Schools in the area?

[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