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Supporters of a politically appointed Board of Education label themselves as grassroots volunteers and public education reform advocates. But a closer look reveals that the pro-appointed BOE campaign of Hawaii’s Children First is steered by a handful of people investing extraordinary sums of money to persuade voters to give up their right to democratically elect BOE members.

Their large expenditures – exceeding half a million dollars as of October 23 – attempt to mislead voters to believe that a governor-appointed BOE would be accountable and help improve education, even though research by the National Association of State Boards of Education and multiple other studies have determined that appointed BOEs are not more accountable or effective.

Unable to dispute these key facts, Hawaii’s Children First (HCF) orchestrated a campaign to misinform and win voters by focusing on emotional issues and misrepresentation of facts. HCF ignores the drawbacks and political nature of appointed BOEs, let alone Hawaii’s own rejected appointed BOE experiment.

HCF’s three-step tactic is as follows:

1-Perpetuate a negative image of public schools and repeat the system is broken (when in fact, test scores have been on a steady climb for the past seven years, isle students are among the nation’s leaders in math gains, while Hawaii was among select states rewarded for its progress with a federal Race to the Top grant);

2-Blame furloughs on the elected BOE and contend they would not have occurred under an appointed BOE (when it was Governor Lingle who initiated furloughs, originally seeking 60 furlough days over two academic years. The independent, elected BOE was able to protest the governor’s unprecedented budget cut to education, reducing the number of furloughs to 17, and was the first to advocate the use of special funds that ultimately ended furloughs. A Lingle appointed BOE would have most likely rubber-stamped her 60-day furlough plan); and finally,

3-HCF attempts to convince voters that an appointed BOE will improve education (when research clearly shows appointed BOEs are not better than elected BOEs).

One example of HCF’s dishonest campaign is evident in a Sept. 16, 2010 e-mail in which the group lauds top-ranked states in Education Week’s 2010 Quality Counts for having appointed BOEs. HCF failed to disclose that eight of the bottom 10 states, and many others in the lower half of the ranking, also have appointed BOEs. In case you are wondering, Hawaii, with its elected BOE, ranked 26.

HCF criticizes the percentage of Hawaii students proficient in reading and math, while neglecting that test scores have continuously risen under one of the country’s toughest standards, or that isle fourth and eight graders are among the nation’s leaders in math gains and closing achievement gaps in the National Assessment of Education Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card.

HCF generalizes that few people vote for BOE candidates and races are decided based on name recognition and union endorsements. When in fact, the 2008 General Election drew more than one million BOE votes, and several BOE members have taken office without union endorsement. But can we name any successful gubernatorial bid free of union backing? In the 2008 BOE Honolulu District contest, between Carol Mon Lee and 20-year incumbent Denise Matsumoto, over 250,000 votes were cast with 80 percent of voters choosing either candidate. Ms. Mon Lee won, 134,284 to 113,367.

HCF argues appointments would improve qualifications of BOE members, when today, Hawaii’s elected BOE includes a university professor, respected retired principals, a past chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, a former associate dean of the University of Hawaii law school, highly successful business people, and members with financial, legal, special education, and other relevant expertise. Members also represent diverse backgrounds from the lower-middle income range and up. Who would HCF appoint?

HCF claims an appointed BOE would let voters hold a governor accountable for education. But when voters sought to question Lingle for the furloughs, they were left alone in her office for days and nights before being arrested directly in front of their children. The elected BOE accepted its responsibility and met numerous times with parent groups to hear their concerns and discuss possible solutions. When talks between the governor’s staff and the teachers union broke down, it was the independent/elected BOE team that brought the union back to the table. HCF’s claim that the public would hold the governor accountable for another board is questionable when you consider that Hawaii’s governor already appoints members of 150 boards and commissions. Despite numerous problems, voters have not held governors accountable for lackluster performances, nor have governors held their 150 boards and commissions accountable.

These are undisputable facts I trust voters will carefully consider when casting this important vote.

To make an informed choice, you must determine whether an unproven and unclear system of political appointments is indeed better than democratic elections through which voters directly select and unseat BOE members who answer to the people, and not the governor.

I encourage you to also question why so few people are spending so much money to take away your right to vote and empower the governor with more political appointments.

Close to $400,000 of the $512,000 in Hawaii’s Children First’s campaign chest has come from Bill Reeves, founder of The Learning Coalition (TLC), with much of his contributions being wired from England, according to campaign records.

Ironically, despite Mr. Reeve’s criticism of our education system, here’s how TLC praises Hawaii’s robust academic standards on its website:

“Many states are effectively “cheating” by devising extremely easy tests (very low standards) – and then declaring that a very high percentage of their public school kids are making Adequate Yearly Progress. If one were to look at the top performing states many of these fall into that category.

“Hawaii is thankfully at the other end of the national spectrum. Hawaii has some of the most robust and complex academic standards in the country. This is a good thing – because it encourages our teachers and children to aim higher and hopefully graduate ‘smarter.’”

That’s true. Harvard University recently gave Hawaii – and only four other states – an ‘A’ for having tough standards. Yet, Mr. Reeves funds a misperception through Hawaii’s Children First to support an appointed BOE.

While TLC’s original intent was to raise awareness about BOE candidates and “dispel those longstanding myths of failure” in public schools, its owner now seems determined to perpetuate those myths and eliminate BOE elections altogether.

Mr. Reeves and his wife also gave money to BOE candidate Melanie Bailey, who publicly announced she would use her campaign to advocate for an appointed BOE, as well as unsuccessful BOE hopeful Kathy Bryant-Hunter. Mr. Reeves and his wife have also contributed heavily in the 2008 elections for two other successful BOE candidates.

Sitting on TLC’s Advisory Board are Keith Amemiya, executive administrator of the University of Hawaii Board of Regents, and attorney Alan Oshima, both Hawaii’s Children First supporters. Also on TLC’s board are Andrew Aoki, deputy campaign manager for gubernatorial candidate Neil Abercrombie, and Tammi Chun, executive director of Hawaii P-20, an organization that would help screen appointed BOE members, according to House Bill 2377, which spelled out a BOE appointment process. While Lingle vetoed the bill, it will likely be resurrected by the 2011 Legislature.

One likely group pushing for an appointed BOE is the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, which has already successfully lobbied lawmakers to receive tax-exempt revenue bonds. Former Superintendent Patricia Hamamoto, who had been silent on the issue and just a month ago offered a neutral viewpoint in a televised debate, was suddenly recruited to play a leading role as an appointed BOE advocate, after becoming principal of St. Louis School, a member of the pro-appointed BOE private school association. Would an appointed BOE whose members could be made up of private school employees, parents and advocates push for private school vouchers?

Hawaii’s Children First Chairman Randy Baldemor, who has been a recent staunch critic of special interest influence in BOE elections, was paid more than $12,000 between March and April 2010 to lobby the legislature to pass the appointed BOE constitutional amendment. In addition, as president of Honolulu-based DiscoveryBox, Mr. Baldemor has contributed $62,474 (as of October 23) in consulting and other services to the HCF campaign. Another Hawaii’s Children First spokesman, Colbert Matsumoto, happens to be a DiscoveryBox director.

Mr. Baldemor’s wife is executive director of Hawaii’s Teach for America, which profits from Department of Education contracts and stands to potentially benefit even more should HCF backers or friends be selected to serve on the BOE or influence appointments. To date, there has been no public acknowledgement of Baldemor’s conflict of interest or at the very least, his own special interest in an appointed BOE.

Meanwhile, as Hawaii’s only daily newspaper, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser has been less than objective in its coverage of the issue. Following a barrage of staff blogs and articles critical of the BOE, the paper published on Oct. 18 a “guest” editorial by Mr. Matsumoto – whom the paper failed to disclose is on the Board of Directors for Oahu Publications Inc., the Star-Advertiser’s owner, in addition to serving as president of Island Holdings, part owner of Oahu Publications Inc.

The next day, the newspaper’s editorial board endorsed the idea in an opinion piece as unconvincing as its headline, “Appointed BOE deserves a try.”

These are the real people seeking to take away voters’ voices from public education through an appointed BOE in a movement that is anything but grassroots.

Hawaii voters know better, having removed in the 1960s an appointed BOE that was out of touch, unaccountable and entrenched in politics in favor of the current representative BOE.

Rejected in Hawaii, the BOE appointment system has also failed to improve education in places such as Chicago and New York. To the contrary, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been criticized for ousting his own appointed education panel members who challenged his policies, and has won reelection twice by taking credit for academic gains later attributed to easy tests developed under his watch.

A governor can and must be an educational advocate, as well as accountable for supporting education, regardless of how the BOE is structured. But the best and only way to hold the BOE accountable and maintain its independent advocacy for students is through direct voter participation, not by tossing away our right to vote.

We already know what improves education. Research-based strategies linked to quality education are high quality preschools, teacher articulation teams and time for teachers to meet, a highly challenging curriculum, school leaders that engage the community, and retention of highly qualified teachers. There is no research supporting an appointed BOE.

I urge you, voter, to be critical of the money flowing to this campaign, the shiny pamphlets, slick TV commercials and radio spots seeking to convince you that an appointed BOE would somehow help solve our education challenges.

Before casting your ballot, think about what it means to lose the right to elect and hold a BOE member accountable, and whether a political appointment system in which members have the governor as their sole constituent is the answer. Think about what’s best for your children, grandchildren, neighbors and friends. Will we truly be putting students first by disconnecting ourselves from the democratic process and allowing a few political appointees to govern our public schools without checks and balances? I say ‘No.’