Governor signs state budget with compression fix, shortage differentials monies

Gov. David Ige signed into law the state budget Thursday that includes more than $164 million to end salary compression for experienced educators, fund shortage differentials, and restore paid job-embedded professional development for all teachers.

The budget provides funding to:

• Increase the salaries of roughly 8,700 educators by anywhere from $7,700 to $26,000, depending on their years of experience, addressing those who have been stuck or compressed in the middle of the salary scale for years. Read more about compression here.
• Continue shortage differentials of between $3,000 and $10,000 a year for more than 4,000 special education classroom and Hawaiian language immersion teachers and those who teach at geographically hard-to-staff schools.
• Restore 21 hours of job-embedded professional development for all teachers, boosting their pay by nearly 1.5%.

Act 248, the state budget approved by the governor Thursday, calls for:

• $130 million to address compression via repricing and restoration of 21 hours of job-embedded professional development:
  • $121.7 million for HIDOE.
  • $8.3 million for charter schools.
• $34.5 million to address shortage differentials for teachers in hard-to-staff geographic areas, special education, and Hawaiian language immersion:
  • $32.5 million for HIDOE.
  • $2 million for charter schools.

“This is great news,” said Hawaii State Teachers Association President Osa Tui, Jr., who thanked HSTA members for sharing testimony and stories with legislators that helped them and the governor understand the need for these important measures.

“They heard our members loud and clear that paying educators for their experience, job-embedded professional development, and ensuring shortage differentials into the future helps students to succeed and thrive,” Tui said.

“For years, HSTA has tried to address the salary compression problem in bargaining with the state, but the answer was always that lawmakers needed to appropriate the funds to solve compression. We are so grateful to the governor and lawmakers for taking these crucial steps to help attract and retain experienced teachers,” Tui added.

While the HSTA has already had some preliminary discussions with the employer, now that the budget is signed into law, your HSTA Negotiations Team will begin supplemental bargaining with the employer to work out the details of getting these funds to bargaining unit members. Last month, the Hawaii Board of Education approved its representative to engage in supplemental bargaining.

It’s unclear how long negotiations with the employer will take to work out the reinstatement of 21 hours of job-embedded professional development as well as agreeing on the implementation details to fix salary compression, but the HSTA will push to ensure that any pay increases will be retroactive to the first working day of the new school year when the funding starts.

Members have many questions about whether they qualify, how much they will receive, and when they will see higher pay in their paychecks. As soon as implementation details become available, we will immediately share them with you.

With regards to shortage differentials, the Hawaii State Department of Education issued a memo last month announcing the continued implementation of shortage differentials for school year 2022–2023. Click here for more information.

Featured photo courtesy Office of the Governor.