Many Kauai
youth skip school
today in protest

Not enough Hanalei
teachers vote to align school
vacation schedules

Anthony Sommer
Star-Bulletin

HANALEI, Kauai -- An estimated 65 parents kept their children out of school today in a one-day protest over the refusal of Hanalei School teachers to approve a new vacation schedule, which would have aligned it with the local middle and high schools in the coming school year.

"We won't know until the end of the day how many kids were out," said Mickey Norell, a Hanalei PTA member who helped organize the protest. "Many other parents would have liked to participate, but they couldn't find child care."

Norell home-schooled a half-dozen children today, two of them her own. Other parents were doing the same.

Barbara Baker, principal of the K-6 Hanalei School, did not return calls seeking comment.

The protest is over the refusal of Hanalei School members of the Hawaii State Teachers Association to agree to a contract change that would put Hanalei School on the same schedule as Kapaa Middle School and Kapaa High School, which also serve Hanalei children.

Both Kapaa schools have adopted new schedules that begin the 1999-2000 school year on Aug. 2, three weeks earlier than at Hanalei School. And fall, winter and spring breaks are radically different from Hanalei School's schedule.

A change to the Hanalei School schedule would have required agreement by at least 80 percent of the teachers to a change in their union contract. In a vote Thursday, 14 of the 18 teachers voted for the change, only 78 percent.