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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Parents consider paying teachers


By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

MEETING TODAY

What: Meeting for private providers interested in applying to use school facilities on “furlough Fridays.”

When: 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Today

Where: Queen Liliuokalani Building, Board of Education Meeting Room, 1390 Miller St.

For more information: Call Donna Shiroma at 203-5510*

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Parents at some public schools are looking into the possibility of renting their schools and paying teachers directly to keep their children learning on "furlough Fridays."

The plan has caused some concern that Hawai'i's public school system is opening itself up to a new form of privatized education.

Several Parent Teacher Student Associations around the Islands are trying to figure out how much it would cost per family to pay to have their children's teachers in school during 17 upcoming teacher furlough days — and to keep the school lights on and the air conditioning running, said Valerie Sonoda, president of the Hawai'i State PTSA.

The topic was discussed at a meeting last week at 'Aikahi Elementary School attended by about 50 parents.

Some were concerned that they — and not their tax dollars — would bear the direct costs of educating their children on teacher furlough days.

"What are we going to do?" asked Debbie Schatz, co-president of the 'Aikahi Elementary School PTSA. "Either our schools will be privatized on Fridays or a private entity will end up educating our children on Fridays or we're all going to end up taking our kids to work with us."

OPTIONS OFFERED

On Sept. 22, the Hawaii State Teachers Association announced that its members had ratified a new collective bargaining agreement that calls for Friday furlough days for about 13,000 teachers at 256 schools, affecting some 170,830 students.

Since then, several options continue to materialize, including:

• The YMCA of Honolulu will offer all-day programs on teacher furlough days, beginning on Oct. 23, that include homework time and "guidance, enrichment projects, recreational and sports-related activities," according to the YMCA. Daily costs range from $25 to $36, depending on YMCA location.

• Diamond Head Theatre plans to hire furloughed Department of Education performing arts teachers to help with a series of seven musical theatre classes for 6- to 12-year-olds at a cost of $350 for all seven classes.

• The Pacific Whale Foundation in Wailuku, Maui has scheduled "hands-on ... ocean learning" for kindergartners through fifth graders that will include science experiments, projects, arts and crafts, vocabulary development, language arts and field trips that incorporate Hawai'i Content Performance Standards. Cost is $56 per day — or $44.80 per day for members of the Pacific Whale Foundation.

But Schatz, the mother of a sixth-grade girl at 'Aikahi, said many parents like her prefer to keep their children in the same classroom settings on furlough Fridays, pointed toward the same academic goals.

"We want our kids in their classrooms with their teachers on Fridays," Schatz said.

The state Department of Education has scheduled a meeting today at the Queen Lili'uokalani Building to outline procedures and requirements to private providers — including PTSAs — that may want to rent school facilities on furlough Fridays.

CONCERNS ARISE

The costs vary based on the type of room, utility costs on various Islands and other criteria, said Sandy Goya, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. In general, she said, a classroom without air conditioning would cost about $20 an hour to rent.

If PTSAs or other entities decide to directly pay to keep their schools running on furlough Fridays, parents such as Schatz worry that relatively affluent areas like Kailua will be better able to absorb the costs, compared with other parts of O'ahu and areas of the Neighbor Islands.

"This is a statewide crisis," Schatz said. "There are many areas where families will have to decide whether to put food on the table or send their kid to school and that's not right. This will tell some students and their parents, 'Why bother to go to school?' "

Even if individual PTSAs decide they can afford the costs, other issues are certain to arise, such as:

• Liability insurance for teachers that currently only covers their work for the DOE.

• What to do about families that can't afford to send their children to Friday classes.

• How non-HSTA unionized schools workers will respond, such as cafeteria workers, custodians and administrators.

CITY PLAN IN WORKS

Whoever applies to rent a school to run a program would "then become an employer with responsibility for the liability issues and the costs," said Goya, of the DOE.

But Sonoda, of the state-wide PTSA, said, "We can't be an employer, liability-wise. ... Everybody is waiting for some answers. This is unprecedented. Nobody knows what's going to happen right now."

On Friday, Big Island Mayor Billy Kenoi announced a program modeled after his county's popular Summer Fun program, at a cost of $5 to $10 per child per furlough day.

"Our working families are already under stress during these difficult times, and scrambling to find safe child care on furlough days will only add to the worry," Kenoi said in a statement. "... We want working parents to know they will have an alternative on teacher furlough days, and know their children will have a place to go where they will be busy, safe and supervised."

Yesterday, Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann said that Managing Director Kirk Caldwell is working on a similar program for O'ahu public school students and that all four county mayors are seeking solutions.

Caldwell met with Community Services Director Debbie Kim Morikawa and Parks Director Lester Chang yesterday "to identify opportunities for us to fill the void to step in and help those families that are going to be affected by furloughs," Hannemann said. "We have a lot of parks utilized by the schools so we could either use city facilities, we could use school facilities."

Hannemann and Caldwell said the talks are preliminary and the city has yet to decide such basic points as how many students may need to be accommodated, what ages to target and what the costs will be, if any.

"We're going to try to do this on a shoestring budget, we're going to try to see how we can make this make sense," Hannemann said. "... This really should be the primary focus of the state but we recognize the hardship that this is going to create for the families in our counties."

Advertiser Staff writer Gordon Y.K. Pang contributed to this report. Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.