•Farewell and mahalo •An outdated system Farewell and mahalo Just wanted to say thank you to The Garden Island newspaper for being there for our business, 5th Gospel Christian Bookstore. Over the past eight years, The Garden Island had done
•Farewell and mahalo
•An outdated system
Farewell and mahalo
Just wanted to say thank you to The Garden Island newspaper for being there for our business, 5th Gospel Christian Bookstore.
Over the past eight years, The Garden Island had done stories on our store from our grand opening to some of our other events and it was great exposure to our store. We had also advertised with you on many occasions and that had attributed to being one of the best ways of getting the word out about our shop.
We are sad to say that we will be closing on Nov. 1. Due to hard economic times and the expectancy of our twin boys =) we can no longer operate our business.
We are having a farewell celebration today from 6 to 9 p.m. with live music, food, and fun fellowship. You are welcome to come! Again much mahalo to you and The Garden Island newspaper for all the support you have for Kaua‘i and its people!
Leah Ragsac, Lihu‘e
An outdated system
Until yesterday, I did not realize Hawai‘i is the only state in the nation with a state-run single school district. Yes, the District of Columbia also runs as a single school district, but it is not a state, is geographically compact, and receives most of its monies from the federal government.
Hawai‘i, on the other hand, allots about 23 percent of its state budget to the Department of Education for schools. Size wise (number of students), the Hawai‘i public school system is about the same size as the Philadelphia City School System, although more geographically disparate.
Knowing how federal and state-run entities can have a tendency toward growing beyond their useful size, I have done some research and learned a few things that make me question if the Department of Education did everything in its power to prevent the furlough Fridays. Did they really look into all the nooks and crannies?
With roughly 177,871 students statewide in K-12, and 13,000 teachers, the student/teacher ratio is 1:13.68, not bad, not bad at all.
A review of the State Department of Education telephone directory, which does not include teachers, reveals there are approximately 2868 names listed in the directory. If we divide these 2868 personnel who work for the DOE into the 177,871 students in the district, we find that there are 62.01 students for every DOE employee, not including teachers.
That is nice administrative and technical support. If we add in the 13,000 teachers, there are 11.20 students for every teacher and administrator in the system. I did not count by island, but most of those employees are on the island of O‘ahu.
For comparison purposes, I did try to find similar files on both the Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. DOE Web sites, but to no avail. That just makes me even more curious as to how large their bureaucracies are!
You see, I grew up in a small town in the Appalachian region of Southern Ohio, in a consolidated local school where even today, 14 percent of the students live in poverty. Yet, the school I graduated from is an excellent school and is run by a local school board and small administration.
In areas where the school board members live and are elected locally, and property taxes collected within the school district are the major funding for the schools, individual citizens take keen interest in the size of administrative overhead, and how their property taxes are being spent.
Try to go to the U.S. Census site and download information by school for Hawai‘i, and it is impossible. The single-school-district system keeps the average citizen from being able to learn exactly how much is being spent per pupil at your local school.
The breakout is available on the DOE site but one must understand the various allocation categories and how they relate to your school, once you finally find it. When was the last time someone from the school board took the time to explain to you at a school board meeting (oh, that’s right, they’re on O‘ahu) how the allocation process works? Just a question, it’s your money.
Hawai‘i’s public school system was started by King Kamehameha III in October of 1840 and is proudly touted on the DOE website as “the oldest public school system west of the Mississippi.” Could it also be the most outdated?
With all the reforms over the years in modified school years, school uniforms, and teacher salary negotiations, it seems odd that any time the possibility of creating local school districts is put forth, the idea is dismissed with little serious discussion. Maybe, after 169 years, a change is necessary? Or does the leadership at the DOE believe that local folks aren’t bright enough to run their own school districts?
As for the state of our schools and the need for repairs to schools in Hawai‘i, that is another interesting topic for research. Perhaps, a group of high school students interested in economics and finance could use their furlough Fridays to do a comparison between those states that used their tobacco lawsuit settlement monies for education infrastructure upgrades, and those that did not allocate any money at all toward education.
I have already seen the results first hand, but it would give students a great research opportunity with 17 days of extra time on their hands.
Cynthia Balderson, Kalaheo
