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Hawaii voters cast a vote of no confidence in the elected board of education on Tuesday. A constitutional amendment to replace it with one appointed by the governor passed by a 14-point margin.

Fifty-seven percent voted in favor of the amendment, while 43 percent voted against it.

If unmarked ballots hadn’t been counted as “no” votes as required by state law, the margin would have been slightly larger: 57 percent to 38 percent.

Anger over Furlough Fridays and the lack of accountability among government leaders helped fuel the rejection of the elected board.

“It’s certainly more than a furlough, isn’t it?” said now-former board of education member Donna Ikeda, with a hint of glee in her voice. Ikeda supports the amendment and has the tendinitis from sign-waving to prove it.

She said the amendment trumps anything she accomplished in six years on the board.

“This is my greatest accomplishment as a BOE member,” she said. “We’re making a permanent, positive change, and education will finally have coordination, collaboration and a common direction.”

Current board chairman Garrett Toguchi is skeptical about the claims that an appointed board will improve education, and disappointed with the results.

“It’s almost obscene that our right to vote is being taken away through that very mechanism,” he said. “I would watch out for reduced access to the board for the community and lack of transparency.”

More than 40 years ago, just after statehood, Hawaii voters did just the opposite, rejecting an appointed board in favor of an elected one.

This wasn’t the first time they had the opportunity to reverse that decision at the polls. It was the third. And it passed this time even without a process outlined for how members would be selected. Earlier this year, Gov. Linda Lingle vetoed the Hawaii State Legislature‘s proposal, which was modeled after the selection council format for appointing members to the University of Hawaii Board of Regents.



What Now?

There will be no immediate change in the status quo, because there is no enactment plan for the constitutional amendment. In other words, the seven newly elected board members will be sworn in next month as usual, and all 13 board members will keep their seats until further notice.

Meanwhile, legislators will craft a bill outlining the selection process. Ikeda, who also spent 26 years in the Hawaii Legislature, said she believes this will be a top priority for the incoming lawmakers.

Because the original enabling bill received wide approval this year in the Hawaii State Legislature, Rep. Roy Takumi said it is possible lawmakers could fast-track the issue in January and put it on Governor-Elect Neil Abercrombie‘s desk almost immediately. It could become law as early as within a week or 10 days of session opening. On a regular timetable, it could take months to become law.

“That would be the most expeditious manner of dealing with it,” Takumi said of the fast-tracking plan. “Whoever is in the Legislature would work with the new governor to figure out how they would like to appoint the board so that on the first day of session, a bill could be introduced that is ready to go.”

Abercrombie indicated he was counting on a fast-track plan when he voted in favor of the amendment.

The school board was an appointed body at statehood, per the state constitution. In the early ’60s, people criticized the appointed board for:

• Lack of accountability
• Being out of touch and not engendering parental and community support
• Being unqualified
• Using students as political pawns

In 1964, voters changed the constitution so they could elect the board’s members.

And amendments to reverse that decision have been proposed in the Legislature “probably every year since then,” said Toguchi. But only three have made it to the ballot.

The first attempt to revert to the state’s original an appointed board was rejected in 1970.

In 1994, a second attempt to revert to the state’s original appointed board failed at the polls by a 16-percent margin. Eleven of those percentage points came from blank ballots.

This third attempt came in the wake of Hawaii’s infamous Furlough Fridays, which some say could have been prevented if the board had been more directly answerable to the governor.

“I think Furlough Fridays highlighted a lot of the problems with the education system,” said Randy Baldemor, chairman of ballot issue committee .

The committee was fully endorsed by Lingle and all three living former governors and it led this latest push for an appointed board.

Children First lobbied in 2010 for legislation that would put a constitutional amendment on the ballot and then funded an aggressive advertising and speaking campaign in support of the amendment. The organization raised more than $500,000 during the election season. Most of the funds came from a handful of well-funded individuals and organizations, including philanthropist Bill Reeves.

But it wasn’t only because of Children First that the amendment passed on its third ballot appearance, Baldemor said.

“We had all kinds of people — parents, teachers, principals, the former superintendent, all the living governors — calling for change, and it really sent home the message that this was the time to improve government. The good thing is that the voters spoke.”

The only organized opposition for the amendment came from the elected board of education and from the Hawaii State Teachers Association, which spent about $86,000 in advertising against the ballot issue.