This year, the Hawaii state government ended with an astonishing $1 billion surplus in its treasury. You could buy 238,663,484 Burger King Whoppers with that amount of money. In an event such as this, we are left with a massive question: Where should that money go? I propose we focus as much of the money as we can into places that would give us some form of a return investment.
“Raise Your Hand,” a monthly column featuring Hawaii’s youth and their perspectives, appears in the Insight section on the first Sunday of each month. It is facilitated by the Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders, a local nonprofit working at the high school level to engage, equip and empower Hawaii’s homegrown future leaders to start making a difference now. For more, see www.CenterForTomorrowsLeaders.org
First and foremost, we should allocate as large a portion of the money to the rail as it needs. This project has gone on far too long and its deadline gets pushed back every few months. It needs to be finished. If it is not, in no way will we make enough on tickets to ever pay off the $6.7 billion construction, and we will also have to pay to maintain the structure for as long as it stands.
If we pay the amount we need to build the whole thing and not abandon it halfway, we will be more likely to have enough passengers to make a return via tickets.
Second, we should invest as much as we can into our education budget. Less than half of our eighth-graders are considered “proficient” in reading and math. We have schools that report faulty equipment such as desks, tables and boards that they cannot replace. Many of our schools have further downsized their music and arts programs every year — programs that give hope to students who don’t excel in math or English but flourish in more creative settings.
Many of our teachers have the drive and ambition to do great things and try to be an inspiration to their students, yet they are paid only nickels on the dollar, leading some of them to work multiple jobs just to support their families.
Putting more funding into our schools could allow our students to flourish, possibly in environments they are more suited for and in ones with teachers that have the time to focus a little more on their success. These students will one day become our workforce. They will be our lawyers, our doctors and our politicians. The more educated they become, the more we all benefit.
Some argue that money of this proportion should be saved for the future. What they fail to realize is that there’s no harm in spending now to invest in a better future.
Darrius Crowell is a Pearl City High School student, class of 2017.
