Hawaii’s public education system and local politics are never far apart, and a new move by Gov. David Ige appears to show a broadening conflict at the intersection.
Last week Ige announced he was forming his own task force to map out plans for the new federal law regarding public schools.
The law is called “Every Student Succeeds Act,” ESSA, and it is designed to give the states more power over school funding and decisions. It replaces the federal program called “No Child Left Behind.”
It is not completely new because Hawaii’s Department of Education has been working to mesh the ESSA requirements with state policies.
For Ige, ESSA appears to be the sort of lever he has wanted to pry his way into the DOE.
“This is a major opportunity to change the face of public education in Hawaii,” Ige said at last week’s news conference. Ige said his team will assess the current public school system and identify areas of need. Then Ige will call an education summit to chat up the public school questions.
Ige could have done all that without the guise of a federal law. Lots of previous governors have summoned up their own task forces to worry about education. Govs. Ben Cayetano and Linda Lingle have already taken that journey.
As Star-Advertiser reporter Susan Essoyan reported in last week’s coverage of the ESSA news conference, “The legislation requires the state Department of Education to ‘consult in a timely and meaningful manner with the governor or appropriate officials from the governor’s office’ in developing the plan and also requires it to give him 30 days to sign it. However, if he declines to sign it, the law directs the state educational agency to submit the plan to the federal government without his signature.”
The thing to watch is what happens with the players.
Ige named retired Moanalua High School principal Darrel Galera chairman of the new ESSA team. Galera is a strong Ige supporter, a campaign contributor and is executive director of the Education Institute of Hawaii, a self-described education think tank that lists among its positions that teachers and students “are not thriving in the current system.”
Galera is part of a group of public school educators who last year called for public schools Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi to step down after they released a scathing survey of school principals saying that principals lack the power and support to act in their schools’ best interests.
Interestingly back in 1995, when Ige and his chief of staff, Mike McCartney, were both in the state Legislature, they worked on a program called “student-centered schools” that would give more authority to individual schools and take away power from the central school administration.
The rub is that the governor and the Legislature don’t run education in Hawaii; the state Constitution says “the Board of Education shall have the power … to formulate policy and exercise control over the public school system through its executive officer, the superintendent of education.”
If you want to drive the education car in Hawaii, you have to be on the BOE or be the superintendent of education.
Ige has already appointed one close campaign supporter, Hubert Minn, to the BOE, has named two more so far this year and is likely to have another vacancy because Don Horner says he’s retiring.
That gives Ige the chance to cause Galera’s wish to come true by replacing Matayoshi as superintendent, and that could be what is driving the Ige education policy.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
