Charter advocates appealed Tuesday to the Board of Education to allow 128-year-old Laupahoehoe High and Elementary School to convert to charter status this fall, despite opposition from teachers, the principal and the Charter School Review Panel.
"Although there are many naysayers at the present DOE school … their views are not representative of the community as a whole," said Lucille Chung, a 1958 graduate of Laupahoehoe, on the Hamakua Coast, and chairwoman of the Interim Local School Board for the charter.
Acting Board Chairman Brian De Lima said the board would deliberate in private and issue a written ruling later. It has already overruled the Charter School Review Panel once on the issue when it granted a charter to the applicants on Aug. 3 with plans to open in the 2012-13 school year.
But that opening date was postponed in December by the Charter School Review Panel after the charter advocates failed to hold elections for a permanent school board in September as promised in their application. The charter advocates want to put off those elections for a year, until the school opens and its staff and students are identified.
"We understand that we have a charter but we don’t have a charter school, so the constituents are not there right now to have the vote," Chung said. "Our school is not in place. There’s no way we could have an election."
Complicating the matter is the fact that 20 of Laupahoehoe’s 21 teachers have asked the Board of Education to allow them to transfer to other schools in the district if it becomes a charter. Previous conversions, such as at Waialae and Lanikai, have had the support of the school staff.
"The anticipation of this process for conversion is that there is the approval and the support of the staff," Charter School Review Panel Chairman Carl Takamura told the board. "And in the past that’s what’s happened. This particular situation is different."
Fred Pollock, project director for the charter effort, warned that the charter group might lose the remaining $250,000 of a $450,000 federal grant if the charter school doesn’t open as planned this fall. He argued that the panel’s decision to postpone the opening of Laupahoehoe as a charter school was in effect a revocation of the charter.
Takamura stressed that the charter had not been revoked. "We want to be sure a school is well prepared to open and operate successfully," he told the board.
"The ongoing uncertainty about the future of Laupahoehoe School has caused a great deal of anxiety and stress for the students, staff and families of the school," Takamura said. "We believe that delaying the opening of Laupahoehoe Community Public Charter School will provide the time for all parties to try to reach a mutually agreeable resolution to this complex situation and hopefully begin a period of healing."
In initially denying the charter, the review panel said it was not financially viable and did not have enough support in the school community. The principal testified that strong majorities of staff and teachers oppose the charter, and he projected it would have an annual budget shortfall of up to $600,000.
Chung said the charter group "would like to hire as many current teachers as possible, but in any case will have a full roster of teachers ready to teach when we open."
"The Charter School Review Panel has not shown a ‘can do’ attitude," Chung told the board. "Ever since you granted that charter, it has been ‘don’t do.’"
On Tuesday, Pollock said that despite concerns to the contrary, the school would continue to have a sports program. He also said that unless Laupahoehoe becomes a charter, "closure remains a real possibility a long as the school continues to lose students." Enrollment has dropped to 218 students from 236 at the start of this school year, he said.
De Lima said the board’s deliberations were exempt from the Sunshine Law because the board was acting in an adjudicatory capacity on the appeal of the panel’s action. He also said the board’s "policy doesn’t really permit that the Charter School Review Panel make a presentation," but nonetheless it allowed Takamura to speak.
