Schools in the area?

[unknownjulie]

OK, I actually know quite a bit about this topic. HASS does have a "gifted program" that requires a recommendation from the current teacher and I believe is something like 3-6grade. I agree the public schools are getting better and better. I have a SPED kid in HIlo at DeSilva elementary and they are saints there. I truely believe they have saved my son's life. I also have a middle schooler in GT classes at Hilo Intermediate. I think the public schools are much better than charters because they have more resources, different types of classes, and the fundraising structures of a public school. They also have all kinds of free things from federal grants because these schools are supposedly "bad". There has also been far less bullying in HIlo than my older son experienced in Austin Texas. All in all, I am one very satisfied customer of the public schools in Hilo at least. Keaau also has AP classes and anything else that a student could need. IMO. Keaau seems to have more a problem with sort of a "culture of underachievement" (from the students) in the schools there, as compared to Hilo, but there are classes there for everything from SPED to the college bound physics and calculus classes. It depends on the kid! I've met good teachers in both places! And I honestly believe that the school staff in Hawaii are more caring in general than on the mainland, and that counts for alot.

[csgray]

Julie,
Charter schools ARE public schools! We do receive far less funding from the state, but Cyril Pahinui isn't going to be teaching kids ukulele in a DOE school, but he does at Connections! In a DOE school, classes can be as much as twice the size as at a charter school, and teachers in secondary at DOE schools see as many as 175 different students in a day. There isn't a lot of room for personal relationships with those kinds of numbers. Unless you've had a student in a PUBLIC charter school here in Hawaii I don't think you really have any basis for comparison.

Charter schools in Hawaii came about because many Hawaii families were frustrated at the lack of local input and control that a single statewide school district provides, if a child is not part of the middle range they teach to, parents go looking for alternatives. Most of the charter schools on the Big Island have long waiting lists, so clearly many parents are voting with their feet. The legislature has been trying to starve charter schools out of existence ever since they started, this year we got half the funding that DOE schools get and we pay for our own facilities out of that per pupil funding. However, if you want your child to have a personal relationship with their teacher or teachers, if you want a school where everyone is part of the same ohana, no matter what ethnic background they have, where bullying is dealt with swiftly and decisively, where the classroom teacher has time to really get to know your child, then Charter schools are worth looking at.


CKG,
As far as Gifted and Talented education goes, few schools anywhere offer special programs for those kids anymore. My daughters were tested and evaluated as TAG students (the label our school district used) and the program was slashed so far due to budget cuts right afterwards that we never really saw anything offered to them. That was back in the 90s and the funding hasn't gotten better anywhere since then.

As a teacher I love having gifted kids in my classes, I have a 7th grade student who is writing a 5 page double spaced typed and properly cited research paper on the conflict between rights and laws, instead of doing what the rest of the class is doing, because that is what her intellectual need is. I think any teacher who is confident in their teaching welcomes the gifted child. I also know that the dropout rate for gifted children is higher than that of special education students, because their needs are not met in the classroom so much of the time, so as an educator I view it as a very important part of my job to meet the needs of those students, every bit as important as meeting the needs of the special education students in my class.

Perhaps my perspective is a little different because of my experience as a student (who left for college after my sophomore year in HS because my small town school had nothing left to offer) and as a parent of two gifted children whose needs were not met in what was considered one of the best school districts in the country, but I try to meet the needs of ALL of my students, and teaching in a public charter school gives me the freedom to do that. I can meet the needs of all my students in ways I would just not be allowed to do in a DOE school.

In the long run, it is the job of parents to meet the needs of their child, if your school doesn't do that, then either go school shopping, or find ways to add on to the richness of their lives with other educational experiences. School is far from the only place to learn, I have seen parents of gifted students meet the needs of their child through art, music, fencing and dance classes, there are both Puna and Hilo chess clubs, theater groups that cast kids, if you are at least part Hawaiian, Kamehameha schools have great summer programs, Imaloa offers intersession classes too, and a friend of mine empowered her daughter to write two full length novels before she graduated from HS by getting dragonspeak for their family computer and prioritizing when she could use it. Be creative, if you have a gifted child you are probably pretty smart and talented yourself, think outside of the box and find out what your child wants to explore and then help them do it. You will never regret it.


Carol

Edited to fix a silly typo.

[unknownjulie]

thankyou for setting me straight! I thought that because the teacher's do not have DOE retirement plans that they were not DOE employees and therefore, the schools were somehow some kind of public/private hybrid. I may even have this wrong! But I think it was a big bone of contention up in laupahoehoe when they converted to charter, and that's why a lot of teachers wanted to leave. (but please provide info if you know it about this also! because I certainly could even have this wrong) I also saw that the kids that were on the science olypiad team from the charter school did not all get to go to Oahu because of lack of money and that the Hilo Inter students all managed, with the help of PTA also to go. IT seems like there's more of a structure for fundraising in the regular schools. This has just been my own limited personal experience.

[unknownjulie]

The other reason I did not know that Charter schools were DOE schools is because the DOE substitute teachers cannot teach at the charter schools. Why do they have this separation? Maybe it's simply the different budgets.

[dayna]

quote:

---

Originally posted by csgray

Julie,
Charter schools ARE public schools! We do receive far less funding from the state, but Cyril Pahinui isn't going to be teaching kids ukulele in a DOE school, but he does at Connections! In a DOE school, classes can be as much as twice the size as at a charter school, and teachers in secondary at DOE schools see as many as 175 different students in a day. There isn't a lot of room for personal relationships with those kinds of numbers. Unless you've had a student in a PUBLIC charter school here in Hawaii I don't think you really have any basis for comparison.

Charter schools in Hawaii came about because many Hawaii families were frustrated at the lack of local input and control that a single statewide school district provides, if a child is not part of the middle range they teach to, parents go looking for alternatives. Most of the charter schools on the Big Island have long waiting lists, so clearly many parents are voting with their feet. The legislature has been trying to starve charter schools out of existence ever since they started, this year we got half the funding that DOE schools get and we pay for our own facilities out of that per pupil funding. However, if you want your child to have a personal relationship with their teacher or teachers, if you want a school where everyone is part of the same ohana, no matter what ethnic background they have, where bullying is dealt with swiftly and decisively, where the classroom teacher has time to really get to know your child, then Charter schools are worth looking at.


CKG,
As far as Gifted and Talented education goes, few schools anywhere offer special programs for those kids anymore. My daughters were tested and evaluated as TAG students (the label our school district used) and the program was slashed so far due to budget cuts right afterwards that we never really saw anything offered to them. That was back in the 90s and the funding hasn't gotten better anywhere since then.

As a teacher I love having gifted kids in my classes, I have a 7th grade student who is writing a 5 page double spaced typed and properly cited research paper on the conflict between rights and laws, instead of doing what the rest of the class is doing, because that is what her intellectual need is. I think any teacher who is confident in their teaching welcomes the gifted child. I also know that the dropout rate for gifted children is higher than that of special education students, because their needs are not met in the classroom so much of the time, so as an educator I view it as a very important part of my job to meet the needs of those students, every bit as important as meeting the needs of the special education students in my class.

Perhaps my perspective is a little different because of my experience as a student (who left for college after my sophomore year in HS because my small town school had nothing left to offer) and as a parent of two gifted children whose needs were not met in what was considered one of the best school districts in the country, but I try to meet the needs of ALL of my students, and teaching in a public charter school gives me the freedom to do that. I can meet the needs of all my students in ways I would just not be allowed to do in a DOE school.

In the long run, it is the job of parents to meet the needs of their child, if your school doesn't do that, then either go school shopping, or find ways to add on to the richness of their lives with other educational experiences. School is far from the only place to learn, I have seen parents of gifted students meet the needs of their child through art, music, fencing and dance classes, there are both Puna and Hilo chess clubs, theater groups that cast kids, if you are at least part Hawaiian, Kamehameha schools have great summer programs, Imaloa offers intersession classes too, and a friend of mine empowered her daughter to write two full length novels before she graduated from HS by getting dragonspeak for their family computer and prioritizing when she could use it. Be creative, if you have a gifted child you are probably pretty smart and talented yourself, think outside of the box and find out what your child wants to explore and then help them do it. You will never regret it.


Carol

Edited to fix a silly typo.

---

Carol, I agree on letting the gifted kids move at a faster rate (or do extra stuff). My daughter is moving twice as fast as her AP calc class and while the teacher (via skype from maui) didn't like it the principal agreed to just "let her go". lol Also in her AP biology class, not only is she doing the regular classwork, she's researching and has written papers for extra credit on infectious disease. Right now she's focusing on Smallpox, Ebola, and some other deadly disease. She wrote a paper "just for fun" about HIV and her teacher included that in her recomendation for some UH Manoa summer program for kids going into the medical field.

Some teachers don't like her extra work that she does, but I've found MOST do. And MOST let her do whatever she wants so long as she gets her classwork done. She spends 75% of her day in the library working on her own with teachers permission.

Dayna

www.E-Z-Caps.com

[csgray]

Charter Schools are public schools teaching the children of the State of Hawaii. They are NOT Hawaii DOE schools. Charter school teachers in Hawaii, unlike many other states, are on exactly the same pay scale and pension plan as DOE schools. However, DOE teachers who go to work for PUBLIC charter schools lose their seniority and tenure. Charter school teachers who have never been DOE teachers do not have any seniority in the DOE and have to enter the system as brand new hires; PD hours up to, and including, PHDs don't count either. The DOE position is that since charter school teachers are not part of their hiring systems that they are just the same as a brand new college graduate from the mainland. Prior experience, even in Hawaii public charter schools, does not count on the pay scale if you move to DOE schools, neither does additional education. Charter school teachers also have less protection from unfire promotion and firing processes, because our union (same one the DOE teachers belong to) allowed the charter schools administrators and governing boards to say that every charter school teacher is an "at will employee" who can be fired at the end of any school year, with no need by the employer to justify the firing. The seniority and firing issues were why the Lapahoehoe teachers were worried about becoming charter school employees.

I love my students, my school, and I love my job; every day I spend teaching middle schoolers is a day well spent. But I work without many of the protections and security aspects of working in education that DOE teachers have. I have greater freedom as a teacher to do what works than I would in a DOE school, but I can also be demoted or fired at the end of any year. That trade off means that I routinely work 60-70 hours a week, have no prep periods in which to plan, grade, or make copies, and I work with students or meet with parents every day until 4 or 5, when I arrived at school before 6:30AM. All of that is my choice, but I wish people would realize that my school, like all other PUBLIC charter schools in Hawaii, is free, must take any student who reaches the top of our waiting list, are bound by the same federal rules and laws as any other PUBLIC school in Hawaii and are held to the same standards as all other public schools in Hawaii with half of the per pupil funding. The reason I work as hard as I do, like every other charter school teacher in Hawaii, is because we have a much smaller staff trying to meet the needs of our students with far fewer resources than DOE teachers have available.

The reason many charter school students can't make it to things like State Science Fairs is because many of our families are poor, 75%+ of our students are eligible for free and reduced fee lunches, that is not an affluent pool of parents to fund trips to Oahu. However, we have two students going to Punahou this summer (the elite prep school on Oahu our President graduated from) for a free program that will continue through college, so there are amazing things available for students of Hawaii Public Charter schools who are willing to aim for it.

Carol

[malolo]

"RealClass" is the accelerated program for 5th & 6th grade students at HAAS... application and program info here:

http://realclasshaas.com/realclass/Application.html

[unknownjulie]

CSGRAY thankyou so much for the excellent explanation! And thanks also to the poster for the HAAS gifted program link. I now know a lot more, and so does everyone else reading this about the choices avail for the keiki!

[knieft]

Besides the regular 7-12 campus, HAAS has a variety of diverse programs, so it is very hard generalize and the word of mouth can be all over the place but gets labelled as HAAS. And then for the most part, supply (available spaces) exceeds demand so the lottery system kicks in. REAL Class is an exception to the lottery with competitive admission instead.

You don't mention her exact grade level, but REAL Class has openings for 5th grade only next year: http://realclasshaas.com

I am one of the teachers in the program.

Further, HAAS does have an excellent virtual program (with some classroom time). See details at http://haasindigital.org

Cheers,
Kirt

[ckg]

Wow mahalo for all the great info on HAAS and it's virtual and gifted. It looks like there are some good options to explore there. We are still at the very early stages in our journey but we know our 3rd grader will be skipping ahead we are just not sure how much ahead since we are still in process of having her IQ/gifted tested. We will definitely look closer there when the time comes.