Big Isle students
protest loss of teacher

Pahala kindergartners are
unhappy that their class was
combined with first grade

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By Crystal Kua
ckua@starbulletin.com

Kindergartners at Pahala Elementary School on the Big Island went on strike yesterday.

The pint-size protest came after their teacher's position was eliminated because the class size of eight was too small under Department of Education regulations to justify a teacher. The school is now combining the kindergarten class with the first-grade class, which is not uncommon in the public school system but a move that parents and the students' former teacher say is not right.

"Kindergarten is a special year in itself," said JoAnn Homsany, who until this week was the Pahala kindergarten teacher. "We cannot close the only kindergarten class in this school ... in this community. Developmentally, it's so inappropriate."

Five kindergartners and their parents reported to school yesterday morning but left soon after attendance was taken to protest their unhappiness.

The parents of the remaining three students are backing the others but kept their children in school for fear of repercussions, parent Julie Enriques said.

"I think as a group we want the eight students to get their own class again," parent Jana Marques said.

"There's been a lot of wrongs in this situation," Enriques said.

Parents said they had been checking with the school for months before the start of the school year on whether there would be a kindergarten class because they had heard that the class was expected to be unusually small.

Marques and Enriques said they had other options for schooling for their children if there was not going to be a kindergarten class at Pahala, a former sugar plantation town still reeling from sugar's demise. "I did not want a combo class," Marques said.

The kindergarten class was given the green light, but last week, after the children spent an entire quarter with Homsany, the Big Island district personnel office informed the school that enrollment was too small and the position needed to be eliminated.

"Their (academic) growth has been phenomenal, and it's being taken away from them," said Homsany, an eight-year public school teacher whose background is in early childhood education and who will be bumped up to teach second grade.

"I feel like someone held on to the (teacher) count too long, and having the children pay for it is a little disturbing," Marques said.

Deputy District Superintendent Maureen Duffy said the teacher allocation numbers came out later than normal possibly due to a new method for allocating special-education teacher positions -- tied to the regular-education teacher count -- which may have held up the regular-education teacher allocations.

"We certainly want our kids in school.

"The school and the district want to work with this community, but I don't know if the teacher will be reinstated because as a district we're given an X number of positions," Duffy said.