SPORTS, MUSIC

NATATORIUM SHOULD BE USED FOR ENTERTAINMENT

Utilization of the Natatorium has been a vexing public issue for too many years.

We appreciate the need to keep the memorial and architectural history aspects of the Natatorium, but any reuse of the pool for swimming as it was originally intended has been shown to be infeasible. There are many reasons for this, including engineering difficulties, maintenance cost, public health and environmental issues.

We feel that a much better use for the Natatorium would be as a public stadium. By filling the pool with sand, it could become a great venue for events such as beach volleyball tournaments, concerts, movies on the beach and even a regular hula and Hawaiian music show.

Promoters would not have to worry about sound-decibel levels as they do at the Shell because most of the sound would project out into the ocean. Can you imagine how beautiful a concert could be with the open skies, a full view of the ocean and the lights of Waikiki in the background?

We urge the mayor and council to move forward to bring new life and purpose to the Natatorium.

EDUCATION

STOP GRIPING ABOUT NO CHILD, GET TO WORK

Paul Deering in an April 28 commentary and Margaret Maaka in a subsequent letter to the editor opposed a standardized core curriculum proposed for Hawai'i's public schools.

Ms. Maaka chided The Advertiser's editors for taking "cheap shots" at Deering's Island Voices column. I'm not going to take sides in this core curriculum issue because I simply don't have all the facts from an objective party. However, I would like to address the "cheap shots" taken by both Deering and Maaka regarding the No Child Left Behind Act.

They call the act "mindless mandates" and "the Bush administration debacle." Deering actually said "that public schools have made enormous progress in the past 50 years," if you can believe it.

Almost everyone on the planet knows that U.S. public schools have been turning out students less equipped then those in Europe and Asia and that Hawai'i's schools were at the bottom of the heap.

After all those past decades of failing our students, the Bush administration, with the help of Ted Kennedy, finally passed a tough public education bill that would make all involved accountable and test for results, and it is working despite the bemoaning by naysayers like Deering and Maaka.

Sure, the No Child Left Behind Act isn't perfect, but at least it attempts to address a long-festering situation. As Lee Cataluna said in one of her columns about No Child: "Stop complaining and help make it work." Good advice.

PARK CLEANUP

NOW IT'S STATE'S TURN

Good job, Mr. Mayor. Now that the three-day cleanup of Ala Moana Beach Park is complete, let's hope the governor takes heed and a cleanup followed by regular maintenance of all state parks will begin.

U.S. SENATE

AKAKA BILL SHOULD BE DEBATED IN HAWAI'I FIRST

The May 4 editorial "Akaka bill deserves a full and fair debate" is absolutely on the money. Unfortunately, The Honolulu Advertiser believes the debate should take place 5,000 miles away from Hawai'i among 100 U.S. senators who either know nothing of Hawai'i or who owe an obligation to the bill's sponsor, Sen. Dan Akaka, who has paid them already with his vote on issues such as drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in exchange for Alaska's Sen. Ted Stevens co-sponsoring Akaka's bill.

Such an important bill, which no one doubts would change Hawai'i's racial relationships forever and end up costing the state billions of dollars in reparations, should not be debated in Washington, D.C., but in Hawai'i. Even The Advertiser has, in the past, recommended the bill be returned to Hawai'i for further discussion.

Since the bill was introduced six years ago, it has been nearly completely gutted and changed to fit Senate opponents' objections, such as eliminating gambling. But, since 2000, the bill has not been returned to Hawai'i for a "full and fair debate," as now advocated by The Advertiser for the Senate.

Before we go headlong into forming an entirely new government in Hawai'i that would demand all ceded land revenues and more benefits for its citizens, I agree with The Advertiser editorial, "At the very least it deserves a full and fair debate" — in Hawai'i.

ELDERLY, DISABLED

SEVERAL APARTMENTS AVAILABLE FOR HOUSING

While senior citizens like Rolando Sena remain homeless and on waiting lists for subsidized housing they are legally entitled to, several apartments at Makamae Elderly Housing have stood empty and ready for occupancy for some time. In addition, no repair work has been done for years on two dozen other units at Makamae that were damaged when part of the building foundation sank.

The Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawai'i has also commandeered a perfectly good Makamae living unit as office space for a service organization when an existing community room could have served that purpose. HCDCH seems a lot more interested in cosmetic repairs and hassling tenants over nitpicky housekeeping issues than in housing elderly and disabled people who are homeless because they are too poor to afford private rentals.

The situation has gotten worse since the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development threatened to eliminate funding to HCDCH and take over all public housing in Hawai'i.

This is a case of a bureaucracy serving its own interests at the expense of the people it is supposed to be helping. Something should be done to make HCDCH much more responsive to the crisis faced by elderly and disabled people who are homeless.

GREEN WASTE

LAUNCH BLUE BINS

Does the city have any idea just how long we are to store the new, as-yet-unused blue (green waste) bin in our yard? Will the green waste collection plan ever be implemented?

HELPED FRIEND

KANNO'S PREDICAMENT WAS SELF-INFLICTED

I can appreciate Renee Furuyama (Letters, May 4) defending Sen. Brian Kanno because she's a fellow social worker. But what I can't understand is why she doesn't recognize that Kanno's predicament is not politically motivated, but instead self-inflicted.

One big problem with Furuyama's assessment is that Kanno wasn't just helping defend an innocent person against a big, evil corporation. Kanno was actually helping his old friend, Leon Rouse, who had worked on previous political campaigns and advised him.

Another problem is that Rouse doesn't even live in Kanno's district. I bet that people are getting fired every day in Kanno's district, and I seriously doubt he runs around trying to get their jobs back.

POLITICAL PLOY

TAX RELIEF PACKAGE NOT MUCH TO BRAG ABOUT

The $50 million tax relief package is nothing but a ploy for politicians to win over ignorant voters.

If you look at it on the surface, $50 million seems like a generous break, but when you consider that the state's population is over 1.2 million, that $50 million equates to a little over $41 a person. For a family of four, that is $166 and change.

Gee, legislators, thanks a lot!

BENEFITS

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE STRAINING BUDGETS

I am a resident of Hawai'i, temporarily in Denver. This letter is a warning to the residents of Hawai'i. Here in Colorado, free medical and welfare benefits for illegal immigrants have strained the budget so badly that programs and services are being cut, thereby hurting U.S. citizens.

Example: Libraries here have drastically cut hours and days of operation due to no money.

Denver has become known as a "safe" state for illegals. It is easy to get a job and live without fear of detection here (I think the whole state has two immigration officers).

I am not against immigration. On the contrary, this great nation was founded on immigration. But come in the front door, legally.

There have been huge demonstrations here supporting illegal immigration. This is insanity. This country can only take so many people. Health and welfare benefits are given immediately to illegals. Just let an American citizen need help! It would be a joke if it were not so sad.

If we were in another country illegally, we would not be given any health or welfare benefits at all. I believe in helping others, but to the point of denying our own citizens?

IMMIGRATION

CARTOON OFF MARK ON MINUTEMEN BRIGADE

I thoroughly enjoy the political cartoons and must say that by and large they are right on the money. However, the May 3 cartoon on the Letters page was, in my opinion, a little off the mark.

The seated individual depicted as a member of the Minutemen Brigade, holding the "Every day without immigrants," sign, just contributes to the misinformation regarding this issue.

In all the readings I have done on the so-called Minutemen Brigade, I do not remember reading that they are against immigrants per se. It is the larger issue of illegal immigrants, the undocumented workers who cross the porous California, Texas and Arizona borders and remain illegally in this country, that the Brigade tries to address and provide assistance to the Border Patrol.

We should be careful and make sure that there is a distinction made between immigrants and illegal immigrants. That is the issue.

CORE CURRICULUM DEBATE

DOE FOSTERS EDUCATIONAL CHAOS

As a public school classroom teacher, I applaud Grassroot Institute of Hawai'i education policy analyst Laura Brown (Letters to the Editor, "Rant on core curriculum ignores Hawai'i problems," May 5).

Her attack on the fatuous premise of UH Education School professor Paul Deering's April 28 rant against a core curriculum is right on the mark: "Despite professor Deering's claims, all evidence shows that the Progressive Education Movement — where teachers leave children to their own devices in hopes they will somehow discover bodies of knowledge cultivated from worldwide civilizations throughout the ages — is a terrible failure."

The day before Brown's letter was published, readers of the two major Honolulu dailies learned that the Hawai'i Department of Education ranks near the bottom nationwide in its ineffective use of technology (The Honolulu Advertiser: "State gets D+ for technology") and is one of the 11 worst in the nation in meeting physical education requirements.

The common denominator in all of this is the DOE's deadly embrace of exactly the sort of rubbish advocated by professor Deering, who used the phrase "rotten to the core" to show his contempt for the notion of a common, well-defined academic curriculum for every grade level and every subject taught.

Until there is a common and academically rigorous curriculum to establish clear and high expectations for both teacher and student, chaos will continue to prevail as each teacher is free to teach or avoid anything that strikes his or her fancy. That is not public education. That is baby-sitting.

Given the roaring avalanche of evidence that the DOE simply cannot hack it, how much longer are parents and other taxpayers of this state willing to continue dumping exorbitant sums of money into the maw of an insatiable, obsolete, Stalinist-era, bureaucratically top-heavy, obscenely overfunded and accountability-averse DOE?

More to the point, how much longer are we willing to see our children cheated out of their rightful intellectual legacy by a remote, uncaring DOE that does not give the snap of a well-manicured finger what happens to them?