The Senate Education committee unanimously passes measure to end salary compression
Posted: January 28, 2022
A proposal to pay Hawaii public school teachers based on their years of experience won unanimous approval from the state Senate Education Committee Friday.
Unlike many school districts in the country, Hawaii educators’ years of experience are not automatically taken into consideration to determine when they earn salary movements. Hawaii public school teachers only receive increased pay for years of service if those rates are negotiated with the state, which has rejected increases during economic downturns.
Hawaii State Teachers President Osa Tui, Jr., a statistics expert and former math teacher, created a heat map that shows how thousands of teachers with more than ten years of service are compressed or stuck in the middle of the salary schedule, which is why the problem is called compression.
About 8,700 of Hawaii’s 13,500 public and charter school teachers would have their salaries adjusted anywhere from $7,700 to $26,000 under the proposal, depending on their years of service.
Nearly 2,000 educators are trapped between salary steps 12 through 14A of HSTA’s salary schedule, meaning they haven’t reached 14B, the top step, even after serving as educators for anywhere from 24 through 32 years, Tui’s research found.
“On behalf of thousands of teachers, mahalo for taking up this important bill which addresses whole swaths of teachers who have been denied longevity salary step increases over the years,” Tui told senators Friday.
“After years of this problem not being addressed, many affected teachers have already or are beginning to qualify for retirement and see little reason to stick around. They love their students, but that is just not enough to make up for years of sacrifice. Every experienced teacher we can retain is one less we need to recruit,” Tui added.
“The current distribution of each level of the salary schedule is inconsistent and compressed, contributing to senior teachers leaving,” Tui said in written testimony to the committee.
Nimitz Elementary teacher Logan Okita asked senators to “please address our salary compression so that we can keep qualified teachers in our schools.”
“Teachers who I admired as a high schooler twenty years ago still have more to give to Hawaii’s keiki, but are ready to throw in the towel and retire because they can’t imagine reaching the top of the salary schedule after all of these years,” Okita added.
Lisa Morrison, an arts and communication teacher at Maui High, told senators, “It’s absolutely worth the money to pay teachers according to their years of service and expertise, because the reward is priceless and the payoff is lifelong.”
Hilo Intermediate social studies teacher Aaron Kubo said, “We need to pay educators better and place them where they deserve to be on the salary schedule, reflecting their years of experience.”
“If nothing is done, many educators are going to leave the profession either by retiring or because they can make more money for less work and stress elsewhere. And the students we serve will suffer as a result,” Kubo testified before senators Friday.
Interim Superintendent Keith Hayashi also supported the proposal, telling senators, “I strongly support our teachers and agree that they need to be appropriately compensated for the years they have dedicated to the department, our schools and especially our students.”
“The department is committed to working with HSTA to effectively address teacher compression issues to impact recruiting and retaining efforts positively,” Hayashi added.
Nearly 150 people submitted written testimony on the compression bill, all of them in favor of the proposal, according to Senate Education Committee Chair Michelle Kidani.
All five members of the committee voted to approve the proposal Friday and it will next go to the Senate’s Ways and Means Committee chaired by State Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz. Dela Cruz co-introduced the bill. He also sits on the Senate Education Committee and voted in favor of the proposal Friday.
SB2819: ‘Unfair pay scales have driven experienced senior teachers to either retire or leave the profession’
State Senate proposal SB2819 would fund an experimental modernization project “to address compensation equity issues and to make the necessary discretionary salary adjustments for approximately 8,700 experienced senior teachers by recognizing their professional service to the (Hawaii State) Department of Education through discretionary salary adjustments.”
Research indicates that competitive and equitable compensation correlates with greater success in recruiting and retaining qualified educators, the bill said.
“Yet, numerous studies have shown that Hawaii’s teacher salaries are the lowest in the nation when adjusted for the state’s high cost of living. The legislature also finds that teacher salaries are unequal when experienced senior teachers are aligned with less senior teachers in their placement within the existing salary schedules. Unfair pay scales have driven experienced senior teachers to either retire early or leave the profession, due to the perception that their experience and dedication to public education and the teaching profession will never be adequately valued and recognized,” SB2819 said.
The Senate bill was co-introduced by 17 senators including Kidani, the education chair; Senate Education Vice Chair Donna Mercado Kim; Dela Cruz, who chairs the Senate’s Ways and Means Committee and Senate Ways and Means Committee Vice Chair Gil Keith-Agaran.
A similar state House proposal, HB2359, has been introduced by House Speaker Scott Saiki and House Finance Chair Sylvia Luke.
Legislation is subject to amendment and change and the final outcome will not be clear unless and until lawmakers pass the bill in some form and it becomes law with or without Gov. David Ige’s signature.
SB2819 would set aside money to help end salary compression that would become available in the 2022-2023 fiscal year which starts July 1, 2022. The exact details need to be negotiated between the superintendent of education and the HSTA, according to the bill.
The measure calls for the superintendent and union to reach a memorandum of understanding to address compensation equity issues and make the necessary discretionary salary adjustments for about 8,700 “teachers whose current base salary does not reflect their years of professional service; provided that the moneys shall not be released until the memorandum of understanding is executed between the superintendent of education and the exclusive representative of collective bargaining unit (5).”
The bill also calls for funds to be appropriated to ensure teachers at charter schools are also paid for their years of service.
The last time a teacher compression bill was introduced was in January 2020, but those efforts stalled with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic shortly after the legislative session began.