Hawai‘i should not try to offset its ranking near the bottom in overall quality of public education by leading the nation in fewest days of classroom instruction. Shutting down the state’s elementary and high schools for 17 Fridays starting later
Hawai‘i should not try to offset its ranking near the bottom in overall quality of public education by leading the nation in fewest days of classroom instruction.
Shutting down the state’s elementary and high schools for 17 Fridays starting later this month is not an acceptable solution to close the budget gap — no matter how many millions of dollars we are falling short. This furlough plan should not even have been entertained as an idea.
For every parent, teacher, bureaucrat and elected official who has said “the children are our future,” shame on you for allowing the state to rob kids of a huge chunk of their time in class the rest of this school year.
Where is the public outcry?
While we weren’t privy to the inside discussions, we refuse to believe this is the best deal the union could have negotiated with the administration.
High school graduation rates have hovered in the upper-80 percent range over the past several years, but the skill level of those students remains a top concern. Most are leaving high school testing below the college transfer level.
With a 21st century emphasis on innovation and high tech jobs, our public education system must prepare our students to be competitive in their bids for these promising careers.
Test results show only 35 percent of 194 recent high school graduates on Kaua‘i had the “transfer-level” skills required by Kaua‘i Community College, according to the Kaua‘i Planning and Action Alliance’s “Measuring What Matters for Kaua‘i” Community Indicators Report for 2008.
Some 31 percent of these recent graduates entering KCC lacked basic skills and 34 percent needed developmental assistance, according to the report. Only 15 percent were at the basic skill level; such students require remediation to take college level courses.
If we’re struggling to prepare students to enter a community college at the regular level of instruction, how are we ever going to improve with fewer days in class?
Parents, don’t you want a better life for your children?
Teachers, is this really why you entered this noble profession?
Again, where is the public outcry? We saw more uproar to sink the Superferry.
Public education is not a problem you can solve by throwing money at it. Additional funding certainly doesn’t hurt, but it’s not critical. Studies show inconsistent relationships between the amount of money spent per student and the success of the system.
Hawai‘i spends $11,060 per pupil, according to census data for 2006-07 (the most recent available). The national average was $9,666 per pupil in 2007, a 5.8 percent increase over 2006.
We can trim more fat and implement temporary alternative solutions to weather the current financial storm without kicking the kids to the curb on Fridays.
Hawai‘i is the only state with no public education debt, according to census figures. Is it possible to change our laws on an emergency basis to borrow from our future selves to get through this financial challenge?
We were tempted to call for a bailout from the federal government, given its willingness in the past and present administrations to throw billions of dollars at faltering industries while providing little oversight or real accountability. If the feds are OK with saving auto manufacturers who waited too long to get into the fuel mileage game or failing banks who took wild risks on bad mortgages, why wouldn’t they be fine with rescuing a broken public education system to the benefit of our nation’s children?
A closer look at the numbers clearly shows the federal government doesn’t offer much money to the states for public education despite all its mandates.
Hawai‘i derives more of its revenue for its elementary-secondary public school system from state sources than any other state. Hawai‘i’s state funding comprises 89.8 percent of its overall total. Hawai’i’s federal funding makes up 8.6 percent, and a mere 1.6 percent comes from local sources, according to the most recent census figures.
Perhaps, therein lies the answer. Are we over-relying on state sources to fund our public education system? Instead of diversifying our funding sources, our public education system is bound to the fate of the state’s economic well-being.
Other states — such as New Jersey, Nebraska and Ohio — pay for more than half of their public education systems from local sources. When states like those come up short with funding, those public education systems seem better set up to absorb the subsequent penny pinching.
The fluctuation in federal sources is comparatively minor. Louisiana leads the nation with 17.6 percent of its overall revenue for its elementary-secondary public school system coming from federal sources.
Nationally, of the $556.9 billion in total public elementary-secondary school system revenue, 47.6 percent was from state sources, 8.3 percent was from federal sources and 44.1 percent was from local sources.
We should ask our leaders — state lawmakers, the governor, union officials, administrators — to take a harder look at how we finance public education.
No one wants to pay more taxes, but evidently most states in the nation have opted to at least partially fund public education through local sources. We should consider this option.
But mostly, we should take a tough look at our priorities from local, state and federal standpoints.
A strong public education system is, without hyperbole, quite possibly the most important engine in creating economic and social mobility.
It is a robust public education system that allows immigrants who come to the United States with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs to, within a handful of generations, move into positions of power and influence and add to the fabric of this nation. Think about all the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps stories you’ve ever heard and it’s easy to identify the single unifying theme among them: a good public education combined with a strong work ethic.
Would our lives really be better if we all finished right where we started and everyone knew that would be the end result before even opening their first textbook? Would we have been able to solve some of the biggest problems of past generations — the Cold War, space travel, social injustices — without public education?
Can we hope to solve the challenges facing us now? Will humanity figure out how to address the destruction of our lands, to feed the world’s hungry, to create a lasting peace and to defeat the specters of terrorism and nuclear war?
Without a good education for our children — all of them, remember, no child left behind — our island, our state and our country will continue down the path of a stagnant society incapable of rewarding intelligence, hard work, drive and ingenuity.
Aside from the grave loss of education, this terrible plan leaves many parents scrambling to figure out what to do with their kids while they are at work.
Why do we all work so hard? Ask almost anybody with a child and they will tell you they put in long hours and pick up a second or third job in the hope that their offspring and the generations who follow can live betters lives than their ancestors. With all this sacrifice, why are we selling out our children so short-sightedly?
It’s obvious our state government is facing a serious budget crisis and is looking in all corners for ways to cut unnecessary expenditures and balance our checkbook, but we were hard-pressed to come up with a more inappropriate decision than kicking students out of school for three extra weeks.
With the exception of a core of public programs needed to maintain a basic level of safety and stave off total anarchy, we would place education at the top of the list of untouchables.
When compared with our children’s futures, how can we rationalize spending millions of dollars on recreation programs like state parks or even maintenance operations to fix potholes on our roads? Can anyone argue, with a straight face, that these things are more important?
