Letter: Per-pupil spending too low in Hawaii

Randall Roth and Ray L’Heureux may have some of it right (“Schools’ problem, fundamentally, is a dysfunctional DOE,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Sept. 16).

But when they quote $13,748 per-student expenditure, it is a major distortion, since after big money is spent on special-needs students, there is only about $8,000 per nonspecial-needs student. And this small figure is expended in large classes where a single teacher has to reach average as well as superior students while dealing with slow learners and unruly discipline cases.

It is common knowledge that it costs $16,000 to $22,000 for an excellent educational experience at our private schools — but they don’t deal with slow learners and discipline cases. Their students are carefully screened through interviews and competitive evaluation, including testing.

Hawaii is kidding itself if it thinks that $8,000 per student is enough to provide an excellent learning situation to its disparate student body. This state needs to get real and put adequate resources toward educating the human resources that will be its human capital in the stiffly competitive future.

William R. Liggett

Kaimuki

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