This likely is already making the rounds at the Hawaii State Teachers Association and around school campuses: The latest national ranking study from WalletHub, the personal finance site, puts Hawaii last in the nation for “teacher-friendliness.” That is, our isles’ public schools fall short in desirable qualities such as low turnover, low pupil-teacher ratios, high spending per student and other factors.

Teacher pay is weighted heavily, and there Hawaii finishes at the very bottom. This bullet point might play well in the union’s push for a new property-tax surcharge to benefit schools — including salaries.

Tension at the top of the GOP ticket

There is something nicely democratic about each candidate for lieutenant governor running independently of the gubernatorial ones in the Hawaii primary — unlike the presidential setup, in which the top of the ticket picks his or her own running mate.

But that arrangement can seem easier — when the hopefuls for governor and LG aren’t always a perfect match. Witness the strains between the GOP lieutenant governor candidate, conservative Marissa Kerns, at a Republican function Friday. Kerns finds gubernatorial hopeful Andria Tupola too liberal. With a few weeks to go before the general election, we’ll see if they can meet in the middle, or near to it.