendaring functions this summer. And she announced improved business practices and systems modernization for facilities management under Future Schools Now (http://bit.ly/HIDOE-FSN); it includes a CIP Project Tracker site, being beta-tested now, which will better track school maintenance projects (estimated cost and quantity) and establish a “systems of record.”

A public version will be released next school year; imagine being able to search for and pull up-to-date information on design and construction contract amounts, the status of projects, and awarded vendors for public schools in your community.

In gearing up for the overdue modernization of our FMS, we will be pursuingwide-ranging input around two key questions:

>> What capabilities will help decision-makers support HIDOE’s mission?

>> How should the accounting system clarify budget allocations and expenditures?

A modern FMS will improve things by integrating school-level budgeting, speeding up procurement and payments, increasing internal controls, streamlining processes, and adding timely financial reporting for how we expend taxpayer funds.

As the 2019 Legislature opens and we begin discussing schools’ needs for fiscal years 2019-2021, there will again be calls to “fix the system.” We all want a world-class public education system. Let’s keep working — together — to give our kids, educators, staff and communities the schools they deserve.

Amy Kunz is the chief financial officer for the Hawaii Department of Education.