State moves up in per-student spending - Hawaii News

Obviously quantity does not necessarily correlate with the quality of the education.

wasting more money !

the more money the state spends in education the lower the test scores for Hawaii's students which is near bottom or at the bottom in some catagories.

nice

this is what you get from bureaucracies such as the board of education that will cut teachers versus administation cost.

and the union only cares about status quo and membership count.

be a sheep
vote democrap

$3 billion divided by 180,000 students is $16,000+ per student.

Waste of time feeding the education system with funds. It all goes to the teacher's greedy pocket. Nothing much left for the kids program.

Excuses wrote:

$3 billion divided by 180,000 students is $16,000+ per student.

$16,000 per student is the highest in the nation but the actual spending of $4,435 per student in Hawaii is the lowest if Utah's $5,000 per pupil is the lowest reported figure by the census bureau. These figures are not checked by the National Census Bureau. These figures were submitted by the DOE. The report is certainly biased and untrue. The DOE is still acting maliciously by trying to cover their inadequate performance with numbers. The media is also at fault for providing the public sector with lies to cover a failing Government agency that is driving the State to bankruptcy.

Excuses wrote:

$3 billion divided by 180,000 students is $16,000+ per student.

Then one has to consider every year for the past 10 years, 800 million goes into "questionable" contracts. Some non-bid and others "fixed" by the corrupt DOE administrators to line the pockets of themselves, their family members, corrupt contractors and other persons of "questionable" character.

Still then, no matter how much taxpayer's money goes into the "public trough" the corrupt DOE will find ways to deplete it at the expense of teachers and students!

Look at the current status, Hawaii's DOE schools rank at the bottom of the 50 state barrel, 49th in Reading, 45th in Math and the scores are decreasing and has been for over 15 years!

Clearly putting more money in a cesspool of incompetent and corrupt DOE administration is NOT the answer. Complete audit and prison time for all those crooks are the answer including a complete overhaul, otherwise it is just "business as usual".

These figures highlight the problem of our educational system-- it is wasting money and not achieving the results we pay for. What it also tells you is that if we spend more money to improve results, it will not happen until we fix the system.

The teachers' salaries come from the $4,435 alloted to each pupil in the State. This is the reason why there is not enough money for textbooks, supplies,maintenance, etc. This total represents 36% of the $3 BILLION Educational Budget. The rest which total $1,920,000,000 is used to pay the salaries of the bureaucratic support staff of the DOE. The remainder which total nearly $900,000,000 go to award outside contractors with contracts that our auditor found to be questionable and maybe fraudulent.

The teachers' salaries come from the $4,435 alloted to each pupil in the State. This is the reason why there is not enough money for textbooks, supplies,maintenance, etc. This total represents 36% of the $3 BILLION Educational Budget. The rest which total $1,920,000,000 is used to pay the salaries of the bureaucratic support staff of the DOE. The remainder which total nearly $900,000,000 go to award outside contractors with contracts that our auditor found to be questionable and maybe fraudulent. Gary Kubota, who wrote the story without checking the facts, is an accessory to the crime.

No matter what is being spent per pupil the DOE is failing to educate.

For the last ten years, our Deocratic legislators with the Unions(HSTA and HGEA) have been successful in building the educational budget of $900,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 as it stands today. We must also give credit to our Superintendent because this spiral of educational dollars went the wrong way during her nearly eight years in office. This unholy aaliance has driven the Hawaii Public School System to the POVERTY LEVEL.

I wonder what Gov. Lingle is doing about this?

not a single thing.....

alice wrote:

No matter what is being spent per pupil the DOE is failing to educate.

true and very sad

NOTE: "Hawaii's $6,517 in teacher salaries and benefits per pupil was higher than the national average of $5,867 and higher than 35 states and the District of Columbia."

That's $550 per teacher more than the national average. That's a 9.4% difference. Is the Price of Paradise COL in Hawaii more than 10%?

Also this year, Senator Donna Mercado Kim cut the Public Charter School per pupil spending down to $5,900. Compare that to "bottom-paying Utah, with $5,683" and a picture of injustice begins to emerge.

$11,060 vs $5,900...Hmmmm.....

Perhaps Donna Mercado Kim hates Hawaiian children.

After all, a recent KSBE study showed that the 17 Hawaiian focused charters are doing a better job educating keiki than the DOE.

And the recent HSA scores showed several public charters in the top ten in math and reading.

Is the legislature trying to starve these schools to make them struggle?

My Magic 8-Ball says YES, IT IS SO.

more numbers wrote:

The teachers' salaries come from the $4,435 alloted to each pupil in the State. This is the reason why there is not enough money for textbooks, supplies,maintenance, etc. This total represents 36% of the $3 BILLION Educational Budget. The rest which total $1,920,000,000 is used to pay the salaries of the bureaucratic support staff of the DOE. The remainder which total nearly $900,000,000 go to award outside contractors with contracts that our auditor found to be questionable and maybe fraudulent. Gary Kubota, who wrote the story without checking the facts, is an accessory to the crime.

To call the media an accessory is a little extreme. However, it would be great investigative journalism to REALLY dig inot the DOE's spending, programs, federal funding, CIP and procurement. At $16,000 per child every year, you would almost be better off simply BRIBING the kids to do well on tests rather than growing the bureaucracy into the Department of Employment.

But because the DOE is such a big elephant, no journalist has the wherewithal to eat it one bite at a time. It's all fluff and feel good/feel bad sensationalism.

No one is up for the challenge.

It would take someone like Randy Roth to do a Broken Trust-style study on the DOE before the SB or HA would pick it up. These papers are incapable of taking on something that big themselves.

en den ...

how many graduate from HS ...

maybe da metric should be ...

cost/HS graduate ...

den, mo scared ...

almost same as cost/welfare recipient ...

auwe ....

shouldn't our wonderful Governor do something other than twiddle her thumbs?

alice wrote:

No matter what is being spent per pupil the DOE is failing to educate.

true..and actually our teachers are paid very well for their very bad performance.

We need to investigate this wasteful spending. Obviously, the staff and the contractors are benefitting from this monstrous funding and there has been no progress nor positive changes affecting the students' national standing. Enrollment went down and the funding went up....it doesn't make sense.
Unnecessary purchases and staff positions should be examined carefully to save money. Concrete explanation of allocations and spending are still pending. Billions of dollars alloted for education should be accounted and see if we can divert money from there to cover the state deficit and to help maintain the quality of life.

alice wrote:

shouldn't our wonderful Governor do something other than twiddle her thumbs?

This is the only thing left for the Governor to do. In nearly eight years in office, she faced a huge corrupt Democratic machine that blocked her every move. I don't blame her for twiddling her thumbs in disgust.