HSTA advocated for a memberʻs medical coverage to be restored within 2 days
Posted: June 9, 2026
Robert Fryer, a teacher at Wahiawa Middle, wrote this story about the Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association’s advocacy on behalf of his wife, Amanda Fryer, a student services coordinator at Dreamhouse ʻEwa Beach, a charter school.
Imagine this: You are a public educator, and you have a major, medically necessary surgery scheduled for early next week. You’ve done all the prep, you’ve secured your leave, and you are ready. Then, days before the procedure, you check your medical app and see a terrifying word next to your insurance status: Inactive.
This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. This just happened to my family.
Without any warning, my spouse—a special education teacher at a local charter school—had her state health benefits completely severed. When we frantically contacted EUTF, we uncovered something chilling. The school’s administration had explicitly told state benefit coordinators that her employment did not cover the summer months, which triggered the immediate termination of her medical coverage in May. They were attempting to silently strip away her benefits right before a major surgery.
But they made a critical miscalculation: they forgot that we are union strong, and they forgot about the paper trail.
When you are facing a massive bureaucracy and a ticking clock on a medical emergency, panic is the natural response. Instead, we got to work, and we immediately brought in our HSTA UniServ Director. That is when the entire landscape of the fight changed.
Here is how the union and HSTA’s master contract agreement saved our family from financial and medical disaster.
The paper trail is bulletproof
We immediately pulled her official state Form 5. It explicitly listed her contract end date as late July. The administration’s claim to EUTF was a direct contradiction of the state’s own personnel files.
The threat of the HLRB
We didn’t just ask nicely for a fix. Armed with the master agreement, we escalated the situation, confirming that this bad-faith action constituted a prohibited practice under the Hawaiʻi Labor Relations Board’s jurisdiction.
The union hammer
Our HSTA representatives did not hesitate. They immediately stepped between us and the administration, writing that this was an unacceptable “administrative error.” The union demanded an immediate, retroactive reinstatement of medical coverage to ensure absolutely zero break in service, and strictly mandated that no affected educators would incur out-of-pocket expenses due to the school’s deception.
Faced with undeniable proof of a Form 5, the union’s mobilization, and the threat of severe legal liability, the administration folded in less than 48 hours.
Late on a Friday afternoon, the school suddenly “found a resolution” and submitted the amended paperwork, citing an administrative error. They were forced to formally reinstate her benefits through the duration of the summer. The following Tuesday, the morning before her surgery, her medical app finally updated to that beautiful, stress-relieving word: Active.
The key takeaways
If you take anything away from our nightmare, let it be this: Know your contract, save your Form 5, and never fight an administration alone. When an employer tries to bend the rules, they are banking on you being too exhausted or too intimidated to fight back. The HSTA is the great equalizer. They took a terrifying medical and financial crisis and turned it into a hard-fought victory.
To our union reps who stood in the gap for us when it mattered most: Mahalo.