Hazard pay proposal also remains alive at Legislature
Posted: February 12, 2026
Key state Senate and House committees have advanced proposals to establish annual step salary increases for public and charter school teachers, salary hikes that are already written into the Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association’s contract but have just never been funded and are the norm in most school districts across the country.
The Senate Education and Labor Committees on Friday approved SB 2391 with technical amendments suggested by the State Attorney General’s office. The proposal will next be considered by the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
In written testimony, J.N. Musto, the chief negotiator of the state’s Office of Collective Bargaining, said his department “must respectfully oppose this measure.”
Musto is the former executive director of the University of Hawai’i Professional Assembly, the union that represents university and community college faculty. He’s also a former member of the three-person Hawai’i Labor Relations Board, the state agency that enforces labor laws and regulates collective bargaining for public employees.
“Wage, hours and other terms and conditions of employment are subject to negotiations as provided in Hawaiʻi Revised Statutes, 89-9,” Musto wrote in his testimony.
But in testimony before the joint committee meeting on Friday, HSTA President Osa Tui, Jr., pointed out that the union’s collective bargaining agreement already says the following:
The parties recognize that annual incremental step movements are a viable recruiting and retention tool. Teachers who are not at the top of the salary schedule and who have effective evaluations shall move to the next highest step of the corresponding class at the beginning of each school year. Annual incremental step movements are subject to funding.
“So that is already bargained language. So to say that this violates collective bargaining is ridiculous,” Tui told senators Friday.
“SB 2391 establishes the annual step increases that mirror this negotiated agreement. It provides the stability and predictability educators need to remain in the classroom by ensuring salary progression is a consistent part of their professional career,” Tui said in written testimony to the two committees.
“I will also say that you folks asked for, and we had a study conducted on (teacher) salaries, and the salary study basically said that in jurisdictions where they have annual salary step movement, things are better. So we appreciate your consideration of this model,” Tui added.
The in-depth, independent study of Hawaiʻi’s teacher compensation system, completed last fall, recommended that the employer consider automatic step increases for teachers.
“Automatic step progression is the norm across most states and is strongly linked to teacher expectations of fairness. Hawaiʻi’s negotiated step movement creates confusion and unpredictability. A shift to automatic steps would reinforce trust and potentially improve attrition,” the study found.
Currently, step salary increases for teachers can only be bargained at the negotiating table.
SB 2391’s companion bill in the state House, HB 1890, is also making progress, having passed the House Education Committee on Feb. 3 and the House Labor Committee on Thursday. It awaits scheduling before the House Finance Committee.
State Schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi submitted written testimony that said, “The department appreciates the Legislature’s continued efforts to improve the Department’s ability to attract and retain quality employees to support Hawaii’s K-12 public schools. Providing automatic step increases in teacher salaries for each year of satisfactory service completed has the potential to be a powerful tool to achieve that goal.”
Teacher testimony: automatic steps ‘send a clear message that Hawaiʻi values educators’
Kori Harvey Oros, a third-grade teacher at Kīpapa Elementary and HSTA’s Central Chapter president, said, “From a fiscal standpoint, retaining experienced teachers through step increases is more cost-effective than constant recruitment and training of new hires. Stability saves money and improves outcomes.”
“Most importantly, automatic step increases send a clear message that Hawaiʻi values educators as professionals and views teaching as a sustainable career, not temporary or expendable labor,” she said in written testimony.
John Fitzpatrick teaches Marine Science, Biology, and AP Biology at Kūlanihākoʻi High on Maui.
Fitzpatrick submitted testimony explaining the long journey teachers currently face to reach the top of the pay scale in the islands.
“Our salary schedule is designed with 12 steps to reach the top. Logically, a career teacher should reach the top in 12 years. However, because we historically receive step increases only every other year, it takes a teacher 24 years to reach the top, and nearly 30 years to maximize retirement. This wage compression demoralizes experienced teachers,” wrote Fitzpatrick, who is an HSTA board member representing educators in its Maui Chapter.
He previously served as a head faculty representative at Maui Waena Intermediate and recalled mentoring two teachers recruited from Chicago.
“They were shocked to learn we did not have annual step increases, which were standard back home. Both have since moved back to the mainland. We are competing in a national market; when we cannot promise consistent salary growth, we lose talent to the mainland or private schools,” Fitzpatrick said.
“Just this year, my fellow science teacher left two weeks into the school year for Kamehameha Schools to secure better pay. I had to scramble to cover his AP Biology classes so those students wouldn’t be left with a long-term substitute or emergency hire for the entire year,” Fitzpatrick added.
Paul McDonnell, a teacher at the Hawaiʻi School for the Deaf and the Blind, wrote, “Automatic step increases are the norm across the country and are a basic expectation for teachers entering the profession. In Hawaiʻi, however, step movement is uncertain, negotiated irregularly, and dependent on funding decisions that are often beyond an individual educator’s control. This unpredictability creates confusion, undermines morale, and directly contributes to the state’s ongoing recruitment and retention crisis.”
“Automatic step progression is not a bonus or reward—it is a foundational structure that recognizes experience, promotes fairness, and builds trust in the system. Teachers should be able to plan their financial futures with reasonable certainty, especially in one of the most expensive states in the country. When step increases must be bargained year after year, it creates instability that discourages talented educators from staying in Hawaiʻi long term,” McDonnell said.
In his written testimony, Michael Press, a teacher with HIDOE’s Office of Curriculum and Instructional Design, wrote, “By creating a predictable, annual step, SB 2391 strengthens the existing salary structure, reinforces trust in the compensation system, and supports teacher retention, an urgent need given that nearly 40% of teachers surveyed expect to leave the classroom within three years.”
Press serves on HSTA’s Board of Directors, representing its Honolulu Chapter.
Pandemic teacher hazard pay measure advances
On Friday, the Senate Consumer Protection and Hawaiian Affairs Committees passed a proposal that would provide funding allowing for the creation of a Teacher Temporary Hazard Pay Special Fund to honor educators who served students across the state during the pandemic.
Legislation introduced in January proposes a total bonus of $20,000 for eligible members of Bargaining Unit 05 who were employed at any time between March 4, 2020, and March 25, 2022.
To fund these bonuses without straining the state’s existing budget, the legislation introduces a strategic revenue generator by reforming the General Excise Tax (GET) on the purchase of rental motor vehicles. Currently, the sale of vehicles to rental companies is treated as a wholesale transaction, which allows a 0.5% tax rate. This bill closes that loophole by excluding such sales from the wholesale classification, ensuring these large-scale corporate purchases are subject to the standard retail rate of 4.712%.
Similar loopholes have been closed in other states.
Testifying before the House Transportation Committee on a companion House proposal Tuesday, ʻIlima Intermediate teacher and HSTA Teacher Lobbyist Sarah Milianta-Laffin said, “Closing this tax loophole will provide $70 to $80 million to the state from visitors, making this teacher special fund, funding hazard pay for four years. The extra funds go back to the state, and that benefits everybody.”
During the pandemic, Milianta-Laffin taught middle schoolers computer science at ʻIlima. In her class of 30 students, half were in person and half were online, she said.
“It was something I had never done before. I had no training. I had no textbooks. I had no materials to do this. And I did it all from scratch. I had to constantly sanitize the room. I was a contact tracer. When one of my students got COVID, I had to figure out who they were sitting by, and I had to deliver that news to families. I got COVID twice. I was also undergoing fertility treatments at the time, and if you know how those work, I actually had to cancel a cycle. And I put off parenthood till after the pandemic so that I could focus on that and not worry about what we were dealing with,” Milianta-Laffin said.
“I had an amazing educational assistant at that time. We call them EAs. I wrote our lesson plans, gathered our materials. I assigned our grades, and she was my co-teacher. We were in the same school, same classroom, same students, same risk to our health and safety. She was compensated with hazard pay, and I’m not mad about that. It’s absolutely great that our union siblings got compensated,” she testified, referring to educational assistants represented by another public union, the Hawaiʻi Government Employees Association, who received pandemic hazard pay.
“And also, I’m glad that the Department of Education decided to retroactively compensate office workers at the Department of Education with hazard pay, even though teachers have not gotten it. So, I’m here today asking for teachers to be honored for a service to the state,” Milianta-Laffin added.
In December of 2024, the Board of Education approved $20,000 and $10,000 COVID-19 bonuses for 247 HIDOE employees who are excluded from collective bargaining agreements. Unlike classroom teachers, most of those HIDOE employees who received COVID bonuses did not work directly with students during the pandemic; instead, they worked from their homes or offices, or in other areas where health risks were much lower than in classrooms.
Gov. Josh Green submitted testimony on the House pandemic pay proposal in which he said his office “supports the concept of leveraging these revenues to provide additional financial support for teachers and recognizes the value of establishing a stable funding stream linked to this tax adjustment. Consideration of how these funds are utilized will help ensure they contribute to long-term workforce stability and positive outcomes for students and schools statewide.”
The House transportation panel approved the measure with amendments on Tuesday.