LIHUE Kauai Superintendent Bill Arakaki has announced his retirement.
LIHUE — Kauai Superintendent Bill Arakaki has announced his retirement.
After serving in the role as Kauai Complex Area Superintendent for 13 years, and 40 years total with the Department of Education, Arakaki announced Monday he’s leaving the district effective June 30, 2020.
He said the Department of Education is in the process of finding a new person to fill the role, with a goal of transitioning in that new person and getting them up to speed before that June 30 deadline.
“I have given considerable thought to this significant decision over the past few years and I feel this is the right time to retire,” Arakaki said. “I am proud to have worked with such fine and respectable educators, parents, business and community members. Most of all are the keiki and students who have brought inspiration and joy during my 40 years of service..”
Before taking up the role as Kauai Complex Area Superintendent, Arakaki served as principal at Waimea High from 1999-2007. He’s been vice principal at four schools on Kauai — Kapaa Middle from 1996-1999, Kapaa High from 1993-96, Wilcox Elementary from 1992-93), and Kauai High from1990-92, as well as serving as acting vice principal in the role currently.
He was also a teacher in Kauai High School’s alternative learning center from 1988-1990.
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For a fuller picture of Mr. Arakaki’s career, the Garden Island should research and publish his final salary and also the amount of the pension he’ll be receiving. Huge amounts of money for someone who made a career out of forcing teachers in the classroom to adhere to ridiculous bureaucratic paperwork requirements to the detriment of actually teaching their students. While we’re on the subject, the DOE should be abolished. It’s a $2billion behemoth that’s accountable to no one but itself. At the very least, a federal auditor should be brought in to investigate the many ways in which DOE money is misused and wasted.
Currently across the board Hawaii schools are failing because they have more administrators collecting welfare off of hardworking teachers.
This is what is the root cause of the problem s with the education system in Hawaii.
Audit and you will find out that this is no lie. It’s been written about many times but hidden from public view in every single aspect.
Yes, an audit is necessary for transparency purposes so the public can see where all the money goes. Of the state’s 2 billion dollar budget, approximately 386 million (state and federal funds) goes to special education statewide. Of that Kauai Complex gets 21 million for ~956 IDEA eligible students. The DOE withholds or makes it very difficult to access IDEA related services that can help students and teachers in classrooms when there is a DOE school based Medicaid program that would reimburse the state ~54% of funds if they provide health related services to Medicaid eligible students. To date, only ~12 students in Kauai indicated they were Medicaid eligible and the ability of the DOE to obtain reimbursement from the federal government is low. Sylvia Luke (House Finance Chair) said that Hawai’i could be missing out on 50-100 million dollars annually for Medicaid related health services (https://www.staradvertiser.com/2018/08/19/hawaii-news/state-forgoing-millions-in-federal-reimbursements/?HSA=98d5da46e4086e6ae44fe482f5b16090a4db8fd2). Hawaii students could be getting much needed services which could help them in school and improve their quality of life. There is a mechanism to help IDEA eligible students on Kauai receive the services they need, but instead many students and parents have to struggle to get a decent IEP created and executed properly. We need to be assured the services provided are helping the students on Kauai.