Complete ban on smoking in public schools winning support
By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer
A bill to snuff out all smoking on public school campuses is alive in the Legislature, but supporters are encouraged that a school smoking ban might happen even without legislation.
United Public Workers officials yesterday said they are willing to work with the Department of Education during the next 90 days to amend their union contract to allow for the no-smoking rule.
The union's longtime issue with the public schools has been the inappropriate implementation of the Board of Education's original administrative rule against smoking, but not the ban on smoking itself, union officials said.
House Bill 248 would prohibit public employees from smoking in all public schools and school transportation, and at all school-sponsored functions. The measure cruised through the House with widespread support, but needs the approval of the Senate Labor and Education committees before moving to the full Senate for a vote.
The Senate Labor and Education committees heard testimony on the measure yesterday, but Sen. Brian Kanno, Labor Committee chairman, said they wanted to hear from Schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto before voting.
Students, teachers and principals are not allowed to smoke on campus under administrative rules passed by the Board of Education a decade ago. But custodians and cafeteria workers, who belong to the United Public Workers union, won an exception to that rule in arbitration because of a technicality over the way the rule was implemented.
Big Island resident Chris Dein-Gaughen has worked for passage of the bill since seeing a custodian and a teacher's aide smoking in an enclosed room in front of a special education student at her son's school a year ago.
"I thought, 'This is absurd. Why is anyone smoking on campus?' " she said.
The federal Pro-Children's Act of 1994 bans smoking inside any kindergarten through 12th-grade campus.
Kalani High School students Natasia de Silva, 16, and Marsha Ng, 17, said that allowing employees to smoke on campus sets a double standard and sends the wrong message to students. "Most of the students who smoke felt that if adults could smoke and break the rules they could, too," Ng said. "They think it's unfair."
Greg Knudsen, spokesman for the Department of Education, said the department would like to ban smoking entirely.
