An almost decade-old effort to make the selection process for Kamehameha Schools trustees more self-governing appears to have come up short in state court.
Circuit Judge Jeannette Castagnetti, at the end of a two-day probate hearing Thursday, wasn’t inclined to have court-appointed panels, which put forth trustee candidates, made up exclusively of trust stakeholders, according to advocates for such a change.
Since 2016 a group of former Kamehameha Schools leaders and supporters has advocated for the change because they believe the current trustee selection process in place since 2000 lacks transparency and stakeholder management.
“Specifically, we believe the process for selecting trustees of Kamehameha Schools should be internally driven, not externally managed, as is the process currently in place,” advocacy group leaders said in a 2017 letter to then-Circuit Judge Derrick Chan.
The court-appointed screening panels, also referred to as trustee selection committees, which are made up of at least seven people, recruit, review and offer a list of three finalists from which a pick is made by a judge assigned to the Kamehameha Schools probate case.
Advocates for changing the process also contend that how members of the selection committees are chosen isn’t generally known.
Early work by the advocacy group, Swell the Echo, included sending four letters to judges on the probate case in 2017 expressing its view, and in 2019 getting the state Legislature to adopt a resolution stating that the court hasn’t been fully transparent about how it chooses screening committee members.
The resolution also says qualifications for committee members aren’t clear, and urges that future committees be made up of Kamehameha Schools stakeholders, who could include Kamehameha Schools alumni, faculty, scholarship recipients as well as generally any Native Hawaiian person knowledgeable of the trust’s mission.
However, the group, in part led by former Kamehameha Schools President Michael Chun, didn’t have standing to petition the court to act on its claims regarding the roughly $15 billion charitable trust established to benefit Native Hawaiians through education.
In 2022, Kamehameha Schools trustees petitioned the court to review the process, and the court quickly appointed three special masters to explore the matter and submit a report to the court with recommendations.
The report was filed June 10, and it said the trustees do not mean to imply any dissatisfaction with the trustee selection process or selection results over the past two decades, but that a periodic review and potential fine-tuning would be prudent to ensure that the best trustee candidates are considered.
“The current procedure for selection of trustees is not broken, but a review by the special masters was appropriate and necessary,” said the report by Benjamin Matsubara, Eric Sonnenberg and Caycie Gusman Wong, three attorneys serving as special masters.
The report didn’t recommend that committee members be limited to Kamehameha Schools stakeholders.
A hearing was held Sept. 19 and continued Thursday for Castagnetti to receive more input on the issue, including participation from a state deputy attorney general representing the public’s interest in the protection of Kamehameha Schools’ charitable assets. Advocacy group representatives said the judge indicated that she would affirm the report’s suggestion regarding committee member selections and not adopt the overhaul sought by the group.
Kamehameha Schools said in a statement that it is grateful to the stakeholders and beneficiaries who engaged in the important process by offering their insights and proposals. The trust reserved further comment pending a formal decision.
Chun, in a statement, expressed disappointment. “Our call for self-governance has once more been rebuffed,” he said. “We believe Kamehameha stakeholders are fully capable of making leadership decisions — like trustee selection — rather than allowing others to determine the course of our future.”
Another advocacy group leader, Jan Dill, who formerly led a Kamehameha Schools alumni, parent and student organization, added in a statement that the trust has a system that continues to marginalize the Hawaiian people.
“The beneficiaries of the legacy of (trust founder Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop) are fully capable of making decisions as to the leadership of the Kamehameha Schools,” he said. “Because of the extent of its resources, the present political/economic system refuses to allow this to happen. The struggle for ‘pono’ (righteousness) continues.”
Julian Ako, a former principal of the trust’s high school on Oahu who also is helping lead Swell the Echo, said backers of the group aren’t willing to give up their struggle and that public demonstrations could be part of next steps.
“We are going to continue to fight,” he said.
The current effort to significantly change the way the board of trustees for Kamehameha Schools is selected began about two decades after public revelations about corruption at the trust led to a prior overhaul for selecting trustees.
For much of the trust’s history, Hawaii Supreme Court justices appointed Kamehameha Schools trustees, which led to allegations that justices and state lawmakers were giving and receiving favors tied to trustee positions that at one point included around $1 million in annual pay.
The scandal was exposed in the “Broken Trust” essay published in December 1997 in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
According to the essay, trustees were passing lucrative business to their friends, investing in ventures in which they had a personal stake and shortchanging the schools and other educational services.
An ensuing investigation led then-state Attorney General Margery Bronster to seek the permanent removal of trustees Lokelani Lindsey, Richard Wong and Henry Peters.
In May 1999, Lindsey was permanently removed following a six-month trial. A day later Wong, Peters and Gerard Jervis were also removed. The fifth trustee, Oswald Stender, voluntarily resigned. An interim board was appointed by a Circuit Court probate judge to run the estate. Since 2000 the Circuit Court process involving the selection committee has been in place.
Randall Roth, one of the “Broken Trust” authors, said in an Oct. 15 letter to Swell the Echo leaders that he admires the group’s efforts and likes the idea of putting future trustee selection in the hands of Kamehameha Schools graduates.
“That wouldn’t guarantee anything, but I believe it would lessen the chances of ending up with trustee- selectors, or trustees, who do not feel morally obligated to protect Princess Pauahi’s trust, including the interests of future generations of intended beneficiaries,” Roth wrote.
Roth also said he believes Hawaii’s political establishment will prevent such trustee selection unless there is a coalition behind it that includes trustees and is recognized by the public as an “irresistible force of virtue.”
