At Town Hall On Public Education, The Goal Is Community Involvement
Panelists at a town hall Wednesday dared more Hawaii residents to get more involved in public education.
“Sometimes we expect all the answers and solutions to lie in the schools, but education doesn’t happen just in schools,” said panelist Christine Sorensen, dean of the University of Hawaii College of Education. “Education happens in the communities, and in our partnerships with one another.”
Gov. Neil Abercrombie and Maya Soetoro-Ng also attended and gave speeches as part of the two-hour town hall at Kapiolani Community College to galvanize the community about public education. The forum was sponsored by local nonprofit , co-founded by Soetoro-Ng, in partnership with , and the new .
The forum members said that community engagement is one of the most difficult issues to address when it comes to schools, but also a critical missing link. It’s hard to measure outside involvement in education and hard for schools to stimulate it when it doesn’t exist. And often the people who want to be involved don’t know where to begin.
But they also shared a plethora of success stories about community engagement in Hawaii’s schools that received multiple rounds of applause from the enthusiastic audience.
“Part of what makes it so hard to change is that people start expecting the worst of each other,” said James Koshiba of Kanu Hawaii in his closing remarks.
“We need to be far more organized than we are right now,” Koshiba said, challenging the 300 or so attendees to text their names, email addresses and ZIP codes to 801-901-3555 in order to build a database of action-takers.
Soetoro-Ng said she hopes that people who are already mentally and emotionally engaged in education feel nudged into action by Wednesday’s meeting, and that those who haven’t been now recognize the importance of education not just for parents and children.
The other panelists included:
- Castle Complex Area Superintendent Lea Albert
- Waikiki Elementary School principal Bonnie Tabor
- Jean Silvernail of the U.S. Pacific Command Military Child Education Division
- Christina Simmons, Hawaii Parent Information Resource Center
