Thursday, September 24, 2009

Protest

If you are interested in protesting the theft of over three weeks of instructional days of your child's education,
If you are interested in showing that we support the work, salaries, and benefits of public school teachers in Hawai'i,
If you are interested in showing the DOE, Governor Linda Lingle, and HSTA that public school parents care about education will not tolerate a reduction of instructional time please comment below, and offer your support.
When we get enough support, we will work on protest permits and other details.
Again, we need your help.

29 comments:

  1. Thank you for starting this. Whatever i can do I will. We can not take our kids education away from them. I am surprised and shocked to see in a western society that a decision was made by " educated" people that our kids education is not important enough for them.

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  2. Well, we need to organize in order to do this. Please share this link. The more we can get involved, the better.

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  3. I'm surprised that more parents have not come to this site. I was contemplating how we might make a difference. For a variety of reasons I think it will be difficult to make a change for the current school year, but perhaps we can light a fire under the legislature in the upcoming session and make a change for next year.

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  4. I don't have children, but believe education is the best investment we can possibly make. I would be honored to take part in any protest of the furloughs forced upon our teachers and their students.

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  5. Perhaps we could get permits and protest on the furlough days?
    The email for this blog is hawaiipublicschoolparent@gmail.com

    Please feel free to share the link to this blog on other sites.

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  6. Thank you very much to whoever created this website. I feel that both the HSTA and DOE are playing politics with our childrens’ education. HSTA decided on furloughs on Fridays because they want to generate as much public outrage as possible. Many school activities and meetings are scheduled on Fridays. Teachers did not have any input on deciding which day to furlough, they only voted to accept or reject the contract before them . Why did the DOE approve furloughs on Fridays anyway? Having less instructional days will not help our kids’ test scores. I will be sure to forward this website to other public school parents.

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  7. I agree the state bungled this one and we need to stand up and state we are NOT going to take it any more. Tax and fee increases galore and now they cannot even recognize what a burden this will be on parents of young children. HI has the worst politicians and I hope we start a movement to vote these greedy and useless people out of office. The whole situation has been an utter disgrace.

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  8. If you want good results. Go get your lawyers and file a class action lawsuit. Sue this governor just like in the Felix Consent case. These politicians are killing Hawaii's future one keiki at a time. Protests would draw media but may not produce results. But in a class action lawsuit, you get the media and you get results.

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  9. I agree. And I cant help but think that somehow this has to be illegal! Children are required by federal law to be in school a certain amount of days! How can Lingle say that teachers have to take furlough days and rob our children of a right to free and equal eduacation??? Anything I can do to help in this process of getting our kids back in school please notify me immediately! Thank you
    kolohelani@hawaii.rr.com

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  10. I am a a parent of two children that attend elementary school and am astounded that Lingle could not come up with a solution that does not take away class time from our children. I will be especially angry during state holidays, when the teachers are being paid to stay home. How about a compromise between fewer state holidays and fewer furlough days, which would result in more class time for the students!

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  11. Taking furlough days on state Holidays makes too much sense. HSTA would not like that because there would be less public outrage. HSTA likes furloughs on Fridays because it gets public school parents angry which causes the parents to pressure state government … thus the union (HSTA) wins.

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  12. It has come to my attention that there are DOE staff who do not work directly with students who have not been furloughed.

    How can this be?

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  13. Doesn't taking furlough days amount to taking a pay cut for doing the same work? What a backward self-defeating message to send the kids, to be push overs who sacrifice their own hard won gains in order to appease corrupt politicians. Any sacrifice should come from the people who caused this crisis through their financial manipulations and bubble speculation. Let the rich give the community back some of the wealth we created for them through our work.

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  14. I'm sorry, I meant doesn't taking furlough days _on holidays_ amount to taking a pay cut for doing the same work? Same amount of work days, but less pay.

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  15. Corrected post:
    Doesn't taking furlough days on holidays amount to taking a pay cut for doing the same work? What a backward self-defeating message to send the kids, to be push overs who sacrifice their own hard won gains in order to appease corrupt politicians. Any sacrifice should come from the people who caused this crisis through their financial manipulations and bubble speculation. Let the rich give the community back some of the wealth we created for them through our work.

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  16. I can't believe that we are taking away instructional time for students all in the name of balancing the state budget.It is apparent to me that our governor does not appreciate how hard it is to educate children. She says that raising taxes would be irresponsible. I think that cheating children from their education is irresponsible.

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  17. I HOPE ALL OF THE PARENTS OUT THERE ARE TRULY DOING THIS FOR THE RIGHT REASONS (FOR EDUCATION AND THE CHILDREN) VERSUS HOW MUCH IT IS INCONVENIENCING YOU AS A PARENT BY HAVING TO TAKE OFF WORK OR GET CHILD CARE. IF SO THEN MORE POWER TO YOU ALL. IF NOT, SHAME ON YOU. WOULD ANY OF YOU NON TEACHERS TAKE A PAY CUT OR WORK THE SAME AMOUNT FOR LESS MONEY IF YOU HAD A FAMILY TO FEED AND TAKE CARE OF LIKE EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD? I CHALLENGE ALL OF YOU WHO FEEL THAT TEACHERS SHOULD DO IT OUT OF LOVE FOR EDUCATION TO TAKE A PAY CUT OR FURLOUGH FOR THE LOVE OF ALL OF HAWAII'S KIDS AND RISK SACRIFICING TIME AND MONEY FROM YOUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD FOR 'THE GOOD OF ALL.' THEN YOU WILL TRULY KNOW THE CONFLICT TEACHERS ARE FEELING RIGHT NOW.

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  18. HSTA bits and needs to dwindle away. They are for the most part the reason of this outrage. They are stealing from our kids!

    HSTA is nothing but greedy..... and they are taking the opportunity away from our kids.

    Lingle should stop this if she can.

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  19. If Lingle cared about our children's education, she wouldn't have agreed to this contract. Instead, she sees it as an opportunity to place pressure on the other unions to make a similar deal.

    It's time for the HSTA leaders and DOE superintendent to resign. If they think that cutting our children's education by almost 10% is acceptable, then we need leaders in those roles who understand that it is not. State legislators - take action now to stop this nonsense.

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  20. Great initiative this blog. Let us not wait until we have thousands to post here, can we agree on getting the protest permits, and hopefully for every furlough Friday??
    Also, write to your representatives, they have been awfully quiet in all of this, because next year is election time. What is Abercrombie to do about it, write to him. He will do anything to get elected, so let's get him involved.
    All military Mom's, this is the time to let commanders, CMC's, congressmen and Secretary of Defense Gates know that your quality of life is affected by this. Military children are being hit hard here, when they transfer they have lost a lot of instructional time that the next state might not consider when the child arrives. This is discrimination, and would probably help if we had a lawyer to pick this up. There is an anti discrimination law in effect for active duty personnel who take college courses and want to transfer credits to other schools, these credits must be accepted, so there should be an anti discrimination law protecting military school children, because it will happen when you transfer they might tell you that little Jonny or Jane have to repeat a grade.
    So, I'll be happy to help whereever I can. Google your reps and Secretary of Defense Gates, they all have email accounts posted.
    You can write me at furloughparent@yahoo.com

    ALOHA

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  21. My opinion is that Lingle is using this financial crisis to intentionally undermine public education in Hawai'i as part of an effort to push through private school wavers. Hawai'i children score poorly on standardized tests, private schools are already very popular here, she is likely the last republican governor for the foreseeable future, and she hates organized labor. She has nothing to lose...and everything to gain in her pandering to the RNC.

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  22. Aloha Concerned parents, If we pull together we can file a lawsuit to get a Temporary Restraining Order to stop the furloughing of our children's teachers. We can also start a petition to impeach Lingle before she destroys our childrens future. Knowledge is power. The more our kids have the more power they will have. Let's get our politicians to see what is really important here in Hawaii by voting them all out if they support Lingle's Furloughs. I did email All of Hawaii's State Senators and representitives and only 1 emailed me back a reply that match my concern. I got one from one of them and said if I lived in his district he would actually read my email. Time to get all of these idiots out of office and put peopl in there who care about our kids. BTW Only Senator Suzanne Chun Oakland replied with a concern and sypathetic reply. I had one say he was too busy to read all of his emails but if I live in his district he would read it. I sent the email to to them all and got only 2 replies. I came to the conclusion that we should vote out the whole lot except for Sen Chun Oakland.

    Aloha, Concerned Parent

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  23. Linda Lingle foolishly invested over $1 Billion dollars of tax payer money (Honolulu Advertiser) in the stock market thinking the money was liquid but found out it was frozen and could not get it out. So she came up with a way to hide this mistake from the public by the furlough ieda. Linda wanted to furlough all of Hawaii's Stateworkers 36 days a year. This includes Teacher, Judges, Clerks, Principals etc. Linda Lingle tried to implement her 3 days a month plan into action but the HGEA/UPW took her to court and the court sided with the unions that Lingle could not implement her furlough plans so Linda started to threaten every state worker that she was going to Layoff state workers. Then she found out that she could not layoff the Courts and the DOE so she got mad and cut the DOE budget by 14%. Lingle didn't even have the guts to cut the DOE positions or programs leaving it up to Superintendent Hamamoto.

    So what can we do now? We have to get together and pool our political power by registering to vote. Then with all of us fighting Linda Lingle we can get a court to stop the furloughs until we can get Lingle out of office.

    Linda Lingle's original 36 days of Furlough for one year and a total of 72 days for the 2 2 year contract which is equal to 3 months and 12 days our kids would miss. Lingle held the teachers union hostage threatening higher medical premiums and budget cuts. The 17 Furlough days looked better than the 30 furlough days Lingle was trying to take away.

    Linda Lingle is the one to blame and if we band together we can get rid of her.

    Aloha Concerned Parent

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  24. After reading through the posts what some of you have been trying to lead others away from the real crisis is here in Hawaii. Arguing about furloughing on Holidays is just Linda Lingle's Spin Doctors trying to get us all to not see the real crisis. Why should teacher have to furlough? Why should kids have to miss school? Who came up with the idea of furloughing teachers? These are the things we should be asking.

    Linda Lingle wanted the furlough to balance Hawaii's state budget. Arguing that Teachers don't want to take a furlough day on a holiday is not the point. Why is there a furlogh day in the first place?

    Lingle lost a billion dollars on the stock market and now since she can't balance the state's budget so she tried to take money away from the Hawaiians (seeded land money), Then she tried to take the Federal Stimulus money that was suppose to go to education. Since she could not legally do this she thought that she would furlough all of the State workers 14% or 3 furlough days a month would be her next plan.

    Well since she is Governor she is the one who agreed to 17 days of furlough. Lingle actually wanted 36 days.

    If you read this post you will see that it was LINDA LINGLE WHO WANTS FURLOUGH DAYS FOR OUR KIDS.

    Please let's get her out of here.

    Aloha

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  25. All it would take is one special education parent to sue the state so they would not take away services to any special needs student.

    The Felix Consent Decree (FCD)was started by just pone parent and took the state years of court overseeing to get the care special education kids services. Nothing has changed since Felix was finally acheived except now Linda Lingle is furloughing teachers. Felix cost Hawaii taxpayers millions of dollars. Since Linda Lingle is trying to forlough teachers she is not fullfilling the FCD and is exposing Hawaii to yet another costly lawsuit.

    Lingle should be impeached and kicked out of office and get our keiki back into to school.

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  26. To the most recent poster,

    You are correct about the special education students. There are many in the schools here, all who have certain minutes legally written in their inidivualized education plans. If that was taken to court, all that money the state is saving via furlough days would be spent on court costs and attorney fees. I wonder if Lingle or the DOE/BOE has a plan for that, if it were to happen.

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  27. If teachers held teach ins against the furloughs, that might be a way to show that they cared about educating the kids, that they were willing to stand up against Lingle's B.S. and it might be something that would draw public support. People might appreciate the fact that teachers were out there serving the children despite the pay cuts, and it would be a chance to lead by example, giving the kids their teachable moment. Another possible civil disobedience move would be teachers announcing they were going to hold classes on campus, outside, on furlough days. Lingle could try and clamp down, but she'd have a hard time playing the victim and calling the teachers greedy as she always does in the media. Even if you think these ideas are lame, teachers have to find a move that brings public support, and that has some teeth.

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  28. This whole situation is just mind boggling. The basic issue of furloughs is that they should NOT BE HAPPENING. There are so many issues here because there is just so much wrong with our educational system. Many schools are not passing or barely passing AYP (anual yearly progress). Less classroom time will only result in lower test scores. How can we afford that? We rank 42 or 48 in our nation-nothing to be proud of. Yet we are 14th in the amt of $ we budget the DoE. Their budget is 2.4 BILLION dollars,which equates to 14,000 per child, as much as some of our private schools yet the quality of education is inferior. I commend our teachers and administrators for doing a magnificent job with the little they have been given. Our school sees just over $4000 per child...the rest (10,000) per child goes to central administration. Our state employs just over 11,000 teachers to teach our students yet employs as many as 20,000 for central administration. Do you think that maybe the machine has just gotten too large? That is the real problem. But the issue at hand is keeping our children in school and doing away with furlough days. As a ratified contract the only way that furloughs can be overturned is if there is a special session of the Legislature called to come up with alternative ways to help close the state's budget deficit and to come up with a way to financially cover the cost of imposed furlough days so that they may be removed from our calendars. This will only happen IF WE LET OUR REPRESENTATIVES KNOW THAT THIS IS WHAT WE WANT. We need to call them and write to them. Schools are scheduled for another 20% cut next year and now we have a larger budget deficit because of the $36.8 million that was 'oops' an error in their calculations. What it comes down to is that we have a political option, vote in people who care! But in the meantime we need to stand up for our children's future. It is said that education is the great equilizer. Don't our children deserve the chance to compete with kids on the mainland for a spot in a great university? Education is a right, not a privilege. It is up to us to demand that the responsibilty of the state's current deficit does not fall on our children to pay today and the rest of their lives. Please speak up and be the voice of our children.

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  29. I am so happy to have found this protest site online. It is so difficult to believe that the Govenor, the DOE and the HSTA thought that reducing the number of instructional days for our children was an option to balance the state budget. How ignorant can these people be? It is crazy that there was even a vote on this. I know teachers feel that furloughs are better than RIFs...but in actuality-NEITHER option is appropriate when you are affecting the education of the future leaders of our country and state. Maybe our state's leaders need to review the Whitehouse website: www.whitehouse.gov/issues/eduacation/ to brush up on our Nation's take on education. I am not sure how we can make a change for the better, but I am game for trying whatever we can so that the future adults of Hawaii and America have the best possible chance of having a productive and meaningful existance for life!

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