When kindergartners ask for water, they should be allowed to drink from their water bottles — especially with the recent high temperatures. So it’s upsetting to hear allegations that a teacher at Mokapu Elementary School in Kailua has repeatedly denied 5-year-old students’ requests to drink water. Parents were so incensed that five police reports were filed, claiming their children were denied access to water. One of the children went to the emergency room to be treated for heat exhaustion.

The state Department of Education said the principal “met with the teacher” and the issue will not go beyond the school level. But perhaps the DOE should stress some common-sense safety guidelines for teachers dealing with children in this merciless heat.

How many hoary bats must die for wind energy?

Estimates are just that — educated guesses, really — but the SunEdison Inc. projection of its bat kills seems so far off it should give decisionmakers pause. The permission for SunEdison’s two wind farms on Maui was that just 14 of the newly crowned official state land mammal, the endangered Hawaiian hoary bat, would be killed over the 20-year life of the installation. With three bat deaths in only the first three years, the company has upped its requested limit to 80. And, if U.S. Division of Forestry and Wildlife approves the request, the allowable kills of the state bird, the nene, will go from 30 to 48. That’s the not-so-green cost of going green.