He also approved a bill to protect educators from harassment
Posted: July 13, 2026
Gov. Josh Green signed bills into law Monday that ensure Hawaiʻi public and charter school teachers receive annual step pay increases and protect education workers from harassment and threats.
A step increase is equivalent to a 3% salary hike, except for those moving from 14A to 14B and transitioning to the last step, which results in a 6% pay raise. Annual step increases are the norm in most other school districts across the country for decades and have been written into HSTA’s contract for years, but have just never been funded.
Act 233 passed both houses of the Legislature without funding for school year 2026-2027.
Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association President Osa Tui, Jr. said, “We look forward to engaging in the necessary negotiations authorized by this bill to now make annual salary step increases a reality.”
HSTA will work with the employer regarding the next actions needed to implement Act 233. The current contract, which expires June 30, 2027, calls for a 3.5% across-the-board raise and no step movements in school year 2026-2027.
Any annual increment or step movement in the 2027-2028 school year will require legislative funding. As updates become available, HSTA will share the latest information with members of Bargaining Unit 05.
At a bill signing ceremony in his office on Monday, Green told reporters, “When you can show that we reward that experience, and the superintendent has shared this with me many times, keeping people in the classroom, we don’t have to go out and retrain people. And also having an experienced teacher with 18, 20, 22 more years. They are teachers who have had all of that experience to help our kids.”
“If fewer teachers retire, we don’t have to scramble quite so hard to fill that gap, because there’s always going to be openings. So we want very experienced teachers,” Green added.
Speaking in the governor’s office before Green signed the bills, Tui, the HSTA president, noted the steps bill has been a multi-year effort since it was first introduced in 2016.
“It simply asks to put Hawaiʻi in line with school districts across the country where step increases on the salary schedule happen annually,” Tui said.
“Our beloved HSTA teacher lobbyist, Sarah ʻMiliʻ Milianta-Laffin, who helped see this bill through to completion, would have loved to have been here today. Sadly, after ten years with the Hawaiʻi Department of Education, she relocated two weeks ago to Indianapolis, where the school district salary schedule aligns with years of service, which gave her an instant $25,000 salary increase,” Tui said.
“When people wonder why Hawaiʻi struggles to recruit and retain educators, lagging compensation is a major reason why! Our compensation needs to be competitive to attract and retain the best teachers for our keiki,” Tui added.
State Senate Education Committee Chair Donna Mercado Kim said, “This bill sends an important and loud message to our teachers. What this bill says is that we recognize you and your value as teachers. We appreciate your commitment, and we support you.”
“We need to send that message to our teachers, and that supporting our teachers is not an expense. It’s an investment. It’s an investment in our children. It’s an investment in our communities throughout the island,” Kim added.
An in-depth, independent study of Hawaiʻi’s teacher compensation system, completed last fall, recommended that the employer consider funding automatic step increases for teachers.
HSTA’s salary calculator allows educators to enter their step and class to see their pay rates for the coming school year, when most Bargaining Unit 05 members will receive a 3.5% across-the-board pay hike (except for those who moved from 14A to 14B this year, who will receive a step valued at 6%).
Need to find your class and step? Toward the end of every school year, HIDOE sends a link to each teacher’s HIDOE email address containing their personnel action form (Form 5) for the next school year, along with all their previous Form 5s for reference. The link does not expire.
HSTA’s salary loss calculator allows our members to see how much money they would lose over a 25-year career without guaranteed annual step pay increases.
What about those already on the top salary step?
Since the legislative conference committee passed the automatic steps bill in May, HSTA has heard from numerous members who are already at the highest pay step – Step 14B.
“I would also like to know how there will be compensation for teachers on Step 14B who were compressed for years in pay because there were not automatic step increases for years,” wrote one teacher on Facebook.
In response, Tui, HSTA’s president, explained, “We have done all we can do legislatively with regard to salary steps. Now we have to pivot to the bargaining table, which is the appropriate venue to address the thousands of experienced educators who are already on the top step.”
HSTA’s four-year contract expires on June 30, 2027, and negotiations on a new agreement will begin this fall.
Under HSTA’s current contract, the 2025-2026 school year brought a significant victory for our most experienced educators, as the salary schedule was amended to create a Class VIII with a 4% raise above Class VII. More than 4,500 teachers at Class VII began moving to Class VIII last fall.
“The establishment of Class VIII was a significant win that our members have been asking for for so many years,” Tui added.
After years of lobbying by HSTA, state lawmakers in 2022 approved long-awaited pay increases for thousands of educators whose salaries had been compressed during hard economic times. That resulted in about 72% of the members of Bargaining Unit 05, roughly 9,200 educators, seeing their annual pay jump anywhere from $1,500 to $18,000. The average teacher affected by the compression pay adjustments saw their salary rise by about $6,000 per year, with payments beginning in November of 2022.
Some teachers moved up several pay steps, and hundreds of senior teachers moved to the top salary step, 14B, in 2022 as part of that one-time salary adjustment.
In the meantime, HSTA continues its efforts to resolve compression issues affecting more than 2,200 island educators who weren’t properly credited for teaching outside Hawaiʻi’s public school system.
Green also signed a bill to protect educators from harassment by parents, others
The governor Monday also signed into a law a bill that will address the rising problem of educational employees facing harassment from parents and other members of the public.
The educator safety proposal allows the state Attorney General to help educational employees who have been subjected to harassment or intentional bodily injury in obtaining a temporary restraining order (TRO).
Previously, the Hawaiʻi State Department of Education (HIDOE) said employees needed to obtain that legal help on their own. The state AG’s office is currently developing a pilot program to help state agencies with TROs on behalf of their employees. The AG will identify private attorneys available to assist state employees with TROs and reimburse state agencies for these services.
The bill also requires schools to report and address harassment, and clarifies and elevates penalties for harassment and intentional bodily injury to educational employees.
Tui, the president of the teachers’ union, said, “Educational workers want to feel that they’ll have the support of their employer to better protect themselves from outside harassers and this law will go a long way towards that including the development of emergency safety plans, working with law enforcement, assisting with legal actions, and providing paid leave to attend court proceedings.”
State House Education Chair Justin Woodson told reporters at the signing ceremony that “These two measures together reinforce our commitment to Hawaii’s education workforce and to the educators who dedicate their lives to helping our keiki thrive. Our educators deserve to be valued. They deserve to be supported, and they deserve to be protected.”
Green said, “Our students and our teachers deserve to have a safe place, and they have a lot of work to do. It is hard to educate kids now. There’s distractions everywhere. The last distraction we should ever have is one of violence.”
Kim added: “Every educational worker deserves a safe and respectful, supportive workplace so that they can focus on teaching our kids and helping our students succeed.”
Retired Kalihi Uka Elementary teacher and former HSTA Honolulu Chapter President Inga Park Okuna provided American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation of Monday’s ceremony in the governor’s office.