Posted on: Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Letters to the Editor

State amendments editorial made sense

I read with much interest and admiration your editorial of Oct. 24 regarding the four constitutional amendments. Your points were logical and expressed very clearly. The editorial points out that these amendments could be the beginning of a slippery slope of prosecutorial abuse and intrusion by government into private lives and civil rights.

I contend that especially on amendment Question 4, the role of the attorney general should be to represent justice for the people, not to strictly expedite convictions.

The prosecutor and attorney general have been speaking about these amendments as if there is only one side to the coin — the victim. How quickly their criminals would turn into victims if improperly arrested and prosecuted without the opportunity to confront the accusers. These are the issues that should have been debated on the floor of the state Legislature before presenting the questions to the people to vote on Nov. 2.

Faith should indeed dictate how you vote

I totally disagree with Richard Miller (Sunday commentary) about not letting your faith dictate your vote. People like him would love to have people of faith keep quiet, but I think we have kept quiet for too long while our country is headed for destruction by God. Anyone who reads the Holy Bible will agree that a nation that continually makes things moral that God tells us are wrong is on the wrong road.

Right now, we have a minority that is legislating morality. In the last 50 years, they have taken prayer out of school, taken the Bible out of school, taken the Ten Commandments out of school, made abortion legal — which resulted in the destruction of at least 40 million babies — and now they want to destroy the family by legalizing homosexuality.

I think it is time for all those who believe in God and the Holy Bible to stand up and be heard. I think all the political analysts will be surprised when they see how this election turns out. Those who believe in God will vote for those who will do his will, or they are not going to get our vote.

I believe God has blessed this nation like no other on the face of the Earth because we had a strong belief in God and the Holy Bible. He has also protected us from all enemies, but he may not do so in the future because it states in the Bible what will happen to a nation that continually turns away from him.

Finally, I will let my faith dictate my vote because the one I will have to answer to is God.

Democrats distorting Rep. Leong's record

The low tactics employed by the Democrats in my district to discredit Bertha Leong is disappointing. Recent HGEA propaganda and deceptive mailings distort the image of Rep. Leong as someone who doesn't support families or education. This could not be further from the truth.

It's a shame that people who can't win a fair fight in life resort to cheating. It is also a shame that the HSTA would attempt to disparage one of its past members, in playing party politics, by sending out a flier endorsing those they consider to be the "best" candidates.

Although Bertha Leong and Lyla Berg have similar platforms and experiences, Bertha has a record of community involvement and supporting education in the Legislature. She supported teachers during the strike, she supported pay raises and she supported the trust health plan.

I guess this shouldn't come as a surprise coming from a union that didn't oppose losing physical education and social studies positions last year. Maybe they forgot how contentious life was for teachers during the Big Ben era. Maybe they forgot that teachers like Bertha Leong used to clean their own classrooms.

Negative political mailers must stop

We all recently have been the recipients of political mailers, intended to benefit some of our candidates for state and federal offices. Many of them are mean-spirited, misleading, often completely wrong and certainly not at all reflective of the spirit of aloha.

We may not have much influence over national politics, but those influential in our parties and our candidates within Hawai'i can control such things. Surely it must be possible to run for office without tearing apart the opposition and without presenting misleading information about them and their records. Surely it must be possible to not completely lose the spirit of aloha.

Please, let's stop those negative political mailers and ads and focus, instead, on what the candidates intend to do for us.

John Kerry remains the 'not Bush' choice

In Sunday's Advertiser, you expressed puzzlement at the Hawai'i Poll, which shows President Bush running unexpectedly close to Sen. Kerry in the state. Shock and horror, how could that be? Your conclusion was that, in spite of high negative feelings about Bush, the electorate is hesitant to change horses in mid-stream, or war in this case.

I believe you underrate Hawai'i's voters with this explanation. A more likely reason is that John Kerry remains the "not Bush" choice because he has changed his position so many times on the key national security threat to the country that no reasonable voter can be certain what a President Kerry would do in office. To vote for him, in terms of national security, is equivalent to voting for "other."

Even with his many flaws, Bush still offers the clearer, more compelling vision of dealing with the threats we now face.

It rained on our parade during the 'Creation'

On Sunday, I had an only-in-Hawai'i experience. I attended the Honolulu Symphony presentation of Joseph Haydn's "Creation." The beauty of the music and the efforts of the large chorus were destroyed by the distraction of having nine performers doing a makeshift hula in front of the performers.

Whoever thought they could improve on Haydn by upstaging the assemblage made a serious blunder.

About 20 minutes into the performance, it began raining outside the auditorium. It also began raining inside the auditorium because the roof was under repair and water had free access to the audience.

Only in Hawai'i would the city rent out a hall unsuitable for the occasion. For the second time in three days, the audience was treated to the added sound of torrents of water cascading onto the balcony. Once again during the performance, we were all treated to the sounds of Haydn and people being reseated and pots and pans used to collect the flow.

While the federal government is distributing funds to Third World countries, I hope it will not neglect Honolulu.

Tax assessor's office is denying us due process

The U.S. Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to due process of law. The most basic right protected under the due process doctrine is the right to be given notice and an opportunity to be heard.

The county tax assessor's office is blatantly ignoring due process in connection with real estate tax assessments.

In 2002, the tax bill for the co-op in which I live increased by 34 percent over 2001. We immediately filed an appeal. This appeal has not been heard. It has not even been scheduled for a hearing. In 2003, our tax bill increased by another 31 percent. We filed a second appeal. Like the first, this one has not been heard or scheduled for a hearing. In 2004, our tax bill increased by another 27 percent. We filed a third appeal, which like the first two has not been heard or scheduled for a hearing.

Our tax bill has more than doubled in three years. It now amounts to 36 percent of the entire operating expenses of our co-op. Our original appeal has been on file for over two and a half years. We can get no indication from the assessor's office as to when any of our three appeals might be heard. The reason given is that the office is "understaffed."

Well, of course it is. Ignoring such things as due process and the right to be heard, there is no incentive for the tax office to build up its staff in order to process appeals in a timely way. Any appeal that is heard and is successful will just reduce income to the county.

In order to protect property owners' rights, I suggest that the tax regulations be amended to provide that if a real property tax appeal is not processed within one year of the filing date, then the appeal is presumed successful and the property tax is rolled back to the previous year's amount.

If something like this is not done, the county might prepare for a class-action lawsuit against the tax assessor's office over denial of due process.

Tests are not being made easier

Mr. John Kawamoto ("Tests are being made easier," Letters, Oct. 15) doesn't get the "big picture" when it comes to refining 1,544 standards to the essential standards.

Teachers are determined to get the job done right. We understand why the Board of Education identified essential standards. It is necessary to focus on comprehensive standards, which are inclusive by definition.

Essential standards are scaffolds on other standards. To achieve one, we have to do the five others that support it. When we finally accomplish essential standards, we have covered the 1,544 standards that are divided among the grade levels and content areas.

Our teachers are laboring over instructional design based on the state's essential standards and webbing the foundation standards into the instruction. As an example, the state requires students to articulate "the appropriate reading strategy to construct meaning from text." We are determined to be very clear about what the state means by "appropriate reading strategy." We take nothing for granted. Instruction in teaching comprehension will include the language and strategies the state requires along with the other necessary comprehension strategies that are reasonable to make meaning from text.

This information is translated to quarterly calendars where the standards are tied to biweekly assessments. Every teacher evaluates the standards and plots their instruction based on the state's tools. We are determined to do this well. We are using every instructional strategy and taking advantage of teachers' meetings to discuss how best to achieve this work.

The unwrapping of the standards means interpreting what foundation must be in place, what follows in instruction and what the assessment looks like.

We are doing this.

Let's make it real clear: The state standards are driving instruction. The Hawai'i State Assessment (HSA) is based on the state standards. These assessments are very challenging, and many of you would find the items beyond your ability and expectations for an assessment at this level.

Teachers discuss each item and its validity based on the standard and required instruction for that grade level. It's a long and arduous process to review and analyze the items, with information based on statistics for each item, from pilot testing and "p" values. Does it discriminate? Does it represent the standard? There's no dumbing down in the HSA that we have seen.

Before you declare that essential standards are meant to dumb down instruction, you need to sit with teachers who take the standards seriously. We are determined to do the work that needs to be done to give our students every advantage. So when the scores go up next year, they will represent tremendous effort on our part to meet the challenge of Hawai'i State Standards. Our students are inspired and instructed to succeed. And they will.