Educators: Let each school make its own decisions

Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.

Site-based decision-making in education isn’t a fad that will go through a cycle and then pass away, a Colorado school superintendent told 200 educators, politicians and business leaders here yesterday.

"The whole country is getting swept up into site-based decision-making or shared management. If we don’t do something like this, we’re going to be in serious trouble," said James Mitchell, school superintendent in Northglenn, Colo.

Mitchell said, "Those who have the hardest time accepting site-based management are those who control the money and those who control the information."

Hawaii Schools Superintendent Charles Toguchi, supporting the new system borrowed from private industry, described it as turning "an organization upside down."

That means having the teachers, principals, parents, and students at each school make the decisions they consider best for their school rather than simply following orders sent down from a state or district office.

Toguchi initiated yesterday’s conference at the Hawaiian Regent 

Hotel so islanders could hear from mainland school leaders who are trying the new system of school management.

"It’s a bottom-up way of running a school system rather than top down," said Frank Petruzielo, associate superintendent for Dade Country Public Schools, Miami. …

Dade County school board member Robert Renick said he doesn’t know if the site-based management system, which 40 of the county’s 270 schools have been trying for a year, will work.

But, he said, "Public education the way it is today is destined to fail." 

Hawaii school board chairman Francis McMillen said this is "an idea whose time has come for Hawaii." 

Gov. John Waihee wants 30 schools to be making their decisions and operating with the new system by next January. …

Ron Kula, principal of Maunaloa Elementary School on Molokai, said the new system "sounds like something we’ve been asking for at our school level."

He said isle officials have been talking about more autonomy for the schools for years, "but it doesn’t end up that way."