Laupahoehoe charter school bid blocked

Laupahoehoe Community Public Charter School cannot open as planned next fall because it failed to hold elections for a permanent school board, the Charter School Review Panel decided Thursday.

"The feeling of the majority of members is that we have given ample notice to the Laupahoehoe Interim Local School Board about the importance and the urgency of them conducting their Local School Board election," Panel Chairman Carl Takamura said. "And without them having done that, it really calls into question the future of the school."

Takamura spoke after the panel met in executive session with a deputy attorney general. Members voted 7-0, with two abstentions, on a motion against opening the charter school in the 2012-13 school year.

The move will keep 128-year-old Laupahoehoe High and Elementary School, on Hawaii island’s Hamakua Coast, as a regular Department of Education school for at least another year. The panel said the action was necessary to ensure Laupahoehoe’s financial, academic and organizational success and "for the sake of the students and staff."

The panel had previously rejected an application by a group of alumni and community members to convert Laupahoehoe School into a charter, saying the plan was not financially viable and did not have enough support in the school community. But the applicants persuaded the newly appointed Board of Education in a closed meeting to reverse that decision and award the charter on Aug. 3.

In its application, the Interim Local School Board committed to holding elections in September 2011 to allow teachers, staff, students, parents and community members to choose representatives for a permanent governing board of the charter school. But it now wants to put off elections until after the charter school opens, arguing that most of those stakeholder groups will not exist until that time.

The panel, however, says the current Laupahoehoe teachers, staff, students, parents and community should be electing their representatives, since their school is being converted into a charter. When the September date for elections passed, the panel directed that such elections be held by Nov. 21.

In response the charter proponents are again appealing to the Board of Education. In their appeal, circulated at Thursday’s meeting, they denounced the panel as "arbitrary and capricious" for insisting that elections be held this year, saying such elections were not a contractual obligation.

"Without participating in Charter School Review Panel discussion and without access to allegations by its opponents, Laupahoehoe Community Public Charter School is at the mercy of a one-sided, unfair process that violates its due process rights," said the appeal, signed by President Nicolette Barton Hubbard and the interim board.

Ray Camacho of the Hawaii State Teachers Association told the panel that 20 of the school’s 22 teachers have told the union in writing that they want to remain with the Department of Education rather than apply to work at the charter.

"The teachers want a voice in this process, and they believe they have been shut out," Camacho said.