Sione Thompson was a football coach at Saint Louis School when he was asked to give substitute teaching a try.

“I fell in love with the classroom,” Thompson said. “I made the parallels between coaching and classroom experience, and had an immediate realization that there was some natural ability and a passion there.”

That prompted Thompson, who had majored in sociology in college, to pursue a master’s degree in education. During his 10 years at Saint Louis, his alma mater, he went on to various positions, including social sciences teacher and dean of students, before being named principal of the all-boys Catholic school in 2015.

Last summer, when Thompson was working as an early college coordinator for the University of Hawaii-West Oahu, he was tapped to serve as executive director of the state’s Public Charter School Commission. His predecessor, Tom Hutton, had stepped down after three years on the job. Hutton was the first director of the commission, which was formed by the Legislature in 2012 as part of an overhaul of the state’s charter law to tighten oversight and accountability of the schools, which first took shape here in the mid-1990s.

The state’s 34 charter schools enroll about 10,000 children, or about 6 percent of public school students. Charter schools, which report to their own governing boards, are largely funded with taxpayer dollars through per-pupil funding but are independently run under contracts with the commission. While allotted more freedom than most public schools over budgets, staffing, curricula and other operations, they’re supposed to hold to the same academic and financial accountability measures as traditional schools.

Question: Innovation is a signature element of sorts in charter school curricula here and on the mainland, correct?

Answer: Charter schools are innovation in action. They’re able to go out there and be an incubator or laboratory of new ideas that can be implemented and put into practice — not just innovation on a piece of paper or an idea.

Q: Does Hawaii have its own brand of charter innovation?

A: Hawaii is a special cultural ethnic place, and we bring a lot of our indigenous practices to the table when we talk about education and innovation. … Olelo Hawaii, for example, poses a lot of opportunities for immersion (charter) schools to be assessed not only based upon English language but also in Hawaiian. … Many of our charter schools are leading the way in understanding what Hawaiian assessments look like — what culturally relevant assessments look like.

Q: Due to the built-in flexibility and autonomy, no two charter schools are identical?

A: I always say: “When you’ve met one charter school, you’ve met one charter school.” They are very, very different with some overlapping. … There’s different pedagogy in the methodologies. Some schools are using cultural practices, bringing the ahupuaa system into the arts, science and math of the curriculum. Some have students working with industry and companies of the surrounding area, trying to solve real-life problems. Others are answering in-depth questions about environmental needs and sustainability.

Q: You have been on the job for about six months. What do you enjoy most and least about the work so far?

A: What I enjoy most is visiting the schools, really getting to see and understand how our schools operate. … And any time I can see the keiki smiling, laughing and learning; it’s one of the biggest joys of being in education in general. Being on the campuses and having a warm aloha welcome from a lot of our school leaders has really put the anxiety I had moving into this job at ease.

A barrier is that I don’t have enough hours in the day. I’d really like to be more hands-on and engage with more people and have more time with them.

Q: Under the commission, charter schools are now more structured and less free-form. Complaints about heavy-handed oversight led to a recent Board of Education report that dings the commission for matters ranging from a lack of strategic vision to failing to adequately protect school autonomy. Thoughts?

A: I look at this through a lens of great opportunity, and understanding areas for opportunities for improvement. And that’s what I’m going to take this report to be. … That’s what I preach to schools as well. … It’s not all about punitive action. It’s about gathering the data and looking for continuous improvement. That’s my educational philosophy … and what I hope to bring here to the commission.

Q: Up and running for more than two decades, charter schools in Hawaii are still grappling with growing pains?

A: We’re adolescents in the evolution of charters. We’re fairly young … and we’re working through the growing pains.

Q: Among the commission’s 2017 legislative proposals are bills that would create grants for new schools known as startup schools. Why is that a priority?

A: An applicant will get approved and … prior to their (campus) existence there is no funding stream. They don’t receive per-pupil funding until they literally open their doors. But they have to hire people, they have to pay rent, they have all of these expenses that occur. So, we’re asking for funding.

We have conversion schools and startup schools. Conversion schools do have (state Department of Education) support for their facilities and maintenance. Startup schools do not.

Q: Conversion schools are housed in state Department of Education buildings?

A: DOE buildings and other state facilities.

Q: And the startups could be in any other sort of facility, correct? Several years ago, one school in Waianae was launched in a chicken coop before moving into a storefront space.

A: Some are under tents or in makeshift Quonset huts. One school I visited in Hilo, they repurposed an old movie theater. Beautiful, what they’ve done. The creativity … with a limited budget.

Q: Can charter schools look beyond state allocations to grow their budgets?

A: The schools can have a nonprofit arm. They have opportunities to raise funds through private donors. They can go private-corporate. They can go with foundations.

We have gone out and secured $14.8 million in a pre-kindergarten development grant. That’s from the U.S. Department of Education. What that does is bring 18 preschool classrooms into the charter schools. The schools do not get funding for pre-kindergarten because the statute allows only K-12 per-pupil funding.

Q: What is the status of the grant?

A: We are in our third year. It’s for a total of five years, but only four years are secure. With this (Trump) administration we don’t know whether the funding is going to come or not. There’s uncertainty.

Q: What do you see that indicates Hawaii’s charter school movement is working?

A: When I speak with various educational stakeholders, from the Board of Education to the Department of Education and legislators, parents and community members … the greatest success is that Hawaii allows for charters to be an option — schools of choice. No one is saying, “Stop chartering.” They’re all saying: “How do we get charters to be better? How do we get our education system to become better? How do charters inform our education system so that we can all become better? And how do we bridge the relationship between department schools and private schools?”

Q: What do you want to do to help set the future direction for charter schools?

A: I really want to be a partner in doing almost what’s considered a statewide educational needs assessment. And then strategically authorizing — or even incentivizing in some way — applicants who desire to meet those needs. I can definitely see a more targeted response. … What has been happening is an open invite for anybody with a great innovative idea. … Being more intentional would be helpful in meeting the needs of our communities, the needs of the educational system in Hawaii.