Posted on: Tuesday, January 6, 2004

Letters to the Editor

Need continues for quality foster parents

Your article covering the recent Christmas party for foster families highlights the tremendous efforts put forth to improve the lives of children in foster care. More importantly, it reinforced the continuing need for quality foster parents in our state.

Research has shown that a safe, nurturing home can help repair the damage caused to children by abuse and neglect, enabling them to go on to lead normal lives.

The noted shortage of foster parents in our state makes it a challenge to find safe, nurturing homes for these children. It is our hope that the commitment in our community will grow beyond Christmas parties as more individuals and families consider ways to help these children.

Please consider becoming a foster parent (check out information online at www.hawaiifosterparent.org) or call us at 263-0920.

Or consider becoming a volunteer guardian ad litem, speaking up for the needs of the child in court (call 538-5930 to sign up for training).

If special events appeal to you, volunteer to assist with our upcoming fund-raiser. The event will raise awareness and provide funds for additional training and support to foster parents so they can better meet the needs of the children.

Please help us help the children of Hawai'i today, for a better future tomorrow.

Rep. Moses has failed in his transit efforts

Rep. Mark Moses asks for my help on rail transit in a Dec. 24 letter to the editor indicating a 10-year-old interest on his part.

What he doesn't tell you is I've never heard from him once during that entire time on transit. I'm not hard to find. But trying to find out what Rep. Moses actually favors is considerably more difficult.

Having secured $600 million-plus for rail transit and having specifically cited West O'ahu-Kapolei as a target area for rail transit, the last thing I need is a lecture from someone like Rep. Moses, who hasn't secured a penny for it and, from the content of his letter, doesn't have a clue as to what to do about it.

His letter is one long moan, with nothing suggested by way of solution, especially on financing the project. In fact, he runs away from funding by tossing the problem entirely to the mayor and City Council. If that is the case, why complain to me?

I have an idea that Rep. Moses' constituents are fed up with his posturing and empty gestures. It should be no surprise that having failed to produce for 10 years, he is pointing fingers elsewhere in the hope no one will notice he's come up empty.

The next time you find yourself crawling in traffic in West O'ahu-Kapolei, ask yourself what Rep. Mark Moses has done to change it for the last 10 years. The answer is to cry crocodile tears to the editor. On rail transit, the people of West O'ahu-Kapolei deserve a lot more work and a lot less whining.

Get serious on rail transit, and we can get going.

Heavy rains reveal poor quality of asphalt roads

What is wrong with our asphalt?

After the recent heavy rains, O'ahu's roadways have become a haven for bone-jarring potholes, cracks and gritty gravel-like surfaces. The problem is widespread.

You say water damaged our roads? Well, we just came back from Malaysia, where they experience daily monsoon thunderstorms for weeks and weeks on end. Traffic there is also three times worse than Honolulu, but the roadways there are perfectly smooth and pothole-free, suggesting that our gritty asphalt is defective.

Our roadways failed after only one week of rain. Patch here, patch there. It looks like a Band-Aid solution to the problem. We need to drastically improve the composition of our roadways.

Low-lifes have spoiled recycling for others

For years we took our well-used, and very dead, Christmas tree to a Hawai'i Kai school for recycling. It was a win-win situation.

Now I'm told it has been discounted because some low-lifes who do not have the brains God gave a goat didn't follow the rules.

Well, I'm tired of these people — and they seem to be everywhere. Whatever happened to the Hawai'i I knew when I landed on these shores in the early '60s? I'll tell you — they have left the building. Can you say A-L-O-H-A?

'Ultimate hypocrisy'

When I first saw the headline of your editorial "China: the ultimate political hypocrisy," I thought perhaps The Advertiser was going to point out that George W. Bush, having proclaimed his desire to liberate Iraqis by invading and occupying that country, has cozied up to China, notwithstanding China's occupation of Tibet, threatening of Taiwan and dismal human rights record.

Blame the losers for football brawls

First of all, I'm not in support of the Hawai'i football team getting into brawls at the end of games. That said, everyone seems to be forgetting that we didn't fight with ourselves; why is everyone blaming us?

The three postgame brawls that I can remember are the Cinci game from last year, the SJSU game from this year and the bowl game. I seem to remember Cinci getting into a fight in its very next game; still think it was all us?

There were similar circumstances in the SJSU and Houston games. The opposing teams came very close to winning, but lost. Our guys won very close games and ran onto the field to celebrate the win. Don't you think the losing team should leave the field? I mean, take your loss and go home.

Two words: sore losers. When we brawl like that in a loss, I'll take a tougher stand.

Letters criticizing UH were too severe

Although I, too, cringed at seeing the UH football team fighting with Houston, I must say the letters from people criticizing the fight were too severe. To call our players thugs and low-class losers was pretty extreme.

These are college kids playing a very physical sport with a lot of contact. It's not too surprising to have tempers flare. I certainly don't condone the fighting, but these kids are not street punks. To those who say they will not attend any more UH games, I say, that's your loss.

Wahine showed us class Warriors lacked

Lee Cataluna's Dec. 28 column says it all ... there is no comparison between June Jones' "boys" and Dave Shoji's women.

When the Wahine lost in the semis of the Final Four, it was not too much of a heartbreaker because we knew these women played their hearts out with class and integrity all year long. June's boys won the Hawai'i Bowl, but do we care? Not even! People are going to remember that win as "SO WOT?"; their post-game brouhaha did in fact "make us shame."

The longstanding belief that good leadership reflects off a good team leads to two important questions: (1) Where was it on the day of the Hawai'i Bowl? (2) How soon will the SHOJI or KAHUMOKU for governor campaign committees be set up?

Bureaucrats should use public schools

I appreciate Kathleen Nullet's proposal: People who receive their income from the public sector should be proud to enroll their children in our public schools. This noble gesture would amount to a personal commitment to the department that provides 24,000 jobs.

Those who opt their children out should not be on the public payroll. Full support by all school-age students' parents, expressed by participating in the public school system, regardless of personal preference, should be required if we expect to find an acceptable remedy in our lifetime, if that is the plan.

Remember, 2004 is an election year.

Bush photo caption steps out of bounds

Good grief! I just got to the Focus section of my Sunday, Dec. 28, paper and find that the caption writer is now the political prognosticator.

What, pray tell, is there in that photo of George Bush posing with some members of the military at the Baghdad Airport that has to do with being headed for a second term? Is this partisan prediction an editorial edict from this paper, or did the caption writer overstep his purview?

School board views are wrong

On Dec. 23, The Advertiser granted space to New Yorkers J.P. Greene and M.A. Winters so they could express support for the proposal to expand Hawai'i's school boards to one state board and seven district boards.

While these individuals were likely solicited by local contacts to share their insight, the inaccurate assumptions represented in their arguments call into question their thoroughness as researchers. It is of critical importance that we continue the dialogue about this proposal, but we should hold our discussions within the context of accurate information:

• The authors state that the proposed change would give Hawai'i citizens a choice in the public school system that children attend.

The CARE proposal does not significantly alter the current geographic exception policy, except to specify that parents would be responsible for transportation. Students would still be allowed to attend a school outside of their home area on a space-available basis only.

• They state that the change to separate school districts would invite competition among districts, and parents would be able to move away from failing districts to better ones (as they can on the Mainland).

Presumably the assumption is that when we have seven districts, parents would move to different neighborhoods in their quest for a "better school." This is presented as an alternative to enrolling their children in private schools or moving to the Mainland. A thoughtful reader might question this logic.

• The statement that "a single state district ... can afford to take students for granted" is offensive to the thousands of educators in Hawai'i who have given their lives to helping children in our public schools.

• There is reference to research that smaller school districts produce significantly better student outcomes. The correlation is more directly made between small school size and student achievement. Small districts on the Mainland often have small schools, but we are not talking about building smaller schools in Hawai'i.

• Winters and Greene assert that "decentralized school districts would also better connect communities with their local schools." The proposed seven-district plan would not connect the boards to the "local" community. Pearl City is not the same community as Nanakuli; Kailua is not the same community as Kahuku; Kona is not the same community as Pahoa. Hawai'i Kai is not the same community as Kalihi. The examples are numerous, and we should stop promoting this change as one that would result in more "local" control. What it would do is redistribute power over policy and money. This should be the focus of our discussions.

• And finally, their most uninformed assertion — that decentralized school districts would result in higher real estate values and generate support for bond issues and school levies. Someone must have forgotten to mention to Greene and Winters that the CARE proposal does not support giving taxing authority to the newly formed district school boards.

It would be good if we could keep our focus on students and develop a plan that would lead to excellence and equity for all the youngsters in our public schools. There are many areas of agreement, but this matter seems destined to become a polarizing political issue.