A nearly decade-old effort to make Kamehameha’s school administrator selection process more autonomous appears to have failed in state court.

Circuit Judge Jeannette Castagnetti, at the end of a two-day probate hearing Thursday, was not inclined to have court-appointed committees present trustee candidates, made up exclusively of trust stakeholders, according to supporters of such a change.

Since 2016, a group of former Kamehameha Schools leaders and supporters have advocated for change because they believe the current trustee selection process in place since 2000 lacks transparency and stakeholder management.

“Specifically, we believe the Kamehameha Schools administrator selection process should be internally driven and not externally managed, as is currently in place,” leaders of the advocacy groups said in a letter. 2017 addressed to then-Circuit Judge Derrick Chan.

Court-appointed selection committees, also called trustee selection committees, composed of at least seven people, recruit, review and propose a list of three finalists from whom a selection is made by a judge assigned to probate the Kamehameha schools. case.

Proponents of changing the process also say that how members of selection committees are chosen is generally not known.

The advocacy group Swell the Echo’s early work included sending four letters to judges on the probate case in 2017 expressing their views, and in 2019 getting the state legislature to pass a resolution declaring that the court has not been completely transparent about how it chooses the members of the selection committee.

The resolution also states that the qualifications of committee members are unclear and urges that future committees be comprised of Kamehameha Schools stakeholders, which could include Kamehameha Schools alumni, faculty, fellows as well as generally any Native Hawaiian person knowledgeable about the trust’s mission. .

However, the group, led in part by former Kamehameha Schools President Michael Chun, did not have standing to ask the court to pursue its claims regarding the approximately $15 billion charitable trust established to benefit the Native Hawaiians through education.

In 2022, Kamehameha Schools administrators asked the court to review the process, and the court quickly appointed three special masters to explore the issue and submit a report to the court with recommendations.

The report was filed June 10 and states that the trustees do not want to imply any dissatisfaction with the trustee selection process or the results of selection over the past two decades, but that periodic review and Potential adjustments would be prudent to ensure that the best director candidates are considered.

“The current process for selecting trustees is not broken, but 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 does not recommend that committee membership be limited to Kamehameha Schools stakeholders.

A hearing was held Sept. 19 and continued Thursday for Castagnetti to receive more input on the matter, including participation from an assistant state attorney general representing the public interest in protecting charitable assets Kamehameha Schools. Representatives of the advocacy group said the judge indicated she would uphold the report’s suggestion regarding the selection of committee members and not adopt the overhaul sought by the group.

Kamehameha Schools said in a statement that they are grateful to the stakeholders and beneficiaries who engaged in this important process by offering their ideas and proposals. The trust has reserved further comment pending a formal decision.

Chun, in a statement, expressed disappointment. “Our call for self-government has once again been rejected,” he said. “We believe Kamehameha stakeholders are fully capable of making leadership decisions – such as selecting directors – rather than letting others determine the course of our future. »

Another advocacy group leader, Jan Dill, who previously led an organization of Kamehameha Schools alumni, parents and students, added in a statement that the trust has a system that continues to marginalize the people Hawaiian.

“The beneficiaries of (trust founder Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop)’s legacy are fully capable of making decisions about the direction of Kamehameha Schools,” he said. “Due to the extent of its resources, the current political-economic system refuses to allow this to happen. The fight for “pono” (justice) continues.

Julian Ako, a former principal of the trust’s high school on Oahu who also helps run Swell the Echo, said the group’s supporters are not willing to give up their fight and that public demonstrations could be among the next steps.

“We will continue to fight,” he said.

The current effort to significantly change how the Kamehameha Schools board is selected began about two decades after public revelations about corruption within the trust led to an earlier overhaul of the selection administrators.

For much of the trust’s history, Hawaii Supreme Court justices appointed trustees of Kamehameha Schools, leading to allegations that judges and state legislators were giving and taking favors tied to board positions that, at one point, included about $1 million in annual salary.

The scandal was revealed in the essay “Broken Trust” published in December 1997 in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

According to the essay, administrators passed on lucrative deals to their friends, invested in companies in which they had a personal interest, and harmed schools and other educational services.

A subsequent investigation led Margery Bronster, then the state’s attorney general, to call for the permanent removal of directors Lokelani Lindsey, Richard Wong and Henry Peters.

In May 1999, Lindsey was permanently deported after a six-month trial. A day later, Wong, Peters and Gerard Jervis were also sent off. The fifth director, Oswald Stender, voluntarily resigned. An interim counsel was appointed by a Circuit Court probate judge to manage the estate. Since 2000, the Circuit Court procedure involving the selection committee has been in place.

Randall Roth, one of the authors of “Broken Trust,” said in an Oct. 15 letter to Swell the Echo executives that he admired the group’s efforts and liked the idea of ​​putting the selection of future trustees in the hands of graduates of Kamehameha schools.

“It wouldn’t guarantee anything, but I think it would reduce the chances of ending up with trustee-selectors, or trustees, who don’t feel morally obligated to protect Princess Pauahi’s trust, including the interests of future generations of intended beneficiaries,” Roth wrote.

Roth also said he believed Hawaii’s political establishment would prevent such a selection of trustees unless there was a coalition behind it that included trustees and was recognized by the public as a “force of irresistible virtue.”