One school board? Seven? Four?

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?