Mystery Surrounding Superintendent Hire
The Hawaii State Board of Education voted unanimously Monday afternoon to hire Kathryn Matayoshi as the Hawaii Department of Education‘s permanent superintendent. It happened on a tighter timeline than even the selection committee anticipated at its Sept. 3 meeting, without the board releasing the names of the 23 other applicants or even telling the public who the other finalists were.
All the meetings concerning the applicants were held behind closed doors. And although the board included public input early in the superintendent search process, its transparency seems to have dropped off once the public survey results were in.
The selection committee, which was charged with screening all the superintendent applications, held its first and only meeting Sept. 3 on the neighbor island of Kauai. The committee consisted of board members:
- Carol Mon Lee, chairperson
- Eileen Clarke, vice chairperson
- Lei Ahu Isa
- Karen Knudsen
- John Penebacker
- Herbert Watanabe
Before the committee members entered executive session on Kauai, Mon Lee explained that they would be screening applications and would make a recommendation of semi-finalists at a special meeting of the full board on Sept. 8. The board would then select the final applicants.
“Immediately following the board’s decision on the finalists, the board will begin to conduct reference checks, employment checks and develop an interview schedule, interview questions and draw up a contract,” Mon Lee told the committee. “We hope to complete all of this sometime by October and to make an offer to our finalist, subject to reference checks.”
At its Sept. 8 meeting, the full board went . After executive session, the board recessed until Monday, Sept. 13.
At the Monday meeting, Da Silva said the board focused solely on Matayoshi. He said he is consulting with the Attorney General to determine if and when the board can release the names of the other 23 superintendent applicants.
“Today was strictly Kathy,” he said. “But during the whole process, the board has considered all 24 applicants. In the last meeting, pretty much all the names were mentioned.”
