Lockdown at pahoa high AGAIN.

[terracore]

My daughter's experience was that most of the good or interested teachers were in a revolving door. They came from the mainland for the experience, got quickly disillusioned with the system, administration, paying for needed classroom things with their own money, and making less than a burger flipper in Seattle. Most of the kids had no interest in learning. Many of her classmates were pregnant, others already had a kid, a few were pregnant with their second kid, and at least one of her friends had two kids already. This was a huge culture shock for her, coming from a school district where teen pregnancy was nearly invisible. Some of the kids REALLY wanted to learn and succeed and had every possible disadvantage. She knew several students who had no way to get to school except for a combination of hitchhiking and walking up to 15 miles. And you know the roads around here... not exactly pedestrian friendly.

A friend of mine had two kids in Pahoa high school and found out that some of the kids that had truancy and tardiness problems was because their families either didn't have the money or didn't want to spend the money on the required school uniform (a T-shirt), so the kids were dealing with it themselves by borrowing T-shirts from other students. If something happened like the loaning kid forgot to bring the T-shirt in that day, the borrowing kid didn't go to school that day. When my friend's wife found out about it she made it her personal quest to find these kids and buy them a T-shirt. When it was all said and done, it only cost her about $70. It only cost seventy dollars to fix this specific truancy / tardiness problem. Unreal.