Teacher salaries lower than stated

The front page of Thursday’s Star-Advertiser very clearly showed how difficult it is to achieve home ownership, or even rental of a decent home in Hawaii, even for professionals like teachers ("Honolulu housing costs eclipse most of nation," Star-Advertiser, Dec. 15).

According to the state Department of Education website, the entry level salary for a newly hired teacher with a bachelor’s degree who has completed a state-approved teacher education program is $43,157 (which does not include the current salary cut resulting from furlough days).

The maximum entry level salary for newly hired teachers is $57,243 (close to the $57,100 quoted by the article). But that high salary is for a teacher with a doctorate degree. I wonder how many of our teachers have doctorates. Maybe we are even worse off in Hawaii than the article suggests.

Robert Cowie
Kailua

Teens should know about birth control

Teen pregnancy is an epidemic in Hawaii. As we end 2011, I would like to mention that Senate Bill 922 will be up for revival when state lawmakers convene in January.

Abstinence-based sex education is not the answer; we must go further and emphasize open communication and methods of birth control. We must also be guaranteed that all children in our public school system have access to age-appropriate sex education.

According to the federal government, Hawaii has the 17th highest teen pregnancy rate in the country. In 2009, a Hawaii Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that less than 47 percent of all sexually active teens were using condoms. We have the lowest rate of condom use in the U.S.

In 2004, the state Department of Health found 67 percent of all chlamydia infections were in the 15-24 age group.

Disease and teen pregnancy and the poverty that goes along with them can be prevented through accurate and mandatory sex education.

Melinda Franklin
Waipahu

Impound cars that lack safety stickers

As I drive to and from Ewa Beach every day, I cannot help but wonder why people in Hawaii can blatantly disregard the law and not have a valid vehicle safety check or registration.

When I see cars with their registrations out of date, that means they likely do not have insurance. If people can spend $20 at McDonald’s for food, they can spend $14.95 for an inspection.

Also, why do people have valid registrations with expired safety checks when the safety checks expired more than three months before their registrations?

If the Honolulu Police Department would set up vehicle checkpoints and impound vehicles not in compliance with the law, the amount of money people would have to spend could be used to fix the roads.

Charles Kramer
Ewa Beach

It’s time to stop blaming Gov. Lingle

In response to David Shapiro’s column, "Abercrombie’s troubles are all his own, not Lingle’s" (Star-Advertiser, Volcanic Ash, Dec. 7): The first rule of politics is that prior legislatures and administrations cannot make permanently binding commitments upon currently elected politicians. Anything that was done can be undone.

So it is pure shibai for Gov. Neil Abercrombie to blame former Gov. Linda Lingle for the state’s current financial woes.

Abercrombie could have proposed slashing as much spending and firing as many unionized public workers as it took to balance the budget. And, in the unlikely event he tried that, and the Legislature had refused to implement his suggestions or overridden spending vetoes, again the blame would not lie with Lingle, but with the current fiscally imprudent Legislature.

Any politician can only justly blame his or her predecessors during the brief period between when they take office and when they are constitutionally empowered to undo prior mistakes. After that, any blame must fall squarely upon the current crop of politicians.

Jim Henshaw
Chairman, Libertarian Party of Hawaii

More could be done to placate veterans

I’m a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and I have experience with "Hawaii Five-0." The recent incident at Punchbowl Cemetery, though likely unintentional, was wrong, and more amends need to be made.

However, don’t forget the show has a lot of great people in the crew, including at least one former Marine whom I think highly of, and the show does good things for Hawaii.

Also, it’s crucial that respectful filming continue in our battlefield cemeteries. All Americans need to see and think about these places.

As we know here in Hawaii, it’s not what you say, it’s what you do. I don’t buy the downplaying of this incident by anyone. "Hawaii Five-0" is a good bunch of people who did something very inappropriate. Period. Don’t downplay it, but don’t just say you’re sorry to these great veterans: Do something to show it. Everyone will be better for it.

John Kane Gollner
Ewa Beach