Hawaii Legislative Session Promises Broad Educational Debate
By Katherine Poythress 12/13/2011
Hawaii's 2011 legislative session was packed with debate over hot educational issues. And the new session, which begins January 18, promises to pick up where the drama left off.
Issues that still haven't cooled down and will certainly surface again include charter schools, classroom/instructional time, junior kindergarten, bullying and school buses, lawmakers told Civil Beat this week.
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Tokuda plans to propose a similar but more dramatic cleanup for the charter school system, based on the results of the Charter School Governance Task Force she co-chaired with Rep. Della Au Belatti over the summer and fall. The task force last week recommended a complete overhaul of the authority structure for charter schools.
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The Legislature eliminated funding for regular school buses next year in the face of skyrocketing costs, and said it wouldn't reinstate it unless the department presented a convincing plan to reduce costs. It left $29 million for students with special needs.
http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2011/12/13/14207-legislative-session-promises-broad-educational-debate/
Anyone here not deeply disappointed in the Hawaii public educational system? The switch from an elected to an appointed board was just rearranging the deck chairs, and so much time got spent on that instead of addressing actual issues such as class-size and air-conditioning 
