There is an effort afoot to give teachers in Hawaii a credit on their state income tax for money spent on students' class supplies.

The only thing we can contribute is that this is an initiative way past due.

Everybody in every state in the union knows that teachers have a drawerful of school supplies that they regularly hand out to students. The thing that compounds this burden on teachers in Hawaii is that they are vastly underpaid.

To briefly restate the argument we have made dozens of times, Hawaii's unique statewide school system funnels most of the educational dollar to a bureaucracy on Oahu. Our teachers - faced with the highest cost of living in the United States - exist on salaries that would challenge them to live in Mississippi and West Virginia. The bucks go to the bureaucrats.

Therefore, the least we can do for the folks trying to educate (and love) our children is give them a token tax break for the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars they pull out of their own pockets to make sure there are pencils and notepads to go around. They support our kids, we need to support them.

Please visit www.50000voters.org to sign a petition urging the Legislature to give our teachers a break on their state taxes for the dollars they spend on our kids.

Then call our federal legislators and let them know our teachers deserve a break on Uncle Sam's taxes, too.

Hawaii's teacher salaries are an embarrassment. We compound the embarrassment by expecting dedicated teachers to provide the tools of learning to our children within those bargain basement salaries.

* Editorials reflect the opinion of the publisher.