The administrator of a Kaua'i public school was sentenced to jail yesterday for viciously beating her adopted son. She pled guilty to two counts of felony assault. According to one report, she tied up her son, making sure to wrap the rope around his neck, then beat him with a baseball bat.
She will apparently keep her job as principal of the public school as if nothing has happened. As if she can do her job from jail. As if beating a child, her child, counts for nothing. At least, it doesn't appear so at this particular school because the school's board fully supports her and will not fire her. Even though she will be in jail, as a convicted felon child beater.
Here's the rest of the story. These charter schools are an experiment in local control. Each school is run by a local board. For good or evil, the boards have the power to, among other things, hire and fire and set their own budget priorities. The schools are free of all "statutory and regulatory requirements that tend to inhibit of restrict a school's ability to make decisions relating to the provision of educational services to the students attending the school". They are free of "bureaucratic red tape and accommodating of the individual needs of students to allow the State to dramatically improve its educational standards for the twenty-first century".
This is done, they say, because it focuses accountability directly onto a local group, rather than some faceless administrator on another island, thus releasing the innovative energies of the community.
So what message are we sending when a local board fails to hold their own administrator accountable? What remedy do the people of this child's district have when the problem is holding the local board accountable?
In at least this case, the answer appears to be nothing.
