Kanu calls for action to end school furloughs
Kanu Hawaii held a rally at the State Capitol on Oct. 23 to protest public school furloughs, convince the Legislature, Governor, DOE and Teachers’ Union to restore school days and to urge elected leaders to find a better solution to the state’s budget shortfall.
“At the rally, we'll have our video camera and will be asking folks to share a story of how one moment with a teacher changed their lives,” said James Koshiba, Kanu executive director. The videos were to describe the moment and name the teacher. “We’ll compile the stories and ask leaders, ‘What if that one life-changing moment fell on a furlough Friday?’” Koshiba said.
He explained why Kanu is opposing the furloughs in this article on the KANU Hawaii website:
Call for Member Action: School Furloughs
The members of Kanu Hawaii are working for a future built on island lessons of sustainability, aloha, and self reliance. The recent agreement between the DOE, BOE, teachers union and the Governor to close public schools on 17 Fridays puts that future in serious jeopardy.
The decision is the result of a series of missteps, miscalculations, and a general failure to prioritize the future of our children – a failure by our elected leaders, union representatives, and ourselves as supporters and citizen watchdogs of our school system.
How We Got Here
The story of “furlough Fridays” starts with the economic downturn and the State fiscal crisis. Earlier this year, the Legislature and the Governor had to find a mix of taxes and spending that balanced the State budget as revenues dwindled. They also had the power to set priorities, picking critical services to be maintained, and less essential or wasteful spending to be reduced.
During budget-making, both Legislature and Governor could have prioritized students by preserving the education budget, raising taxes to safeguard school funding, or cutting other areas to shift the burden of cuts away from students. Instead, the Governor opposed tax increases, and both she and Legislature adopted an approach to budgeting guided by the principle of "everyone should sacrifice equally," making cuts across the board. The "everyone sacrificing" would include students, it seemed.
Even with less funding, it was possible to minimize student suffering. When the DOE, BOE, HSTA and the Governor sat down to negotiate a new contract last month, they could have explored ways to protect students. For instance, the DOE/BOE and union could have cut planning days and holidays to meet the funding shortfall. Instead, they bargained with instructional days hoping this would force the Governor to give in to their demands. The Governor held her ground on the “equal sacrifice” principle. Again, students could have been prioritized, but were not.
The result is a teachers' contract with 17 less instructional days for students – a 10% reduction in class time. Students were used as a bargaining chip, and students came out the big loser.
How much does 17 days matter?
Not surprisingly, the educational research supports a very common sense conclusion: Take more time to teach, and outcomes for kids get better. Take less time, and there is less learning. Cut enough hours and days, and students have little hope of competing with peers in other places that offer more hours and days of school. A range of studies and reports support this finding. You can read some of them here.
The evidence is so strong that experts and elected officials across the country propose lengthening the school year. Just a few weeks ago, President Obama declared, "The challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom." Instead of clinging to a 180 day calendar built for a time when kids helped with the summer harvest, we should join the ranks of other industrialized countries that have school years of 200 days or more. Obama said a longer school year would help our kids compete with graduates from abroad.
At the very moment when the President has called for a longer school year, his home state has trimmed its year down to 163 days – the shortest school year of any state in the nation. Most states have a school year that is at least 180 days, and a majority have laws requiring a minimum number of school days per year. Hawaii has no such law, leaving it to the teachers' contract to dictate how many days of schooling students will get.
Even with a “full” school year, Hawaii students struggle to keep up with peers elsewhere. Hawaii's 8th graders rank 47th among kids from the 50 states in both Math and Reading. Hawaii has been among the worst performing states for the better part of a decade on the most widely respected standardized test in the country. The loss of instructional time will push our kids further toward the bottom of the heap. Click here to read the complete article.
Click here to read Koshiba's follow-up to the Oct. 23 rally. Following the rally, lawmakers scheduled a hearing on Friday, Oct. 30, to reopen the issue of public school furloughs.
