Hawaii's Public Schools

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I just don't get it.

Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle gave her "State of the State" address today. She said,

"It is important for us to have a concrete, shared understanding of where we want to go...

We all want a higher standard of living for ourselves and our children...and we want to preserve everything that makes Hawai'i unique...especially our cultural and natural resources...and our sense of 'ohana (family).

We want Hawai'i's young people to have first-rate educational opportunities... we want affordable housing...state-of-the-art health care that is accessible to all...and good-paying jobs...

Our $732 million budget surplus can enable us to dramatically re-shape our destiny, if we make wise choices."

$732 MILLION SURPLUS???

SEVEN HUNDRED THIRTY-TWO MILLION DOLLAR SURPLUS???

Let me illustrate how many zeros that is... $732,000,000.00

The State has that much of a surplus and they still cannot afford to have textbooks for all of their public school students?

Or air conditioning in the school buildings? (Mind you, this is Hawaii, so the temperature is in the 80's or higher year 'round.)

My daughter's math "book" is a stapled-together stack of copied pages from a textbook. Seriously. The other classes do not allow students to remove textbooks from the classroom because there are only one set of books per room.

How does she study? How does she do make-up work? Good question!

She has to take careful notes (which she doesn't) and 'get with another student' to copy their notes when she's absent and then do a lot of after-school time in all of her classes to make up for one missed day.

And the school bus? It's operated by a commercial bus company and we have to pay for that "privilege!" It doesn't matter if she rides the bus to and from school every single day or if she only rides the bus one day a week due to extra-curricular activities. We have to pay the same amount.

I won't even mention the fact that so many of the public schools here FAILED the benchmark tests last year. Failed! They spent weeks on those tests... Doing NOTHING BUT those tests! Regular schoolwork was not a priority during that time.

As an Army family, my children have attended DoDDS schools abroad as well as public and private schools in five different states. We've seen great schools. We've seen schools that were "okay." I'm sorry, Hawaii Department of Education... I am simply NOT impressed at all.

You beg for the Federal funding and then call yourself a public school system. I look around and am not the least bit surprised at the number of private schools flourishing on the little island of O'ahu. I'm not at all shocked at the number of families I meet these days who have started homeschooling their children.

I pray that there is a bright future for the education of Hawaii's children. Gov. Lingle, you have your work cut out for you!