TGI Staff Writer The intersection of Puhi Road and Kaumuali’i Highway at Kaua’i Community College is an adventure during normal weekday mornings. Traffic sometimes backs up through the intersection as college students share the road with workers on their way
TGI Staff Writer
The intersection of Puhi Road and Kaumuali’i Highway at Kaua’i Community College is an adventure during normal weekday mornings.
Traffic sometimes backs up through the intersection as college students share the road with workers on their way to jobs in Lihu’e.
This morning, when students, faculty and staff of both the private Island School and Punana Leo O Kaua’i Hawaiian immersion preschool had to cross the KCC faculty’s picket line to get to their respective schools, the situation likely was tense as well as congested.
The only paved road to Island School and Punana Leo is through the main entrance to KCC.
The KCC faculty, part of the University of Hawai’i Professional Assembly, is on strike with their fellow union members statewide. The union is seeking higher wages and equitable merit-pay conditions from state negotiators.
UHPA represents the full-time, tenured instructors at KCC and all colleges and universities of the University of Hawai’i system.
Island School, unaffected by labor disputes which today put public school and college teachers on picket lines across the state, offers classes for children in grades pre-kindergarten through 12. Punana Leo O Kaua’i, the Hawaiian-language preschool, serves children ages three and four. Instructors at those and other private schools on Kaua’i are not members of the striking unions.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
