Issue – Charter Schools and the Washer/Dryer Syndrome

Senator Norman Sakamoto
October 27, 2006

The Hawaii charter schools recently made the news with the recent dismissal of the charter school administrative office's (CSAO) executive director Jim Shon. The situation is quite complex given all the different players involved. The CSAO is intended to help the charter schools improve their operations. Unfortunately, the office is often like a combination washer/dryer that has been loaded with one set of clothes from each of our twenty seven charter schools and they all come with different sets of cleaning instructions.

One set of instructions says: Maximize hot water, extra detergent, extra bleach, soaking, then long wash cycle and rinse twice. Then spin to the max, extra heat and then dry. Another set of instructions says: Remove delicates for hand washing, use cold water, mild detergent, no bleach, regular rinse, and sort before spin and dry cycle. Add to that twenty five more sets of instructions!

Periodically, the combination washer/dryer operator (the charter school executive director, Jim Shon) would be asked to intercede in the wash/dry cycle based on a verbal report concerning a set of charter school apparel that warranted a modification of the washer/dryer settings.  Unfortunately, the result of the ongoing saga over the controls – buttons pushed, priorities reset, operations started and stopped, dials getting turned right and left then left again, has resulted in CSAO's executive director Jim Shon being wrung out.