by Thomas Stuart

Critical of a proposed commission cleverly devised to shield officials from hard decisions about schools with declining enrollment, Honolulu Advertiser June 6 avers, “Everyone . . . is painfully aware of the imperative to make better use of taxpayer-supported facilities . . . the better course would be . . . for the school board and Department of Education officials to buckle down and produce a facilities plan.”

Get real! The accountability-free DOE bureaucracy is “painfully aware” of nothing but its own perpetuation. As long as the Democrat-saturated state legislature provides cover for this sorry, out of control bureaucracy -- of which this fig-leaf “commission” is yet another example -- don’t ever expect any of these non-teaching, desk driving DOE careerist officials to “buckle down” and make any decision that might carry even the slightest whiff of dreaded accountability.

The money sucking, accountability-averse DOE will never have any incentive to do anything but self-perpetuating business as usual as long as [1] the utterly useless BOE remains too timid to exercise even minimal DOE oversight and [2] Democrat legislators continue to derive growing political power from control over the ever-widening annual DOE slush fund “budget” now rounding on three billion dollars.

A vote for a Constitutional Convention is now the only way for parents and other taxpayers to expunge the rapidly metastasizing DOE cancer eating away the future of the bright capable children who populate our classrooms. As a public school teacher, and despite DOE statistics to the contrary, let me assure your readers it is not our kids who are the worst in the nation.

Until the DOE monstrosity is eradicated -- replaced by real school districts over which home rule can be locally exercised at county and sub county levels -- there is no hope for victimized children now trapped in the belly of this remote, uncaring, corrupt, malevolent, inertia-driven beast, children now being mercilessly and systematically exploited so that comfy, controlling Democrat incumbents might maintain saturation levels of “representation” in the state legislature.