Big Isle agency wants
the state to drop in funds
to stop dropoutsThe program boasts success
with kids who struggle with
drugs and violence
HILO >> No more than a dozen of 4,000 youths helped by the Hawaii County Economic Opportunity Council over 30 years have become involved with drugs, agency head George Yokoyama said.
Although the programs focus on education and preventing high school dropouts, the side effect is that they lower drug abuse, Yokoyama said. The dropout program was established in 1972 to fight the drug scourge of that day, paint sniffing.
"We've got a track record," Yokoyama said.
Yokoyama announced yesterday that he will go to the state Legislature next year seeking to double state money for two economic opportunity council programs: the dropout prevention program, which now receives $120,000 a year from the state, and a reading program called LAMP, which receives $121,000 a year.
The programs cost less than $1,000 per student, noted council adviser Sandra Song, formerly District Judge Sandra Schutte.
Dropout prevention facilitator Rose Kuamoo said keeping children in programs at school keeps them away from drugs and violence at home.
"Last year, I went to get a student at home, and I was faced with a gun," she said.
Song said: "I'd see so many 18- and 19-year-olds. They're not bad kids, they just had terrible home lives. The father is in prison. The mother is in prison. They had no one to pull them out of there."
Former participant Jessica Yamamoto, 28, said a program facilitator kept her from dropping out of school at 15. "She'd go out of her way to help me on personal matters."
Former participant Turner Hocson, 17, said after his father died, "I wanted to be bad." Kuamoo kept him in school. "If not for HCEOC, I would be another loser," Hocson said.
Despite the successes, funding for the programs has declined steadily. The dropout program for intermediate and high school students, which once served seven schools, now serves four daily and another once a week.
The LAMP program for third- and fourth-graders once served eight schools but is now in only two.
