Credit unions celebrate today

Hawaii's 90 credit unions join credit unions around the world today in celebrating International Credit Union Day. This year's theme is “;Your Money. Your Choice. Your Credit Union.”;

After a year fraught with economic and financial challenges around the world, this theme honors credit unions' efforts to put people before profits, providing access to affordable financial services to all their members.

Credit unions are unique not-for-profit, democratically controlled, member-owned cooperatives. Members of credit unions pool their assets to provide low-cost loans and other financial services to each other. Credit unions play a vital role in helping people improve their lives through access to affordable financial services. A philosophy of member service lies at the core of all credit unions, and it's an advantage that has distinguished them for more than 150 years.

This International Credit Union Day, we hope all credit union members in Hawaii will share the good news about credit unions with family, friends, and neighbors.

Furloughs put kids' safety at risk

It's difficult to imagine a worse schedule for teacher furloughs than the one agreed upon by the Department of Education and the Hawaii State Teachers Association. Although agencies are scrambling to create programs to care for children during the furlough days, there is no guarantee that all children will have access to care.

The DOE should be ashamed of itself because it is supposed to put the safety of children first; instead, it is putting the safety of young children at risk. Some parents who have to work on furlough days may end up having no other choice than to have their young children stay at home alone.

A better alternative would be to bunch all the furlough days at the beginning or the end of the school year, thereby extending the summer vacation. Agencies with summer programs could extend their programs to cover all furlough days in one fell swoop.

Adult Education should be cut, too

How is it that we hear about the budget cuts, furlough of government workers and teachers, layoffs—and yet the Department of Education's Adult Education program is not scrutinized for savings opportunities? Is the DOE Adult Education a sacred cow? Most of the public high schools have evening and weekend adult education programs, but I have to question the educational value of some of them. Adult Education has its own hierarchy of principals, vice principals, registrars and teachers to run these programs. This somewhat mirrors the secondary school system and yet you hear nothing about cutting back or doing away with this program. Why is that? And how much “;fat”; is there? This should be looked into before we even start to talk about furloughs and layoffs in the DOE secondary schools that serve our keiki.

Murder witnesses were accessories

If what you report of witnesses watching Bryanna Antone's rape and murder is accurate and true (”;Witnesses saw beach struggle,”; Star-Bulletin, Oct. 13), then I would have to say those witnesses should be arrested and charged with accessory to murder.

They saw she was resisting. They saw that the suspect “;made the choking or shoving movement five times, then stopped, for a total of 30 repetitions ... which lasted about 10 minutes.”; This means they continued watching ... for at least 10 minutes, but did not try to intervene or call for help.

If this is indeed true, the witnesses are guilty of accessory to murder, should be arrested as was the main perpetrator, and tried as criminals in a court of law.