HAWAI'I DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

(Redirected from Hawaii Department of Education)

The 'Hawaii State Department of Education' is the most centralized and only statewide public education system in the United States. Established by Kamehameha III on October 15, 1840, it is the oldest school system west of the Mississippi River and only system established by a sovereign monarch. As the official state education agency, the Hawaii State Department of Education oversees all 283 public schools and charter schools and over 13,000 teachers in the State of Hawaii. It serves an average of 182,798 students annually. The HIDOE is currently headed by Superintendent Patricia Hamamoto.

Contents

Structure

Relevant debates

Network setup

School lunch(es)

Schools

High schools

See also

External links

Structure

There is one individual school districts that are directly controlled from Honolulu by the fourteen members of the Board of Education: Central District, Hawaii District, Honolulu District, Kauai District, Leeward District, Maui District, and Windward District. Thirteen members are directly elected by the voters of either Oahu or the Neighbor Islands to staggered four-year terms. The remaining member is a public high school student selected by the Hawaii State Student Council who serves as a non-voting member.
The Board of Education is empowered by the State Constitution (Article X, Section 3 [1]) to formulate statewide education policy. The Board also has the power to appoint the Superintendent of Education as the chief executive officer of the system. The Superintendent reports to and can be terminated by the Board.
The State Department of Education currently carries suggested benchmarks for each educational grade and subject which are available on its website. However, a law creating a standard state public school curriculum, the first of its kind in Hawaii, did not pass during the 2006 legislative session.

Relevant debates

Probably the most current and controversial debate over Hawaii school reform has to do with the structure of the State Department of Education: specifically, whether it should remain centralized or be broken into smaller districts. The main rationale usually given for the current centralized model is equity in distribution of resources: all schools are theoretically funded from the same pool of money on an equitable basis. (Most schools on the U.S. Mainland are organized into school districts funded from local property taxes; thus more affluent school districts theoretically receive more money and resources than less affluent areas.) Supporters of decentralization see it as a means of moving decision-making closer to the classroom, and thus achieving better student performance.
The debate divides roughly along party lines, with Republicans generally supporting decentralization and the Democrats supporting the centralized status quo. In 2002, Republican Governor Linda Lingle ran on a campaign to reorganize the Hawaii State Department of Education into smaller school districts that were localed modeled after a system found in Canada. The Democrat-controlled Hawaii State Legislature, however, voted not to enact this plan in 2003 and 2004.
In January 2004, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich wanted to create a system similar to that of Hawaii in his state but met fierce opposition from local school boards who did not want to lose control. Michigan also has discussed unifying their school districts and faced similar opposition.

Network setup

The Hawaii Department of Education provides a shared Sprint OC3 (via cable modem) internet connection for certain schools on the island of Oahu. Each school is dependent upon the NSSB (Network Services and Support Branch) for general layout and design. Schools are required to maintain and operate any hardware or software not essential to the overall network.
School computers are commonly assigned DHCP IP addresses in the ranges of 172.17.224.1 to 172.17.227.255. Static addresses for network hardware, printers, and servers are in the range 165.248.77.1 to 165.248.247.255. Speculation exists that the HIDOE has exhausted its pool of addresses, but according to the NSSB this statement is false.
Recently, the company Websense has been hired to manage content-filtering of internet traffic. The filter is able to block many common websites that have been submitted to he service as potentially unwanted content. Methods to bypass the content filters are widely available and effective for most purposes. Since the installation (and recent renovation) of the Websense service, school internet traffic may experience delays of up to 25 seconds.
Most internet-enabled devices on the school networks are outdated mostly due to lack of funding and the HIDOE's usage of legacy software such as MacSchool which requires the school's faculty to use the outdated Apple OS/9. Recently, the HIDOE has begun using a system called ESIS developed as a Java web-applet based on a design from Cisco Systems.

School lunch(es)

Standard lunch fare is an offering of either the "Main" lunch, or a "Wiki" lunch as an alternate. Most schools have recently begun to use the new federal lunch-purchase system. The new computerized system is called "MealTime" and uses student IDs to determine the amount of "lunch-credits" a particular student has.

Schools

High schools

City & County of Honolulu

★ Aiea High School in Aiea

★ Admiral Arthur W. Radford High School in Salt Lake

★ James Campbell High School in Ewa Beach

★ James B. Castle High School in Kāneohe

★ Wallace Rider Farrington High School in Kalihi

★ Henry J. Kaiser High School in Hawaii Kai

★ Kahuku High School in Kahuku

★ Kailua High School in Kailua

★ Kaimukī High School in Kaimukī

★ Kalaheo High School in Kailua

★ Kalani High School in Honolulu

★ Kapolei High School in Kapolei

★ Leilehua High School in Wahiawā

★ President William McKinley High School in Makiki

★ Mililani High School in Mililani

★ Moanalua High School in Salt Lake

★ Nānākuli High School in Nānākuli

★ Pearl City High School in Pearl City

★ President Theodore Roosevelt High School in Honolulu

★ Waialua High School in Waialua

★ Waianae High School in Waianae

★ Waipahu High School in Waipahu

Maui County

★ Henry Perrine Baldwin High School in Wailuku

★ Hana High School in Hana

★ King Kekaulike High School in Pukalani

★ Lahainaluna High School in Lahaina

★ Lānai High School in Lānai City

★ Maui High School in Kahului

★ Molokai High School in Hoolehua

Hawaii County

★ Hilo High School in Hilo

★ Honokaa High School in Honokaa

★ Kealakehe High School in Kailua, Kona

★ Kohala High School in Kohala

★ Konawaena High School in Kealakekua

★ Pahoa High School in Pahoa

★ Waiakea High School in Hilo

Kauai County

★ Kapaa High School in Kapaa

★ Kauaʻi High School in Lihue

★ Waimea High School in Waimea

See also

★ State education agency

External links

★ Hawaii Official list of public school alumni sites in Hawaii

★ Hawaii State Department of Education

★ Native Hawaiian Education Council