Board of Education weighs qualifications for tough superintendent job

Don’t read anything into the fact that it’s been six months and counting that Keith Hayashi has been acting as the interim state superintendent of Hawaii’s public schools. So says the head of the search for the next permanent superintendent.

It does not mean Hayashi is a shoe-in for the permanent position, says Catherine Payne, chairwoman of the state Board of Education and head of its search committee. This is even though Hayashi has said he plans to apply, and these months are widely seen as his tryout.

Six months as the interim head also does not mean the opposite, that Hayashi has been held back from permanent hiring, Payne says.

In fact, she insists, no one has been anointed, or disregarded, for the job of leading Hawaii’s massive 257-campus public school system, one of the largest in the country.

Applications aren’t even being taken yet. Right now, the search committee is in the middle of intensive research for what Hawaii’s public schools need in their next long-term leader, while simultaneously developing new strategic plans for the board and the Department of Education, since the last ones expired in June, Payne said an interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

“It’s important for them to be aligned,” she said.

The search committee spent the past week listening to focus groups of teachers, administrators, parents and general community members express what they want in the next permanent superintendent. A national job posting is expected in a few weeks.

The stakeholders’ input will shape the job description and posting that should lead to an announcement of finalists in May, a board vote in June, and the start of work for a new permanent superintendent on July 1.

Among the plethora of issues the committee is weighing:

What skills, experiences and values should the next hire have? Should that person be an educator with classroom-level teaching experience, unlike the previous two state superintendents?

Should that person be hired from within Hawaii, perhaps from the DOE, or is it better to have someone from the outside with a fresh perspective?

What missteps of past superintendents and the Education Department must be avoided?

Daunting challenges

This is an extraordinarily tough, high-stakes job.

With 171,600 students in grades K-12 and 40,000 full- and part-time employees on campuses scattered across disparate islands with widely varied needs, Hawaii was listed as the 12th largest school district in the nation in 2020 by the National Center for Education Statistics, and 10th largest by World Atlas.

The Hawaii DOE operates on an annual budget of approximately $3 billion, according to the center, and is the only statewide school system in the U.S.

The next permanent superintendent will be expected to lead the schools not only through the COVID- 19 pandemic and its accompanying troubles, such as loss of student learning, and health and safety challenges, but also navigate preexisting issues such as the teacher shortage, funding shortfalls, calls for school reform, and the conflict-prone overlap of Hawaii politics and school governance.

A generation or so ago, the tenure of the typical superintendent in America ran about 10 years, but today it’s only about 18 months, Payne said, citing information the board received by one of its national consultants.

A major reason for the change is the unprecedented public criticism and pressure pushing down on schools and their leaders these days, magnified by the pandemic, Payne said. While Hawaii so far has been lucky to have avoided the worst of the rancor, still, “we’re in a culture now of disrespect and rudeness” that makes the job of superintendent tougher and less attractive to prospects, she said.

Serving multiple bosses

Hawaii’s next permanent superintendent will need political savvy to figure out how to please his or her many bosses, official and de facto.

While the superintendent is hired by the BOE, the volunteer board appointed by the governor neither sets nor collects the taxes that ultimately fund the public schools. Unlike mainland school districts that are often delineated and funded by counties, here, it is the state Legislature that holds the purse strings.

On top of this, Hawaii’s Legislature and the governor sometimes have been accused of effectively creating school policy through legislation and budgeting, when setting policy is supposed to be the job of the school board.

Such twists in school governance frustrated the previous superintendent, Christina Kishimoto, and many before her.

Shortly before Kishimoto resigned in July after four years at the $240,000-a-year post, she described in a Star-Advertiser interview how, instead of answering to the board, she felt pulled by the Legislature, the executive branch and county leadership.

“The Legislature called me in for a number of hearings and COVID-19 conversations, and were having lots of direct conversations about funding — where we were spending it, what the impact was — and it started to get into the details that I really should be talking to the board about,” Kishimoto said at the time. “It did feel (then) like I was reporting to three different entities and that they were not necessarily coordinating with one another around who was responsible for which layers of work.”

The superintendent also must finesse relationships with the Hawaii State Teachers Association, Hawaii Government Employees Association and the United Public Workers, which represent school employees and historically wield substantial power.

The teachers union’s clashes with Kishimoto and the DOE over pandemic measures included filing a complaint in August 2020 with the Hawaii Labor Relations Board.

The divide has not closed under Hayashi. The union has launched multiple actions during his time as interim superintendent, including a demand for impact bargaining in August, a prohibited practice complaint in October, and a grievance and new demand for impact bargaining in January.

Classroom experience weighed

Should the next leader of Hawaii’s public schools be required to be an educator with classroom experience with students?

The HSTA does not have a formal position on this, but its president, Osa Tui Jr., says a heart for the concerns of educators on the ground is crucial. The schools need “someone that will be willing to actually listen,” he said, pausing for effect, “and take ‘teacher voice’ into account.

“Our last superintendent said that ‘teacher voice’ was one of the pillars,” he continued, referring to Kishimoto. “ … When she first started, she said, ‘Let’s work together to get things done,’” but once COVID-19 descended, he said, many teachers felt their fears and needs went unheard.

Critics pointed to Kishi­moto’s lack of classroom teaching experience in the so-called trenches as one reason for some disconnect, even though she came in with strong credentials in education administration, previously serving as superintendent of smaller school districts in Arizona and Connecticut.

Her predecessor had not been a classroom educator either. Kathryn Matayoshi was an attorney, former executive director of the Hawaii Business Roundtable, and president and CEO of Community Links Hawaii. Her mother had been a teacher.

Matayoshi was brought in first as a DOE deputy superintendent focusing on strategic planning, then elevated to state superintendent in 2010, lasting seven years.

The last Hawaii superintendent with classroom experience was Patricia Ha­mamoto. She was a teacher at three Oahu schools and served as vice principal or principal of three more before becoming the state superintendent in 2001.

A proposal in the 2021 Legislature had called for the board to prioritize superintendent candidates with a minimum of 10 years of employment in the DOE, with at least five of those years serving as a teacher, principal, or higher. It was vetoed by Gov. David Ige.

There are pros and cons to promoting from within the DOE, Tui said. Such a candidate will have existing rapport and inside knowledge, but then, “will they be willing to change the status quo?”

Homegrown vs. imported

Then there is a question of whether the system more urgently needs a leader who is homegrown, or one with a fresh vision. Kishimoto was from New York City and faced a steep learning curve working in Hawaii for the first time. The two superintendents before her were local products.

While the school board cannot require that the schools chief hail from the islands, understanding and cultivating Hawaii’s unique culture and sensitive history are actual requirements of the job. This is because the entire DOE since 2015 has operated under a board policy called “Na Hopena A‘o (HA)” — a uniquely Hawaiian culture-inspired document that stipulates the learning objectives for all students, as well as the core principles under which the department operates.

The document calls for students to learn, and DOE employees to work with, a sense of “Belonging, Responsibility, Excellence, Aloha, Total Well-being, and Hawaii.” The list of 48 objectives calls on students and employees to do such things as stay “open to new ideas and different ways of doing things,” “give generously of time and knowledge,” “share the histories, stories, cultures and languages of Hawaii” and “call Hawaii home.”

“It’s very, very grounded in Hawaiian values and the kinds of things we appreciate about the Hawaiian culture,” Payne said.

The next superintendent, she added, “will have to have to have a deep understanding of that.”