Schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto yesterday asked a Board of Education committee to slow down implementation of a school funding formula based on student need, to give the Department of Education a chance to analyze what creates student achievement at successful schools — and how much that costs.

"We want to develop a formula based on student achievement rather than on how much money we have," Hamamoto suggested to generally favorable response from BOE members.

"To assess our progress we need the time to do a proper analysis and evaluation," she said. "We haven't had a chance to evaluate what has happened over the past year."

The committee will meet again Sept. 13 to make a recommendation to the full board, but chairman Randall Yee said, "I'm in favor of the department's recommendation."

Hamamoto suggested increasing implementation from 10 percent this year to just 15 percent next year of the original formula developed a year ago. As part of a four-year phase-in, it had been set to increase to 25 percent implementation, which would have triggered even bigger losses for about half of the schools and bigger gains for the rest.

But Hamamoto suggested that funding level would also include a request to the Legislature for another $20 million next year to again keep schools from drastically losing money.

This year the Legislature increased school funding by $20 million to keep schools expected to see big losses closer to their current budgets. Hamamoto said adding the same amount next year would keep all but four schools from losing in the 2007-08 school year, which would offer principals two years of funding continuity.

Creation of a funding formula based on student need is a legislative mandate that's part of the Reinventing Education Act of 2004.

The new funding mechanism has become one of the primary education issues in Hawai'i. The goal of the formula is to assure more equitable distribution of money among the state's public schools and, ultimately, improve student performance. And it would affect every regular public school in the state.

But turmoil has surrounded the board's efforts to create a fair formula over the past year and a half, with small and generally isolated rural schools claiming they can't survive based on a per student allocation because of the costs of overhead. Meanwhile, large urban schools say a formula based on need finally offers them adequate money to do the job they've been asked to do.

But with the Legislature also mandating that a new committee reconsider the formula annually, even more turmoil has ensued.

Effectively Hamamoto's request tables the latest recommendations of the second Committee on Weights, which favored a new idea — a "foundation" grant for every school that would have returned school funding to a closer approximation of the status quo as of 2004.

In the audience, Liholiho Elementary principal Christina Small said she agrees with the move suggested by Hamamoto — especially since it would include the development of a new formula proposal by the DOE with a lot of input from the schools.

"I like the fact that more analysis is coming," Small said after the meeting. "We don't like pitting schools against each other. That's not good."

In her testimony, Small had favored creation of a Weighted Student Formula Office to do the kind of analysis Hamamoto proposed, but one that would develop a financial impact/adequacy study of each school.

"What we train our students to do — 'do your research' — is not being practiced due to time constraints to quickly implement" the weighted student formula, Small had testified.

Liholiho parent Scott Taniyama also liked the sound of Hamamoto's proposal. His testimony echoed some of the same ideas.

"What we really need to do is step back, take a really good look at WSF, gather data from our schools, determine what is adequate funding for the least-funded group — regular education students with a weight of 1.0 — and work our way up to the special-needs students," he said.

"Then properly fund our schools so that all students can achieve to their fullest potential."

A theme in testimony yesterday from half a dozen people, and a dozen more who submitted testimony, included the refrain that education in Hawai'i is not adequately funded, and until it is no formula can truly be successful.

"All schools have individual needs and requirements and the funding pot is too small," said Dennis Iwanaga, representing a coalition of 21 schools that has banded together as STAFFS — Schools Toward Adequate Funding For Students.

Iwanaga said the group supports the new Committee on Weights' recommendation that the BOE "ask the Legislature for $46 million per year over a six-year period" based on a recent study estimating that public education is under-funded by $278 million annually.

In expanding on her proposal, Hamamoto said that over the next seven or eight months key members of her department would meet with schools to determine what best practices are leading to student proficiency. Only then, she said, can the department really know what it costs annually to see a regular education student reach proficiency.

From that point on, "weights" for such characteristics as poverty, English as a second language, transiency, and gifted and talented, would be analyzed and added.

The recommendations for a new formula would then go to the third Committee on Weights, which will begin meeting next April, and to the board.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com.