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From Save Our Schools Hawaii
Dear Save Our Schools, Linda Lingle, The DOE, & Whoever else this may concern,
Furlough friday's have really been a burden on many of Hawaii students. Yeah, we get to go out on those days and not have to go to school, but we can do that any day. It's taking away from something BIGGER, something more IMPORTANT, our damn education! My name is Chanelle Gamiao, and I'm a junior at Mililani High School. And furlough friday's have affected me drastically. I might not be the best student, or even a good student. I skip class, and at times I don't even pay attention. But I really do care about my education. These furloughs have been taking away from the class time that I NEED, to raise my F to a B, talk story with my friends, learn about things I need to know, and things I don't, but most of all its taking away my future.
This might only be a temporary problem, but its effect is permanent. It seems like our own govenor, the person who is suppossed to be steering our state in the right direction is digging our graves six feet under! I know I don't understand how things go in the DOE, but I know that if they want to, they can do something. This is BS, no one is caring about the kids, no one is caring about the fucking future! How will you feel in 10 years, when you go to the doctor and he doesn't know the difference between strep throat & the flu? Well things like that are gonna happen, because how will the upperclassmen in highschool get into good colleges when the have THE LEAST amount of school days in the country! Furlough days are YOUR choice, and you with everyone else in the state will have to ssuffer the consequences.
Thank you for you time. Sincerly Chanelle Gamiao.
Hi, I'd just like to ask, does anyone realize that Lingle was not responsible for the furlough days? In fact it was the Teachers Union that insisted on, and forced it to be in place. They told the teachers in meetings after meetings that they had to vote on the furlough or they would have to take a drastic pay cut. The teachers were never given the full scope of what their choices were, and subsequently neither was the general public. I'm going to list several facts that should have been posted by the newspapers, facts that I sent in, facts that, had they been interested in reporting, would have brought to light major problems with the HSTA. Facts that I personally am aware of because I was lucky enough to be present at most of those meetings. I'm the guy no one in the room notices, because all I do is provide the sound equipment and make sure the mics are turned on and off at the correct times. I'm the guy that you don't even realize is in the room listening and taking notes.
So here are some key points that you should know, maybe knowing these things the general public will find that the real culprit here is the Teachers Union, and not the Teachers nor the Governor. These facts should all be available in public record. All of them can, and have been, verified.
1. Did you know that Lingle was completely against teachers furloughs and only allowed it because the threat of a strike by the Union leaders would have been more damaging to the students? The fact is that the Union leaders didn't want a pay cut, because it would have hurt their chances of a pay raise last year.
2. Did you know that each teacher has to set aside a portion of their pay to pay for Union dues that go directly towards the Union Leaders paychecks? In fact so much so that any pay cut would harm teachers but would not harm any of the Union leaders.
3. Did you know that the Union Leaders get paid so much, that the highest paid teachers salary is still lower than the lowest paid Union Leader? Go look it up, it's publicly available and if they won't give it to you, go get a lawyer and subpoena the records to make them look even more guilty. Sickening isn't it. The fact of the matter here is that if it weren't for the Unions, the paycut that Lingle had asked for would have been fully covered with enough left over that teachers would have actually gotten an increase in pay. Yes, I said that. If teachers did not have to commit the amount of money they do, towards "Union Dues", as they are now, basically, if there was no Union, there would have been no furlough fridays, the state could have gotten the budget back down to what they wanted, and the teachers would still have gotten a slight increase in pay.
4. Did you know that when the Union asks the teachers to go on strike, the teachers lose pay from those days, but the Union Leaders still collect their full pay with benefits? Another sickening fact.
The bottom line is that the Labor Unions in Hawaii are the ones that are pulling the economy down. Not just the Teachers Union but all the unions. The members foot the bill to pay their Union Leaders/Reps to get them better pay but they don't realize how much it affects their lives in terms of what is actually happening financially. It may seem well and good at times, but the fact is that Unions cause more harm than good now days.
Teacher have no incentive to learn more or do better, because the "Union" doesn't allow for older, non-qualified teachers, to be fired. They just move them to places that they won't be fully noticed. I had a teacher trying to teach from a 1974 Text book and it was in a class I was taking in 1998, most of the information in the book had been outdated and thereby incorrect, but when I brought it up to School Administrators, they told me that it didn't matter if what she was teaching was wrong, the fact was it was correct according to the book she was using. Idiocracy??
The Newspapers and News Channels failed to do any of the research into the story behind the furlough days. They instead ran with the stories because it got them sales, viewers, hits on websites, whatever. They failed as journalists to report the truth behind who actually started and caused the fiasco which was furlough friday. They failed to notice that through it all it was the Governor and her staff, that was trying to end it, and the Union that was actually stopping it. It was the medias fault that Save Our Schools ended up protesting in the Governors office instead of the Union offices. It was OUR fault for allowing the media to hype up the situation to the point they did.
All in all, just do the research.
Oh and by the way if you think there are no more furlough fridays this school year?? Do your homework, there are still 6 furlough days this year, they just call it something else now.
