HIDOE ‘appears to be caught off guard, despite months of time to prepare’
Posted: January 5, 2022
With the recent surge in omicron-variant COVID-19 cases in the islands, Hawaii public schools saw 1,600 staff absences Wednesday, the Hawaii State Department of Education (HIDOE) revealed in a press conference.
“Eight-hundred of our teachers statewide called out sick and stayed home today. We had an additional 800 teachers out for other various reasons. This means that 12% of our classroom teachers are out,” interim Schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi said Wednesday. “Schools are doing everything they can to cover classrooms with substitutes or by making other adjustments. There were about 400 unfilled substitute teacher requests, and that amounts to about a 76% fill rate. This is a reflection of what’s happening in our community.”
Hawaii State Teachers Association President Osa Tui, Jr. said the numbers came as a surprise, since HIDOE interim assistant superintendent Sean Bacon had told him a day prior that “as far as he knew, there was nothing out of the ordinary with regards to absences.
“We are very concerned that the department appears to be caught off guard, despite months of time to prepare,” Tui said. “The superintendent today asked for patience and understanding. How much more time do they need to prepare? When it comes to understanding, the omicron variant understands that it’s easy to take advantage when systems like the Hawaii Department of Education are not prepared.”
Hayashi maintained that he continues to meet with the Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA), Hawaii Government Employees Association (HGEA), and United Public Workers (UPW), the unions who represent public school employees, to discuss long-term plans regarding COVID-19 issues. However, HSTA President Tui said when the unions express concerns, HIDOE administrators “listen. They say thank you very much, and then we move on. They’re not necessarily addressing the concerns that we’re bringing to them, which is the problem.”
Tui said with omicron cases soaring, the department failed to provide a consistent plan for pivoting to distance learning with no preparation time for teachers to switch to online learning, should the need arise.
“It’s not like just flicking a switch and boom, we’re all online or we’re in some hybrid mode,” Tui said. “There needs to be time to prepare, and those are the kinds of things we’ve been asking the department to discuss that they refuse to sit down and negotiate with us.”
Hayashi said that schools have done “a really good job at helping to provide a safe, impressive environment for our students” using core COVID-19 mitigation strategies. However, to cover teacher absences, non-classroom teachers such as counselors, and even security guards, are pulled from their jobs to “babysit.”
Tui said in those cases, students are “just sitting in the cafeteria or in a room with an adult they’re watching over them. They’re not providing a lesson. They’re not doing anything educationally related. Unfortunately, unless there was some type of worksheet that could be handed out, there’s no learning going on.
“We’re worried about students not getting the education that they deserve, and teachers are doing everything they can to get students to where they need to be,” Tui said. “But there are so many things that are put onto teachers’ plates, and now having to help supervise other teachers’ classes or even just, with so many kids out, having to create lessons and the kids are coming in and going out… that makes things a little more scary for our teachers. It’s just very, very difficult.”