Todd Cochrane Ramblings and Happenings

Hawaii Schools have long had a reputation of being the worst in the United States year after year the children scores overall paint a very bleak picture. The school my children attend currently is given a grade of a “C” by agencies that grade school performance.

For the most part schools in upper class Neighborhoods are better equipped and teachers fight to teach their, in areas where the Neighborhoods are lower the schools are generally very bad.

Part of the issue here is that their are no local school boards. The state has a single elected school board that is largely political and in no way can keep up with all of the various issues in the hundreds of schools here.

This state desperately needs to switch to a local school board system and the state department of education needs to turn 90% of every dollar that is alloted by the legislature to the schools equally based upon student population.

Parents like me have no choice but to supplement classroom time with outside tutor support. Most people cannot afford the $10,000 per child cost to put kids in private school each year. A large number of military families home school their kids for fear when they return to the mainland that their kids will no longer be competitive and their chances of getting into a high ranked university will be slim.

The sad part is most people here do not care and yet millions of dollars a year are fed into the education system here and nothing has helped. Maybe home school is the way to go for my family but something has to change.