A teacher who serves on the local school board of Myron B. Thompson Academy and a principal who suddenly departed from Waimea Middle School are among the nominees to fill vacancies on the Charter School Review Panel.
Three candidates proposed by Board of Education Chairman Don Horner will be considered at a board meeting Tuesday to serve on the volunteer panel that oversees Hawaii’s charter school system. They are:
» Jerelyn Watanabe, assistant registrar and math/science teacher at Thompson Academy. She was elected to its local school board last May by her peers.
» John Colson, principal at Waimea Middle until its school board, Ho‘okako‘o Corp., abruptly announced his departure on Feb. 7 without explanation.
» Gary Kai, executive director of the Hawaii Business Round Table and a longtime banker.
The nomination of Watanabe, made public in a board meeting agenda, is already causing some consternation because of concerns about Thompson Academy’s management. In December the state auditor lambasted the school, calling some of its use of public money "possibly fraudulent" and citing its "failure to adhere to ethical fiscal management principles." The allegations were dismissed by Thompson’s local school board.
The academy’s operations have been under investigation by the attorney general as well as the Ethics Commission since last year. A proviso in the current biennial state budget requires that $255,000 of the school’s state allotment be withheld from the academy until its local school board and administrators "have appeared before the panel and adequately responded to all inquiries it and the Legislature have posed." That money has not been released.
State Sen. Michelle Kidani, vice chairwoman of the Ways and Means and Education Committees, said she didn’t know Watanabe, but she was taken aback by the choice.
"I was surprised because very recently the auditor as well as the Legislature have raised very, very serious concerns about operations at Myron B. Thompson," said Kidani (D, Mililani-Waipio). "It would have been nice to make sure the concerns we had about MBTA had been addressed, which they have not been fully addressed to date. I’m not speaking about her personally, but I’m speaking about someone representing the school on the review panel who is tasked to have oversight of charter schools."
Ruth Tschumy, a longtime panel member who recently stepped down, had a similar reaction.
"I don’t know the person in question," Tschumy said. "However, given that both the Ethics Commission and the attorney general’s office are investigating the school, I certainly question why Mr. Horner and the Board of Education would nominate and intend to appoint to the Charter School Review Panel a person who serves as a member of the Myron B. Thompson local school board."
"I expressed my serious reservations when Mr. Horner discussed the possibility of this appointment with me," she added. "It just doesn’t make sense."
A inquiry to Board of Education staff asking whether Horner would like to comment on his choices produced no response.
Members of the panel are appointed to represent different constituencies. Colson was named to the panel last year as a "principal of a conversion charter school" but can no longer fill that slot. If chosen again, the former headmaster of Hawaii Preparatory Academy would represent the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools.
Colson had been at Waimea Middle for four years, and his departure shocked the school community. Teachers, staff and students pleaded for his reinstatement and asked why he would be removed given his recent 4.8-out-of-5-point performance rating by the board. In a statement issued later, Ho‘okako‘o said there was no impropriety involved and described his sudden departure as a resignation.
On Thursday, 300 people turned out at a community meeting, challenging Ho‘okako‘o and asking for an explanation. Many said Colson would not have voluntarily abandoned his students midway through the school year.
On the Charter School Review Panel, Colson would have oversight over Ho‘okako‘o, which is the school board for three charter schools.
The third candidate for appointment to the panel, Gary Kai, has been executive director of the Hawaii Business Roundtable since July 2009. Kai has spent most of his life as a banker, and served as general manager of HomeStreet Bank, senior vice president at First Hawaiian Bank and chief operating officer of Finance Factors. Horner stepped down from the board of the Business Roundtable at the end of last year.
The nominees would replace members who resigned in protest over the Board of Education’s decision to reverse the panel and convert Laupahoehoe High and Elementary School into a charter this fall. Kai would represent the "business or accounting" community, while Watanabe would serve as "teacher at a startup charter school."
"It goes along with why I took my job at the Roundtable," Kai said when asked why he wanted to serve. "It was to support public education and give back to the community, particularly since I went to public schools. The priority of the Roundtable has always been in supporting public education."
