Senator Kahele Launches New Website...

[csgray]

I would also like an answer that directly addresses that question.

Charter schools have to pay for all facilities costs, pay for the Charter School Administrative office and the Review panel's administration costs out of their reduced per pupil funding, so in reality charter schools have even less money to spend on their students. Music, art and sports have disappeared from many charter schools , due to the reduction in funding.

Charter school students are the Hawaii children of Hawaii taxpayers attending PUBLIC charter schools. At many of the Big Island's Charter schools they have much bigger percentages of Special needs, very low income, homeless, and high risk children such as foster children than DOE schools; why are these children treated as less worthy of an equal public education?

Carol

[senkahele]

@csgray
To answer your question I strongly support Hawai'i's charter schools. I support HAAS in Puna, I support the VSAS in Volcano and the other charter schools in our district. However like any other State funded program charter schools rely on State funding and the reality is with the decline in the economy the budget deficit and the other financial problems in our State the legislature is looking to cut funding and when it comes to education the DOE is the first in line to receive funding and charter schools come second. I do not agree with it but that is the way it is right now. It also does not help sway the minds of the other legislative colleagues of mine, especially the ones on the Education committee when charter schools such as the Myron B. Thompson Charter school faced tough questions about questionable hiring practices and impropriety within their administration. Currently the legislature wants to regulate charter schools even more and wants more scrutiny of charter schools and their directors because they do not believe these schools have enough oversight when dealing with the taxpayers money. I am very proud of the fact my staff and I and other Senators were able to get $618K for VSAS in Volcano. In reality many legislators did not want a dime to go to any charter school..I lobbied hard for that and on the very last day we got it. Bottom line: I support our charter schools. I hope that answers your question. Please see these links below...Aloha

http://ow.ly/4QXdB
http://ow.ly/4QXg4

[punafish]

Thank you for responding Senator Kahele.

Not saying there's much you can do about it, but I would argue that the traditional DOE schools have insufficient oversight. How many are being audited by a 3rd party outside firm? (Read somewhere a year or two ago that they found a DOE school in Oahu that couldn't account for millions of dollars, computers were missing, etc. And that, I assume, was done with the stellar oversight of our bureaucrats.)

I can tell you that HAAS has a legitimate auditing system in place and is run like a business with complete transparency (I sat on the board for a couple years). How many traditional DOE schools do you think would pass an audit even with their so-called "oversight" by the administration? It's amazing that an administration in charge of a FAILED school system has the gall to criticize charter schools. But it also makes perfect sense that they'd try to crush them, because their success is making the old boys look incompetent.

Indeed you've got a tough job ahead and in many ways your hands are tied. Allowing oversight by the powers that be would turn our wonderful charter schools into more "failed" DOE schools. Let's hope that doesn't happen.