Throughout my teaching career, I have served under numerous superintendents and followed policies created by numerous iterations of the Hawaii Board of Education (BOE). As such, I have lived through the change in leadership too many times to count. Each time, there was an extensive and expensive overhaul of curriculum materials, a ridiculous amount of musical chair movement at all levels of the department, and a level of chaos that brought the system to a crawl.
When I first started teaching, and new initiatives were initiated by the Department of Education (DOE), all the veterans would say, “This too shall pass.” The belief was that if we changed nothing, in short order the state would be on to something else.
The culture has begun to change under Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi. From Ka‘u to Kalaheo and all points in between, we speak the same educational language. It’s been tough to live through the herculean changes that were made to our state system in such a short time. For teachers, especially, the expectations for teaching have been significantly different than previously experienced.
However, we’ve also seen more partnerships develop than ever before. Under Matayoshi’s leadership these past six years there has been significant forward movement that has involved communities and community leaders throughout the state.
I would posit that is a primary reason that her detractors want her gone. It is tough to fly below the radar when the system has developed a set of checks and balances that cannot hide under the chaos of changing leadership. The work of the last six years has cleared the path for Gov. David Ige’s vision of school empowerment. A common, statewide baseline provides the necessary infrastructure needed to build for our future school successes.
More decision-making at the school level cannot come at the cost of maintaining an equitable and effective state system. There must be a careful balance that exists or we run the risk of going back to a time when fiefdoms ruled the DOE and whoever had the ear of certain decision-makers gained favor, often at the expense of those who don’t.
My observation is that Matayoshi’s training as an attorney has helped the DOE navigate changes in law at every level in government and her “outside the DOE” status helped her take on the many sacred cows that those leaders born and raised in the DOE could not.
There may be those who believe that the initiatives that were designed under this administration to address the edicts of No Child Left Behind were too “top down” or that the decision to enter into an agreement for Race to the Top was misguided, but in trying to make sure that our state, our schools, our teachers, administrators and, most especially, our students were shielded from the sanctions that came from NCLB, she demonstrated that we can create a state system that truly functions as the unique being that it is.
Our education system lives and dies by federal and state laws, and Matayoshi’s knowledge of how to address them has helped us secure funding and recognition that has ultimately benefitted our mission.
By seeing our state system as one system, Matayoshi provided ways for schools to share best practices that may be occurring throughout the system. Our schools are making progress in all the areas that people think matter. Absenteeism is down. College attendance and completion numbers are moving up. Graduation rates, the most important indicator in my opinion, is on the rise, as are scores on the AP exams.
If we remove this superintendent, what we will be doing is starting over, and our system, as identified by the BOE’s glowing evaluation of Matayoshi, doesn’t seem to need a complete do-over. The BOE must take a deep look at all of the changes and initiatives and see what is being done now that has created a system of empowerment.
