Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
By COLIN M. STEWART
Tribune-Herald staff writer
Laupahoehoe’s new conversion charter school faces the possibility of having to fill vacancies left by the majority of the faculty at the current Department of Education school, with the start to its inaugural academic year just five months away.
On Tuesday, Laupahoehoe High and Middle School Principal James Denight confirmed that “most or all” of the teachers at the school, 22 in total, had filed requests with the Department of Education seeking possible transfers to other schools for the next academic year. The majority of them had requested transfers to other East Hawaii schools, mainly in the Hilo area, he said.
As of Wednesday, only five teachers had been sent offers of employment on behalf of the charter school, according to Laupahoehoe Community Public Charter School interim board spokesman Steven Strauss. Four other existing staff members had been sent similar offers. The school currently has 46 teaching and staff positions total budgeted for the 2012-13 school year, he added.
Strauss said that in the interest of preserving employee privacy, he was not willing to divulge the total number of teachers who had submitted letters expressing interest in remaining with the charter school, but he did say the board had received “multiple” letters of interest by Feb. 15, the date by which submissions were requested.
Strauss noted that even if all of the teachers at the current school had requested transfers to other schools, it did not mean they wouldn’t accept positions with the charter school.
“They can seek several different options at the same time,” he said. “The hiring process is a continuous process.”
In the case of a conversion of a DOE-directed school to a charter school, teachers have the option of remaining at the charter school for the first year, if they are offered a position, before they must choose to transfer to another DOE school and remain a DOE employee, or resign as a DOE employee and stay with the charter school.
Having to make such a decision has been unpopular with many of the teachers at his school, Denight said.
“I think most of it (the resistance to the conversion) centered on the fact that they (the teachers) wanted to remain with the DOE,” he said. “Many of them have a lot of years invested.”
Denight counts himself among those who would rather remain with the DOE. He has requested transfer to another school.
Even so, Denight said he remains committed to making the conversion to a charter school go as smoothly as possible.
“Our main focus has been, we really want to make the transition that’s going to happen as smooth as possible,” he said. “I’ve told my staff, ‘Whatever your feelings are about the charter, please leave them at the schoolhouse steps.'”
Teachers and staff have been perhaps the most outspoken members of the community in their opposition to the charter conversion, with Hawaii State Teachers Association representatives leading a number of efforts to stall or quash the conversion process. Two weeks ago, the HSTA filed a suit in the 3rd Circuit Court to reverse a Jan. 24 decision by the state Board of Education that cleared the way for the charter school to open this summer.
Strauss said that interim board members voted during a Tuesday evening work meeting to authorize the Attorney General’s Office to file a motion to dismiss that lawsuit on a number of grounds, including “a lack of standing, a lack of jurisdiction, and failure to state a claim,” he said.
He added that the HSTA also faces potential conflicts of interest in the suit, “assuming that the HSTA will be suing a school with which some of its members want to be employed.”
Meanwhile, the charter school interim board is working with hiring consultants to select a new principal, or “director of operations” from a pool of six finalists. The process began looking through applications from 60 qualified candidates from around the country, Strauss added. Once a new director is in place, he or she will be able to speed up additional hires of staff and faculty, he added.
The effort to convert the Laupahoehoe school into a charter school began with strong community support as an effort to avoid closure by the DOE due to flagging enrollment in a community hit hard by the loss of the sugar industry.
But opposition to the conversion began to mount, especially among school staffers and some parents. Opponents 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 say that their budget is not unlike that of other charter schools in the state.
In its January decision, the BOE sided with the charter school proponents, saying that the Charter School Review Panel had erred in its decision to push back the launch of the charter school.
Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.