Daily Archives: May 28, 2010

Task Force recommends against closing century-old Kaaawa Elementary School

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A task force appointed by the Department of Education has recommended that a proposal to close Kaaawa Elementary School be rejected by the Board of Education.

A public hearing to consider the task force report will be held next Wednesday evening, June 2. The DOE’s official notice of the meeting was publicly posted on May 20.

Parents, concerned members of the community, and others concerned about the important role of small schools in rural communities are encouraged to attend.

The final report of the task force is now available online.

The following meeting notice is courtesy of school volunteer Brian Walsh, and includes additional information for those wanting to support the school and oppose the possibility of closing it.

KA’A’AWA SCHOOL CLOSURE TASK FORCE PUBLIC HEARING

Task Force Report will be discussed
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 Ka’a’awa School cafeteria, 6:30pm

Come and hear the Consolidation Task Force members explain their Report. Representatives of the DOE will be there to gather public input which will be included in their Report to the DOE Superintendent and to the BOE.

This is your opportunity to make your opinion known.

Click here for the complete flyer announcing the meeting.

In adition, Walsh prepared additional background for the media and others who are concerned about education.

Kaaawa Elementary is NOT in an area of declining population. The school is fully utilized and is NOT a failing school – it has an excellent academic record. It has been an important community asset for over 100 years.

Many of buildings are so-called “portable” and this is being used as the most recent reason for closing the school. The State completed in just the last few months a major upgrade of the sanitary system as required by federal law and is now in compliance. Neither Hau’ula Elementary or Waiahole Elementary can accommodate all of the students of Kaaawa school and that could lead to dividing our community down the middle, sending neighborhood children to different school complexes.

The closure of this small rural school is not equivalent to closing an urban school where the young students would travel less than a mile to a new school, both of the alternative schools are at least seven miles away and the vast majority of the Kaaawa students do not currently ride a bus to school.

In early 2009, the DOE created a Task Force (per Chapter 38, Hawaii Administrative Rules) to study the possible closure of Ka’a’awa Elementary School and sending the students to either Waiahole or Hau’ula Elementary. The Task Force has met 9 times over the last year and published their final draft report to the Complex Area Superintendent, Ms. Lea Albert, on April 30, 2010. (The Task Force Final Draft report can be found at the DOE website or here.

The Task Force is recommending that the school NOT be “consolidated” with either Waiahole or Hau’ula. We expect that it is likely that the DOE/BOE will decide to close the school despite the recommendations of the Report and the wishes of the community.

A disturbing article was published on the Big Island on May 25th about DOE tactics regarding the Consolidation process of Kohala Middle School.

You can read Kohala’s TF report online here.

Note that their Report was published last December, the public hearing was scheduled for Jan 21, 2010, but there is no listing of recommendations to or by the CAS or the Superintendent or even agenda or minutes of the TF post-“public hearing” meeting.

The Maunaloa TF public hearing was held on May 10, 2010. They unanimously agreed (noted in their meeting minutes) that the school should be kept open. Their Final modified TF report was to be sent to “Supt. Ball” on June 2, 2010. Minutes and report here.

The Waialua/Hale’iwa consolidation study is also proceeding rapidly under the newly approved “non-Task Force” revised version of Chapter 38, HAR.

It will be interesting to see how the new Interim Superintendent, Ms. Kathryn S. Matayoshi (Kathryn_Matayoshi@notes.k12.hi.us) intends to deal with these “consolidations”. She has been virtually invisible, but these consolidations are coming to a conclusion, driven by her “Facilities” Director, Assistant Superintendent Mr. Randy Moore.

Most of these consolidations are in Rural areas even though the worst cases of under-utilized schools are in the Urban core, where the graying of the population and the flight of the younger generation to the new suburbs leaves many half-empty schools within less than a half mile of each other.

Join the Facebook group (Save Ka’a’awa):

Here is a BOE and DOE directory:

Regards,
Brian Walsh
Ka’a’awa resident, school volunteer and SCC Chairperson

Beginning to refine the campaign contribution data

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Wading through campaign finance data is an ongoing process.

The raw data–lists of individual contributions as reported by candidates–are the easiest to report but tell only part of the story.

Massaging the data means combining the raw contributions of related donors, such as officers of the same company or group of related companies. Sometimes contributions are identified by the donor’s employer and profession, which makes helps finding relationships. But the computer is swayed by litt things in the data like misspellings, misplaced punctuation, etc.. So there’s an ongoing process of human observation combined with computer searching that eventually yields increasingly interesting information.

I’ve spent a little time continuing to work with Senator Hanabusa’s contributions, and came up with another list of top contributors. This one combines contributions from corporate and union PACs with those of individuals associated with them, or multiple officers and employees from the same businesses.

It’s sort of a progress report on what needs to be done to make much sense of it all.

Contribution list

News for Feline Friday–Duke lost two pounds!

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Two catsHere are a couple of cat updates for this Feline Friday.

First, though, not to fear, there’s a Feline Friday photo gallery. Just click on this photo of Duke and Romeo to see the rest of this week’s cats.

Then the news.

Mr. Duke went for a check-up this week with his favorite vet, Ann Sakamoto at VCA in Kaneohe.

The very good news is that Duke lost just over two pounds since the beginning of February on the special MD diet. It’s a high protein diet that promotes weight loss and insulin production, prescribed for him given the history of diabetes in his immediate feline family. And although he’s still a substantial cat, he’s down to just 17-1/2 pounds from nearly 20 pounds when he weighed in on January 31. And, to quote our vice-president, “that’s a Big F…ing Deal!”

We’re aiming to get him closer to 15 pounds before leveling off. Toby and Romeo are next for the diet routine, although I don’t know if they need the fancy prescription diet food.

And the P-Cam? I wish I could report results, but so far the correct software settings have eluded me. I’m trying to set the “motion detection” parameters. First try: cats didn’t trigger the camera. Second try: Everything triggered the camera so it took photos at a constant 4 images per minute and uploaded to a hidden web file. After about 2,000 photos, the system choked. And I had no easy way to browse the 2000 incidivual pictures looking to catch a cat in the act. Third try: Still two sensitive, and trees moving in the breeze outside are triggering the camera. Fourth try: The trigger level is just right to capture people in motion, but cats seem to slip through without being detected. I’m beginning to wonder whether I can ever get it tweaked “just right”.

But I have collected lots of pictures of us opening the refrigerator or doing the dishes, since I forget to turn off the camera when we’re there.

And for your time-wasting pleasure on this Friday, you might try this video which has already gotten over 25 million views. It probably deserves them.