Posted on: Tuesday, January 15, 2002

EDITORIAL
Tuition grant program a community investment

The Hawai'i Community Foundation has made a smart investment in Hawai'i's future with its $1 million grant to help families with tuition to pre schools or private schools.

At first blush, this might seem odd. After all, of all the needs this community faces, how important is it to support families who have chosen to put their youngsters into private schools? But as Community Foundation President Kelvin Taketa put it, this is not a matter of helping wealthy families out of a momentary tight spot.

Many private school students — particularly those attending the smaller independent and parochial schools — do not come from wealthy families. They come from families that may have been hard hit in the wake of the post Sept. 11 economic slowdown.

The Foundation's grant will help those families keep their kids in school at least through the current year. That provides important continuity and offers the families breathing room to reorganize their finances or find new work before the next school year begins.

Even more important is the tuition support the Foundation will offer to private pre-schools. There is abundant evidence that a quality pre-school experience is hugely valuable to the overall educational success of a child. Families facing a cash shortfall, particularly if there is now an unemployed parent at home, might easily decide that they no longer need to pay that pre-school tuition.

But pulling the child out creates stress and disrupts whatever educational progress has been made.

This tuition grant program may be seen as simply a goodwill gesture to local families who have hit the economic wall in the wake of Sept. 11. But it is truly far more than that.

It is an investment in the social health and well-being of the community that will pay off, with interest, many times over.