MILILANI, Hawaii — It was a Friday, and Maria Marte, an administrator for an online college that caters to members of the military, should have been at her office at a nearby Army hospital. Her daughters, Nira, 11, and Sonia, 9, should have been in school.
Instead, Ms. Marte was sitting with a laptop in the dining room of her home in this neatly manicured suburb of Honolulu. “Did you already send your registration in?” she asked a client on the phone, trying to speak above the peals of laughter coming from the backyard, where the girls were having a water-balloon fight with some friends.
It was the 17th, and last, Furlough Friday of the year, the end of a cost-cutting experiment that closed schools across the state, outraging parents and throwing a wrench into that most delicate of balances for families with children: the weekly routine
I am confused in so many ways. Maria is on her laptop, an expert in on line education, yet the article hints that her children would be better off in a classroom. I think the children would get a better education by spending three days in the classroom, and two days with mom and the laptop; at home. And why would an administrator for on line college need an office? And why was the office in a hospital? It seems clear the authors also got the irony.
