Laupahoehoe teachers file suit to halt charter

By COLIN M. STEWART

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Teachers at Laupahoehoe High and Elementary School filed suit Thursday to halt their school’s conversion to a charter school.

The civil action, filed in Third Circuit Court by teachers Bob Beekman and Andrea Wilson in conjunction with the Hawaii State Teachers Association, seeks to reverse a Jan. 24 decision by the state Board of Education that cleared the way for the school to open as a charter school in July 2012.

Handled by Honolulu attorney Rebecca L. Covert, the filing claims that the BOE’s decision to overrule the state Charter School Review Panel, which had ordered the charter school to hold off on its launch until July 2013, was in violation of constitutional and statutory provisions and was “arbitrary or capricious, characterized by abuse of discretion or was a clearly unwarranted exercise of discretion.”

The hope, said Beekman in a Thursday evening phone interview, is that the court will “exercise as much reason as is possible under the circumstances.”

“I believe in my students,” he said in describing his reasoning behind supporting the suit. “The whole idea of continuing to save Laupahoehoe as a Department of Education school is based on our sincere belief that the children and their parents have the right to the best education possible. And, simply, that is not going to be available to them through this charter at this school.”

Opponents of the charter school, including teachers and staff at the existing DOE school, maintain that the community was duped into voting to convert their school to a charter. They also claim that the charter school’s interim board has fashioned a financially unsound budget that will leave the school with less money than it receives now.

Charter school supporters, meanwhile, argue that there was nothing wrong with the vote to convert to a charter school. They also say that their budget is not unlike that of other charter schools in the state, and they will be able to cut costs by maintaining local control over purchasing and hiring decisions.

In its January decision, the BOE sided with the charter school proponents, saying that the CSRP had erred in its decision to push back the launch of the charter school.

In the aftermath of that decision, three volunteer members of that panel announced their resignations, claiming that the BOE had undercut their authority and ignored the voices of the of the students and parents at the school.

Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.