Once again, the ACLU has gone to court to force the state to do right by a vulnerable part of our population.

Hawai'i has a shameful history of having to be forced — and placed under federal oversight — to improve its treatment of those in state prisons and mental health facilities. A federal judge also previously mandated improvements in the Department of Education.

The ACLU and two other parties earlier this month filed a class action lawsuit alleging that the state has failed to carry out the McKinney-Vento Act, which requires school districts to help homeless children receive educational services.

The DOE gets more than $200,000 a year from the federal government to help transport homeless children to school. Yet, the ACLU claims the state's program has been so badly mismanaged that children have been turned away from school, are delayed in enrolling, or must unnecessarily change schools. The federal government more than a year ago cited serious shortcomings with the state's compliance with the McKinney-Vento Act, according to the suit.

Granted, the homeless often are not an easy population to deal with — they move around often, can be difficult to contact and some may not consider schooling a priority. But the DOE has an obligation to be proactive in finding these children and doing all it can to get them to school.

Homeless children already face many hurdles in their formative years. Some lack a stable family and social structures, access to medical care, access to outside activities and healthy food.

The education system, which can provide a sense of stability as well as the education that all children deserve, should not be closed to these children.

The Department of Education's Web site contains this statement: "The commitment to a quality education for all of Hawai'i's children began more than 160 years ago, when Hawai'i's great monarch, King Kamehameha III, established a statewide public school system. Since that time, we have continued the journey in pursuit of excellence and equity in education."

If the ACLU's claims are right, the department is not fully living up to its own commitment to equity in education.

Surely, Gov. Linda Lingle, who has rightly vowed to tackle the homeless problem, also wants to ensure this equity for children of homeless families.

At the opening of a Wai'anae shelter in March, Lingle said the people involved in getting the shelter opened "felt privileged to be a part of something that was so good and so pure and so righteous, and something so long overdue."

Giving all children the same opportunities in life is also something long overdue.