Green: ‘We still don’t pay teachers enough. We’re gonna have to do much better on that’

Green told the audience of more than 200 HSTA school-level leaders and staff at the Hawaii Convention Center that there are many teachers in his family across the country. Green’s father served as a public school teacher in New York state, and his wife Jaime’s family in Hawaii has several teachers, vice-principals, and educators, including some working in Hawaiian language immersion schools.

Green, an emergency department physician, praised teachers for their work during the pandemic.

“It’s always a difficult job to be a teacher to be a leader for young people. And now to be there in front of them when they are carrying a virus along with everybody else and sneezing and coughing on you,” he said.

“I recognize that and I want to thank you for keeping it together, for keeping it together for our keiki when things were so tough, we just did not know. We didn’t know what we were dealing with on so many days,” Green added.

“We still don’t pay teachers enough. We’re gonna have to do much better on that,” he told the volunteer teacher leaders, prompting a strong round of applause.

View photo album: Lt. Gov. Josh Green addresses teachers at HSTA’s 2022 Start of Year Conference

Referring to fixing teacher salary compression that has plagued many senior educators, Green said, “We’re still sorting our way through the disparities when you’ve had so much experience that maybe didn’t get that step or there was an impression that didn’t quite make it up there. So we have to sort through that because if we pay teachers, right, and you are feeling valued and welcomed as professionals, you will be happier in your jobs although I see a lot of happy teachers because I think teachers love to take care of the education of the children in our state.”

As a two-year-old, Green was diagnosed as being deaf and after surgeries to correct his hearing, he needed a lot of special attention to catch him up to his peers.

“Because you lose those first couple of years, you lose all the early language skills, you lose your ability to be attentive, you really lose a lot,” Green said.

He said his parents chose to put him “in public schools immediately to find teachers that could rally me to find an education that would get me caught up. And it was not simple.”

“I tell you this story, because you will know that when I become governor with your help, I will focus on early development, I will focus on education, I will focus on supporting our public school teachers. Because all of these teachers really made all the difference in my life. They never, ever stopped sacrificing for me and my classmates,” Green added.

He recalled several teachers who had lasting impacts on him at various public schools, including Quaker Valley High outside of Pittsburgh, educators he called “wonderful mentors.”

“I know from my experiences how you are inspiring other people to go and move forward. And if I had not had those good teachers, I would not have ultimately been able to pursue medicine. Because it was that conflict, I had that inability to hear, the healing I got in my public schools that got me ultimately interested in health care. So I became a doctor,” Green said.

As a governor candidate, he wants to propose ideas focusing on bringing new resources here for what Hawaii needs.

Among them: a climate impact fee, so the state has “resources for our keiki, for climate change, for our parks, for all these things. And we have resources that don’t tax our system.”

“So when you come to the Legislature, it’s not ‘Sorry, we won’t have resources. Wait till next year, wait till next year.’ It’s time that we look at the fundamentals that we educate children when they have need, that we support the schools and our teachers, that when children have literacy challenges in that early phase of life, that we maybe give you an extra teacher, if at all possible in the classroom, where it’s needed,” Green added.

Green also said, “We’ll make priorities of housing, you can be sure that housing has to be in my mind, one of our very top priorities because why don’t we have enough teachers every year? Because they can’t afford housing. Why don’t we have nurses every year? Because they can’t afford housing.”

The HSTA recommends Green’s candidacy for governor and that of his running mate, State Rep. Sylvia Luke for lieutenant governor. Both candidates soundly defeated their opponents in the Aug. 13 primary election.