School construction should be based on student needs, not politics

The Legislature is about to sentence the children of West Oahu to grossly overcrowded classrooms and campuses for the next decade and beyond, by foolishly expending money on a new high school in Maui where enrollment numbers are substantially dropping.

Gov. David Ige requested $31 million in his budget for a new building at Campbell High School to accommodate the exploding student population. He did not request a penny for a new high school in Maui, which clearly indicates it is not a DOE priority and not a needed expenditure. Yet the politicians are putting unneeded pork ahead of critical student needs. This is shameful and business as usual.

The DOE’s own enrollment numbers and projections are clear: West Oahu is in urgent need of a new high school. The governor’s proposed building for Campbell is an emergency measure in response to decades of poor planning.

To add insult to injury, the House just slashed it by half to $15 million, while appropriating $37 million for a new high school in Kihei that is not needed; enrollment there (Maui/Baldwin) is projected to decline by 409 students while West Oahu (Campbell/Kapolei) is predicted to rise by 769 students. Even more remarkable is that the Senate allocated zero dollars for Campbell and upped the Maui appropriation to $38 million. What are we doing?

State Rep. Bob McDermott has demonstrated that DOE Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi has not provided strong guidance to the Legislature with regards to the No. 1 priority for a new high school; instead she has been a muted political puppet worried about offending powerful politicians instead of putting the children’s interests first.

This has allowed legislators to put their wants and desires before the needs of our school children. The Department of Education should be making recommendations on where new construction is really needed, based on enrollment projections and hard data.

The expenditure of huge sums of money for a new high school on Maui would handcuff the DOE for years. And though the governor finally recently released a long-dormant $5 million appropriation for design and construction of the new West Oahu High school, we do not have the money to build two new high schools at once. Further, this is a pyrrhic victory as this superintendent does not even have a site selected for the West Oahu school. No work can begin until they pick a site.

The numbers say a Kihei high school is not needed, not to mention the huge operational costs of another high school being layered onto an already thinly stretched DOE budget. Once built, implementation of the student weighted formula will cause Maui and Baldwin high schools to have anemic funding levels due to the transfer of students to Kihei, meaning loss of teachers, programs and extracurricular activities.

My heart is for the children of Oahu’s west side who are already in hot, overcrowded classrooms.

Today, Campbell has 3,086 students and, according to the DOE, will grow to 3,545, in 2020. Yet, the politicians want to build a high school where enrollment is falling.

It is time we put the children first with child-centered policies and not political pork.

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Dowd off:

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is off today.