The Bishop Estate has had the good fortune during the last 30 years to have had trustees astute in business and finance, social and educational vision. Let Kamehameha Schools
president do his jobAll trustees are responsible
for letting a bad situation grow steadily worseWith former Trustee Matsuo Takabuki in the lead, the trustees guided the estate from the brink of bankruptcy in the 1960s to its present strong financial position.
On the educational front, former Trustee Myron Thompson saw that early intervention in education would help not only Hawaiian children but all children.
To guide the schools into a new era, the trustees needed a president for the future. After careful consideration, Dr. Michael Chun was selected. The schools under his tenure became a model of educational excellence, because of his vision, focus and hard work.
I use the past tense, because one of the first moves of Trustee Lokelani Lindsey was to restructure the Kamehameha Schools administration and management, so that substantive authority to manage the school was shifted from Chun to herself. She has become the de facto president of the Kamehameha Schools, except she did not have to apply for the job.
To date, she has managed to dismantle the successful Early Education Program, ignoring or not recognizing national educational trends and philosophy.
A national initiative was inaugurated last month, headed by Gen. Colin Powell, supported by the president and many other luminaries. The initiative? Emphasis on early childhood education, all the things that the Early Education Division had developed and was doing.
More than 20 years' expertise and infrastructure, gone. Kamehameha's programs should have been at center stage.
Morale at the school among faculty and staff, which was once at an all-time high, is at an all-time low.
There is an understanding that any and all written communications from the school -- and this includes notices to parents about the cost of a field trip -- be approved by the trustees (i.e. Lindsey) before being sent out. This might be considered micromanagement.
Now, staff and students just call instead of write, in order to avoid the paper jam.
The justices of the Supreme Court of Hawaii chose to ignore a blue-ribbon panel's recommendations, and now they say they're not responsible because the issue is not in their court.
Well, it was in their court and they dropped the ball. The present trustees share in the responsibility because they did not stop an obvious misuse of trustee power.
As a requisite, the trustees should have the business and financial acumen to enlarge and enhance the Bishop Estate's resources, so that the Kamehameha Schools are able to reach the largest number of Hawaiian children possible.
The Kamehameha Schools do not need a new president. The Bishop Estate needs trustees who will support an environment that allows excellence.
Dr. R. Wayne Fukino, an emergency physician
at Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital, is a 1967 graduate of
Kamehameha Schools. The opinions in View Point columns
are the authors' and are not necessarily shared by the Star-Bulletin.