HIDOE settles HSTA paycheck delay grievance

The Hawaiʻi State Department of Education has agreed to conduct an audit and pay 500 teachers hundreds of dollars each for the financial harm they suffered because of paycheck delays, settling a grievance brought by the Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association.

HSTA President Osa Tui said, “While we appreciate the $2,000 placeholder checks which were provided to affected educators, there’s no doubt that serious harm was done to many of them who have every right to be compensated in a timely manner. Ultimately, this should never happen again and we’re pleased to have language in place which ensures an outside entity will examine the process and make recommendations to address this internal failure.”

The HSTA and HIDOE met earlier this week and were able to successfully agree to address the harm caused to teachers who failed to receive timely paychecks on Aug. 20 and Sept. 5.

First, all teachers affected should see a paycheck Friday, Sept. 20, and they should be paid any previously owed salary amounts by that date.

Second, the HIDOE acknowledged the harm caused by the delay by agreeing to make payments for damages to teachers who worked full pay periods and went unpaid for working those pay periods. Generally, if you work from the first working day of the month through to the 15th, you should expect to be paid on the 20th. If you work from the 16th of the month through the end of the month, you should expect to be paid on the fifth of the following month.

The HIDOE will pay $400 to educators who were not appropriately paid either their Aug. 20 or Sept. 5 paycheck and $800 for those who were denied both their Aug. 20 and Sept. 5 paychecks. The payments will address late fees, interest payments, as well as time and effort expended by educators to address their missed paycheck(s).

Based on member requests, the HSTA was also able to successfully secure a 60-day extension for teachers to repay the $2,000 placeholder checks issued earlier to educators who were not paid on time. Repayments will now be due Nov. 30 and recipients of those checks may be able to elect to pay in installments rather than as a single lump sum pending a determination of the feasibility of doing so by the HIDOE.

The department will also work with the HSTA to develop a FAQ sheet and publish a memo addressing questions and appropriate steps to be taken related to Employee Union Trust Fund (EUTF) and Island Flex contributions.

The HIDOE has also committed, pending approval of the state Attorney General’s office, to provide the same options and remedies listed above to approximately 100 Hawaiʻi public charter school teachers impacted by the pay delay.

To fully identify the issues that led to this mishap, the HIDOE agreed to HSTA’s request to retain an independent entity to conduct an internal audit of HIDOE procedures related to pre-boarding and paycheck distribution. Pre-boarding includes the completion of criminal background checks, submission of valid teaching credentials, and generating a personnel action form (Form 5). Once the external auditor’s recommendations are rendered, and necessary actions are identified, the department will develop an implementation plan, and the superintendent will implement the necessary changes to prevent a future situation in which employees are not paid in a timely manner.

Lastly, in an effort to prevent further financial strain on our members, the HSTA will waive HSTA member dues deductions for the affected paychecks. Pending legal approval, HIDOE has committed to providing $5,000 toward Bargaining Unit 05 professional development offerings through the Hawaiʻi Foundation for Educators, HSTA’s nonprofit organization.

Next, the HSTA and HIDOE will meet in the coming days to finalize and sign the settlement agreement. In addition, the union will work through the list of affected teachers to verify their qualifications for payments and will reach out to those teachers accordingly. Should teachers have questions, please reachout to your individual UniServ Director. If you are unsure of who your UniServ Director is, please use our contact form.

Educators tell BOE of ‘catastrophic” consequences from paycheck fiasco

Educators from around the state submitted testimony to the Board of Education explaining the brutal effects of the paycheck delays in advance of the BOE’s Thursday afternoon meeting during which Superintendent Keith Hayashi is scheduled to brief the board about the paycheck situation.

“The ramifications of this issue have been nothing short of catastrophic for me,” said Jashua Walker, a teacher at Kawananakoa Middle School.

“When my paycheck did not arrive on time, I was immediately hit with an overdraft fee due to insufficient funds after a dental procedure. This unexpected charge jeopardized my ability to cover essential expenses, including credit card and loan payments. As a result, my credit score plummeted by nearly 80 points, severely impacting my financial stability and future creditworthiness,” he wrote.

“The inability to receive my paycheck on time meant that I could not afford basic necessities, such as a bus pass. Consequently, I was forced to walk 77 miles over eleven days from Kaimuki to upper Nuuanu to get to work. This dangerous, physically exhausting and demoralizing experience was a direct result of the delayed paycheck,” Walker added.

Walker also accrued significant late fees on his utility bills due to his inability to make timely payments.

“My bank accounts were at risk of closure due to overdraft fees, further compounding my stress and financial instability. The Department of Education’s (DOE) response to this situation has been profoundly inadequate. The use of vague language like ‘experiencing a delay’ is misleading and dismissive of the real, tangible harm caused. What we endured was not a mere inconvenience; it was gross negligence and incompetence,” Walker said.

Special education teacher Lynn Zinsius from Ka’ōhao Public Charter School in Kailua, was also affected by the paycheck delay.

“It is unacceptable that there was no communication to employees until days after (Aug. 20, the first paycheck she didn’t receive) and that the HSTA needed to be informed by members and not DOE directly. The stress of this situation and time that has gone into researching and trying to get to the bottom of this was an unnecessary burden. This energy should have been used towards our students. The DOE and the superintendent need to do better for faculty and students,” Zinsius wrote in testimony to BOE members.

A teacher who asked to remain anonymous told the HSTA, “My paycheck delay has added much stress to my life and the lives of my family members. It is costing my family both emotionally and financially. My sonʻs college tuition payment had to be put on a credit card, adding both a fee and interest to an already large payment.”

“We are underpaid and undervalued and this should have been taken care of immediately. How are we still in this position weeks and weeks into the school year?” the teacher added.

Hayashi: ‘We deeply regret the hardship that this has caused’

At Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, Schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi told board members, “We truly understand how crucial timely pay is, and we deeply regret the hardship that this has caused.”

“This experience has been a learning opportunity, and we are committed to improving our processes moving forward. We are taking steps to engage an independent entity to conduct a thorough internal audit of our onboarding and paycheck distribution procedures,” Hayashi added.

Board members questioned top HIDOE officials about how they will work on improving onboarding processes and communication with new hires.

BOE member Wesley Lo said, “The goal is to get people paid on time and I think that as part of the audit, I would hope that they look at the technology and the processes in between the state because that’s a very cumbersome process and it would be much better to have a payroll HR and a payment system all integrated. That would probably do that in an online onboarding type of system.”

Sean Bacon, HIDOE’s assistant superintendent in charge of the Office of Talent Management (OTM), responded to Lo’s concerns and said, “What we are seeing is many more applications than we’ve ever seen before (with a new online system) to really help out principals. It has increased the workload definitely for our staff, but then it becomes a paper-based process after that. And I think that’s where we’ve got to try to meld the two together here to figure out what we can do to try to take some of that burden off and get our teachers to pay in a timely manner.”

BOE member Kahele Dukelow said the department needs to be more proactive in planning to be sure that educators hired in the weeks before school starts are still paid on time.

“So we know it’s gonna happen because oftentimes people are hired late. So what can we put in place to make sure that, even though it’s not their real paycheck, you know what I mean? You cannot really ask people, even though we have in the state, all we do, all the time, to wait six weeks. I think we maybe do a better job of having something, you know some kind of process where if you start, you wait a month or you wait two weeks or whatever it is,” Dukelow said.

“Whose job is it to communicate to them? Is it the school? Is it OTM? How is that pay date communicated and is that part of some kind of agreement that they receive upon, like you start this day, you get paid this day, those kinds of things,” Dukelow added.

Bacon said, “We want to make sure that we are treating our employees with the utmost respect as they’re entering the department here, because I think recruitment and retention are two of the things that we’ve really been focusing on.”

The HSTA initiated the grievance process in late August, after HIDOE leaders were unable to explain what caused the delays, and repeatedly refused to turn over a list of affected teachers. The department gave HSTA a list of HIDOE teachers affected by the pay delay on Sept. 9.