Our unit this week is the State Constitution, which sets forth our statewide board of education in Article X, section 3: "The board of education shall have the power, as provided by law, to formulate statewide educational policy and appoint the superintendent of education as the chief executive officer of the public school system." This is a unique system that no other state has. All the others have education run at the county, city, or municipal level. In 2004, the average size of a U.S. school district was 3,200 students. In 2004, Hawaii's had 182,000.
In 2004, Governor Lingle proposed amending the constitution to provide for seven local school boards. This would have broken one large district into smaller ones ranging from 10,000 to 37,000 students. Toward the end of the session, when it looked as though that proposed amendment would not pass, she suggested changing it into one local board for each county.
The measure was not passed by the Legislature (and thus did not make it to the ballot for you to vote on).
One position in the 2004 proposal:
http://starbulletin.com/2004/02/18/news/story1.html
Now the Governor again is proposing a constitutional amendment to allow each county council to establish a local school district, in House Bill 3118 and Senate Bill 3040.
What do you think? Is it time to amend the constitution to allow each county to decide to have a local school board?
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3 comments:
Some background for my bias: I'm from a neighbor island, and my father was a school teacher. I think that having a local, county based school-district system is a good idea. I haven't read Hoxby's book, but it seems like it solidly evaluated outcomes based on district size ($s spent/student, test scores) and found that the smaller school districts performed better, simply because of the laws of economics that healthy competition is a good thing. I'm one of those people who can't afford private school for my kid and I would like to have options, without having to fake documents, etc.
I think it is time to amend the constitution to allow each county in Hawaii to have a local school board. I believe this would allow the counties to more closely monitor the needs of their students.
The figures given for the size of the average US school district being 3,200 in 2004 concerned me. I grew up in Northern California and think there were at least 900 students in my high school. Looking at that school district, the Mt. Diablo Unified School District, they reported district student enrollment in 2004 to be 35,542. There is more than this one school district in the county.
With that in mind, 182,000 students in one school district sounds like too many students for one district to adequately serve.
I believe Hawaii students would benefit by having a localized county school district; perhaps even improve the public schools here.
It doesn't work and patching it won't make it better. The educational system managed by the Department of Education and the Board of Education is going through the motions with a hit or miss attitude. The results show in our children. Recent reports state that our teachers are not qualified? The bureaucracy has evolved over time on two levels: the DOE itself with its own checks and balances and now the Board of Education with its political agenda. Don't recall if its been done but would like the State Auditor to do an audit of the entire DOE. The elected Board of Directors' would be our 1980's answer to state problems create a commission and then politicize it.
Studies do show: 1) smaller class sizes work, 2) up to date books and sufficient supplies are necessary, 3) a basic strong curriculum is even better. But to date our DOE has required that our teachers test not teach. What would more School Boards achieve if the DOE is such a mess?
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