Voters Elect Ed Board Members for the Last Time
Even as they were casting their votes for who would serve next on the Hawaii State Board of Education, the majority of voters had already decided they would relinquish their right to vote for the positions in the future.
An amendment for an appointed board of education passed with 57 percent of the total vote. Seven newly elected board members will take their seats next month, but they won’t get to keep them for long.
Voters elected six new board members in Tuesday’s general election. The seventh, Eileen Clarke, ran uncontested in the Central District and did not appear on the ballot. All seven will take their seats in December, but their terms will likely be cut short when they and the other six sitting members are replaced by a board appointed by the governor.
Oahu At-Large District (three):
- Pamela Young — 14.8 percent
- Kim Coco Iwamoto — 12.9 percent
- Randall Yee — 9.6 percent
Windward District: John Penebacker — 45.6 percent
Leeward District: Maralyn Kurshals — 22.9 percent
Maui District: Leona Rocha-Wilson — 41.9 percent
The board members elected Tuesday include a CPA, two attorneys, a former Army colonel, a youth mentor and instructor and a fashion business owner.
Board members serve four-year terms and are paid $100 for each meeting they attend.
Primary Predictions Come True
Participation in September’s primary election for the board was low, and general election participation wasn’t much better. Civil Beat reported then:
Voters in the City and County of Honolulu could have cast 621,876 votes — three for every voter who turned out — to help narrow the field in the race to fill Oahu’s three at-large seats. Only 57 percent of those votes were actually cast. That’s 13 percent fewer than both the and primaries, when voters cast 70 percent of all possible votes for those seats.
On Maui, 60 percent of the 28,839 voters who made it to the polls voted for one of three candidates running for the Maui District seat this year. By comparison, 97 percent of them voted in the mayoral race. There was no primary for that board seat the last time two times it was up for election in 2002 and 2006.
For the general election, voters in Honolulu cast 460,103, or 69 percent, of a possible 723,693 votes for the three Oahu At-Large seats. For the Leeward race, approximately 59 percent of voters participated. For the Windward seat, 68 percent. That’s just behind Maui, where 69 percent of ballots cast included votes for board of education candidates.
In the , 66 percent of possible votes for the Oahu at-large board candidates were cast. The numbers were even worse for the Kauai District seat: 59 percent of ballots were cast. For the Hawaii District seat: 75 percent were marked. For the Honolulu District seat, 80 percent.
This year, Oahu At-Large incumbent Iwamoto received 13 percent of the vote, which is 2 percentage points higher than when she first ran in 2006.
Pamela Young garnered 15 percent of the votes for the three Oahu At-Large seats, thanks in part to a local TV news personality of the same name.
Melanie Bailey, who used her candidacy to campaign for an appointed board, garnered 9 percent of the vote. She received the maximum $4,000 in campaign contributions from Bill Reeves, who also donated more than $360,000 toward the successful drive for an appointed board of education.
Roger Takabayashi, the only candidate to receive an endorsement from the teachers union, came in last with only 8 percent of the votes.
