Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 5, 1 May 1995 — Our readers write [ARTICLE]

Our readers write

Hawaiian immersion lottery is wrong How the Department of Education is handling the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program is just not right. It appears that the state is educating all the English-speaking children at the expense of the Hawaiian-speaking children. The Board of Education, in its wisdom, approved expansion of the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program through grade 12. That decision was perhaps the most significant ever made by the state's BOE in our lifetime. But the DOE isn't keeping faith with the board or with the Hawaiian-speaking children and their families. There seems to be an imbalance, with too many teachers and too many classrooms dedicated to the English-speaking program and too few of both dedicated to the Hawaiian immersion program, Ke Kula Kaiapuni. And the DOE's temporary solution - to hold a lottery only for the Hawaiian-speak-ing children- seems very unfair. If the state cannot provide adequate education for all the children, perhaps the

deficit should be divided equally, with lotteries held for both programs. If the Hawaiian-speaking children cannot be provided the education in their language, the DOE's solution is to force them into classrooms where the same subjects are taught in English. If the English-speaking ehildren cannot be accommodated in Englishspeaking classrooms, would the DOE force them to go into the classrooms where the same subjects are being taught in Hawaiian? Not likely! Keith Haugen Honolulu