Furlough Fridays

I mentioned earlier that I would write about Furlough Fridays. What, you may ask, is Furlough Friday? Well, to put it in terms everyone can understand: The Hawaii State Budget is so messed up that the Department of Education (DOE) is facing "unprecedented budget cuts totally $468 million over two years". Their solution to this ridiculousity is "Furlough Fridays" - or 17 Fridays throughout the rest of this school year in which there will now be no school. That's more than 3 weeks less of school! Hawaii already boasts one of the worst public school systems in the country.

(visualize Ange getting up on a soapbox now)

I understand that we are in a global economic crisis, and that with these budget cuts it might require job cuts, but this is asinine. In order to save jobs, which I do not disparage by the way, they have opted to take a pay cut by working fewer days throughout the year. From my perspective, which I recognize might be skewed, it seems that the DOE is opting for more time off resulting in less pay. (Who wouldn't want more time off?) Hawaii's keiki (children) are the biggest losers in all this. Not only do they have the worst (okay, California was pretty bad too) education system to begin with, now they have less time to learn the stuff they are supposed to learn, which they aren't learning anyway. The Elementary schools already have half-day Wednesdays; so now, B & D will have 3 1/2 days of school most weeks left of school. I've just re-looked at the new school calendar, and determined that there is only one full, five-day week of school in February, April and May. Count 'em... 3 full weeks of school for the rest of the school year. UNBELIEVABLE!

But wait... there's more! Believe it or not... it's buy one get one free! That's right. This will affect the next school year too!

Obviously there is a positive here. The kids will have more play time... more time at the beach, more time to enjoy this beautiful place we live. However, give them enough time here and they won't know how to read the signs at any of the places we visit.

Going Out In Style

Elephant pick-up at the Hyatt

Today was the last day of school at AES for the kids, a surprisingly sad day for all of them.  Saying goodbye is never easy, and it seems to get more difficult as time passes and they get older and develop deeper and more meaningful friendships.  However, we started the day off bright and early with a memorable last ride to school - on Elephant back.  We met Raja, our hathi, outside the Hyatt this morning at 6:15 am and began the ride to school which lasted about 1 hour and 15 minutes.   Dave walked alongside the elephant with the camera the whole time capturing this last adventure, while I drove along behind in the car with Devender and their backpacks.  Almost halfway there, I got a text from A:  "my shoe is falling off.  D's legs are itchy.  Are we halfway there yet?"  This warranted an actual phone call response:  "I'll pick up your shoe if it falls, tell D to sit criss-cross, and I hope you are appreciating every moment of this."  Arrival at the school was less than climactic, but very fitting as the school security guard almost had an aynurism that we didn't have a 'permit' to have the elephant near the gate, and that we were taking photos.  So, we 'parked' further down the street to have the kids disembark.  It was an awesome last day arrival aboard the school-hathi.

Hathi on Ring Road

Are we there yet?

The End... of a great two years