Home Serving our Community 7 Cars for 7 Teachers

Lots of new cars, lots of smiles,

and a new State Teacher of the Year.

The seven cars given away at the event.

State and District Teacher of the Year award ceremonies were held September 1 at a Board of Education meeting. To view more photos of this event, visit our Photo Gallery.

HONOLULU, HI.--The Department of Education named the 2006 State Teacher of the Year at a Board of Education meeting Thursday September 1, 2005, at the Radford High School cafeteria. The new State Teacher of the Year and the District Teachers of the Year each received a new car (use for year) provided on site by auto dealer ad associations, individual dealers, and affiliated associations.

The program, initiated by Hawaii’s Volkswagen Dealers, awarded a new Volkswagen Jetta in 1999, with an apple painted on each front door, to the State Teacher of the Year, and generated such a charming thank you letter from the winning teacher that soon other Hawaii dealer ad associations off ered to award free cars (use for year) to the District Teachers of the Year each year, creating what now has become known as the “7 Cars for 7 Teachers” program. Th e seven cars awarded this year will bring to 43 the number of new cars that have been provided.

“Auto dealers learned from principals, that a delightful and unexpected outcome of the program, was that students would proudly bring parents and guests to see the car in the parking lot and explain that their school had the winning teacher of the year,” said Eric Fukunaga, 2006 HADA president.

The 7 cars program is the foundation of HADA’s involvement with public education. The program helped begin a chain of events which led to the legislature’s successful passage of the HADA-initiated HB2353 creating annual SAT9 assessment in reading and math in all grades 3 through 8, and one year in high school. The 7 cars program also has led to a request this year by Congressman Ed Case for $5 million in federal funding to help Hawaii develop a language arts / core content curriculum.

Auto dealers believe that development and use of a rigorous core content curriculum could help propel Hawaii’s student reading scores, in the early grades, to near the top in the state-by-state comparisons, in only 72 months.

This year, the seven 2006 Teacher of the Year cars are provided by: Hawaii’s Volkswagen Dealers, Pfl ueger Honda, JN Mazda, Hawaii Mitsubishi, Servco Toyota, the Association of Finance and Insurance Professionals, and the Hawaii Automobile Dealers Association.

The other 6 teachers (District Teachers of the Year) receiving their new cars were:

Honolulu District Central District Leeward District Hawaii District Maui District Kauai District

Gail Pottenger, Washington Middle School Don Tsuha, Moanalua Middle School Tracy Taylor, Kapolei Middle School June Sheffield, Pahoa High & Intermediate Cynthia Bennett, Baldwin High School Rene Relacion, Kapaa Middle School

The Polynesian Cultural Center awarded each 2005 District Teacher of the Year a check for $500; Oata, as State Teacher of the Year, received a check for $1000.   Oata also received an educational technology package valued at $14,300 from the SMARTer Kids Foundation.