BOE to hear Laupahoehoe case

By COLIN M. STEWART

Tribune-Herald staff writer

The Hawaii Board of Education has agreed to hear an appeal by organizers of the Laupahoehoe charter school, who claim that their charter has effectively been revoked by the school’s oversight body.

Meanwhile, the state’s Charter School Review Panel (CSRP) maintains that it has merely instructed the charter school to delay its July 2012 launch until the 2013-14 school year.

The BOE notified the Laupahoehoe Community Public Charter School’s Interim Local School Board last week of its decision to hear on Tuesday a pair of appeals the interim board filed on Nov. 28 and Dec. 29.

On Friday, a charter school spokesman said that the interim board hopes the BOE will choose to once again intervene in the charter school’s favor. When organizers of the school initially applied for charter status, the review panel denied their request on three separate occasions before the BOE overruled their decision and awarded the charter.

“By their conduct to date, they’ve effectively revoked the charter,” said Laupahoehoe Community Public Charter School spokesman and Hilo attorney Steven Strauss of the review panel. “Under typical, analogous situations, when an agency doesn’t do something, that is tantamount to a denial.”

Strauss said that the review panel had overstepped its bounds in dictating when the charter school could hold its elections, and it would need to be reined in if the school is to have a chance to flourish.

“They are trying to micromanage us out of existence,” he said. “… One way or another, we expect the BOE to say ‘We expect you to deal fairly with the school.'”

On Wednesday, CSRP Chairman Carl Takamura said that he and the other members of the panel were “perplexed” by the Board of Education’s decision to hear the interim board’s appeals.

“In the final action that the CSRP took at its Dec. 8 meeting, we did not revoke their charter. Based on their refusal to hold an election for the (permanent) Local School Board, we found they weren’t going to be ready for the 2012-13 school year, and decided we would ask the Department of Education to continue to run the school,” he said.

Takamura said that he recognized the BOE’s right to review the CSRP’s decisions, but added that he feels the Laupahoehoe interim board does not have a basis for an appeal, “since we never took action to deny a Detailed Implementation Plan amendment, and since we never revoked their charter,” he said.

He added that the review panel has tried to work with the interim board and does not oppose a charter school in Laupahoehoe. But, he said, from the panel’s perspective, the charter school must first obtain the support of the school’s teachers and staff if it is to be successful.

“The CSRP denied Laupahoehoe’s application for charter not because we didn’t think their application was good. It had innovative ideas,” he said. “The problem we kept bringing up to them was that it was clear that they did not have the support of the staff at the school, and particularly the teachers. We recommended they take a step back and get their support.”

In its November appeal, Laupahoehoe’s interim board claimed that the state charter review panel had failed to respond to a request to amend the charter school’s Detailed Implementation Plan. The interim board sought the amendment to push back a deadline by which it was to have held elections for a permanent school board. The school’s plan had initially called for it to hold elections no later than September 2011.

Laupahoehoe’s interim board members have claimed that they sought the change after reviewing the state’s charter school law and concluding that they cannot legally hold the elections until they have identified the participant groups that will make up the new charter school — including parents, community members, faculty and staff. They argue that those currently at the school would not be the same pool as those who would choose to attend and work at the charter school, and therefore the elections cannot be held until the school year is about to begin.

Laupahoehoe’s anti-charter contingent maintains that moving the elections back is simply a delaying tactic by the interim board to prevent opponents from winning a majority of seats on the board and then surrendering the charter to the state — thereby keeping the school under the direct control of the state Department of Education.

Then, in their late December appeal, interim board members claimed that, through its inaction on responding to the election date change request, as well as requiring the election to be held no later than Nov. 21, the review panel had effectively revoked the school’s charter. The interim board requested that the Board of Education overrule the review panel and allow them to hold permanent board elections and launch by the end of this July.

The Board of Education will hear the charter school’s appeals on Tuesday beginning at 11:30 a.m. In the meantime, Strauss said, the charter school’s interim board is proceeding with its plans to launch for the 2012-13 academic year, including accepting applications for employment for various teacher and staff positions at the school.

“We are not complying with the CSRP’s directive, which we consider to be illegal and outside its authority to prevent us from hiring. … I fully expect we will open as scheduled in July 2012,” he said.

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