Teacher pay bills advance in key House committee

Measures that would pay teachers based on their years of service, bring permanent funding for shortage differentials, and restore funding for job-embedded educator professional development passed the state House Education Committee with no objections or reservations Thursday, following their approval by the full Senate earlier this month.

The bills will next be considered by two other House committees, Labor & Tourism as well as Finance.

Hundreds of pages of testimony favor ending salary compression

The committee received about 225 pages of written testimony on the bill that would fix salary compression, the great majority of it in favor of the proposal.

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.

About 8,700 of Hawaii’s 13,500 public and charter school teachers would have their annual salaries adjusted anywhere from $7,700 to $26,000 under SB2819, depending on their years of service. Read more about the proposal here.

Laura Burton, a teacher at Kapaa Elementary on Kauai, wrote in her testimony, “My sister-in-law in California, with the same number of years teaching, earns $40,000 more per year in a similarly expensive location. It is time Hawaii too, provides annual pay raises to their teachers, providing them a living wage.”

Kim Link, who teaches at Kualapuu Elementary public charter school on Molokai, wrote in her testimony, “Here is one example of compression. I have been teaching 23 years and a coworker has been teaching five years. We make almost the same amount of money. I came to Hawaii 18 years ago with a master’s degree and my coworker just finished her master’s degree after teaching four full years.”

Waikiki Elementary teacher Tammy Holt wrote in her testimony, “I have heard the frustration of countless veteran teachers proclaiming that they are done with the teaching profession if the issues of salary compensation and compression are not fixed.

“If we lose those valuable veteran teachers, we lose invaluable innate knowledge of curriculum. We lose historians of our community, we lose trusted teachers who know and understand the families they serve, and most importantly, our children lose a trusted adult outside of the family nucleus,” Holt said.

During his testimony before House members Thursday, HSTA President Osa Tui, Jr. said, “Without our salary schedule being tied to years of service as is done in many jurisdictions, we’ve had spans of years where incoming teachers were placed at the same salary step as those with a number of years of service already served.”

“Seeing no hope for ever reaching their career salary as we see with teachers who have over 30 years of service without being there (on the top salary step), teachers are saying ‘I’m going as soon as I can do so,’” Tui told lawmakers.

“Losing more and more of these experienced teachers will be devastating for our keiki. Every teacher we lose is one more that needs to be recruited and it’s already becoming more and more difficult to recruit new hires to the teaching profession,” Tui added.

HSTA answers state chief negotiator’s concerns

Ryker Wada, the state’s chief negotiator and director of the state Department of Human Resources Development (DHRD), raised objections to the compression and shortage differential bills.

Wada’s written testimony said the Office of Collective Bargaining (OCB) “believes this measure is premature. Enacting legislation to appropriate funds for a single bargaining unit on salary adjustments yet to be negotiated significantly diminishes the employer’s ability to collectively bargain on the compensation of not only teachers but all public sector employees.”

Tui responded to that criticism in his testimony, saying, “They’re essentially saying this is putting the cart before the horse. Without these types of measures, there is no cart and all we find behind the horse time and time again is a pile of horse poop.”

“Creative solutions are required to work through problems that continue to plague the system and will only worsen with time. All this bill is doing is to set aside funding – those in the Legislature are not the ones negotiating. Continually we hear ‘there is no money for that,’ but not solutions on how to come up with the money. HSTA has tried over and over to come up with solutions to find money but always hit brick walls. Now we see money to make things a reality and DHRD and OCB says it cannot be done because they didn’t come up with it themselves,” Tui said.

“With DHRD in opposition, the important question here is ‘What are they doing to address the continuing and worsening issue of teacher recruitment and retention so that Hawaii’s keiki have the qualified educators they deserve?’” Tui added.

Making shortage differentials permanent means HIDOE won’t have to ‘scrounge’ for funding

SB2820 would ensure continued funding for differentials for nearly 4,000 educators in chronic shortage areas, paying special education classroom teachers an extra $10,000, licensed Hawaiian immersion teachers $8,000 annually, and teachers in hard-to-staff schools amounts ranging from $3,000 to $8,000 a year.

In written testimony, Emiri Iwasaki, a special education teacher at Kanoelani Elementary on Oahu’s leeward coast, praised the differentials.

“I believe it has kept many special educators, like myself, from leaving the profession or switching to general education positions, and has allowed the most vulnerable student population to have highly qualified teachers, rather than (trying to learn) from emergency hires or substitute teachers,” wrote Iwasaki, who’s been teaching for 21 years.

Another teacher, Bryanna Pena of Waialae Elementary public charter school, says she moved to Hawaii in the past year to teach special education.

“This compensation has made it possible for myself and others like me to be able to stay in Hawaii. The teacher differentials are helping Hawaii get more qualified educators. Please continue with the differentials. The community will benefit from this,” Pena wrote.

Tui told House members that figures from the state education department show differentials have been successful.

“The special education shortage differential has seen certified special education teachers move from regular education back to special education and is also creating a demand in teacher prep programs for special education. The University of Hawaii College of Education, for example, is offering a new Bachelor of Education in Special Education degree starting this coming fall and other special education teacher prep programs have had waiting lists after the shortage differentials were first implemented,” Tui said.

“We appreciate that the Board of Education has made this a priority since 2020, but continuing to have to ask the BOE to make the DOE scrounge for these funds only keeps our educators on edge as they try to plan whether to stay or leave their position for the following year,” Tui added.

House Education Chair Justin Woodson (D, Kahului, Puunene) asked Tui to provide data proving differential pay has decreased staff shortages in key areas.

Tui reported that there has been a 16% increase in the number of licensed special education teachers, a 45% decrease in the number of non-licensed special education teachers, and a 43% decrease in the number of special education teacher position vacancies. Teaching position shortages in hard-to-staff and Hawaiian language immersion schools have also gone down since the differentials began in January of 2020, Tui added.

Hearing Tui’s answers, Woodson concluded that “this is a solution that’s yielding positive results.”

Waianae teacher: Paid PD allows teachers to improve their skills, boost student outcomes

Senate Bill 3209 SD1 would restore educators’ 21 hours of job-embedded professional development (PD), which was removed from the contract last year due to budget cuts, resulting in a 1.5% pay reduction for teachers.

The proposal would appropriate around $16 million to fund the restoration of professional development for educators and if signed into law, would take effect on July 1, the beginning of the state’s next fiscal year. Should the funding be restored, the HSTA will negotiate the terms of the 21 hours of PD with the employer.

Woodson said the committee received written testimony from about 75 people on the PD proposal, all in support.

Waianae Intermediate English teacher Phyllis Gurlen submitted written testimony that said the 21 hours of professional development “is beneficial to all teachers. This is one way teachers can improve their skills and, in turn, boost student outcomes.”

Angela Huntemer, who teaches at Kaaawa Elementary on Oahu’s windward side, wrote, “Please let’s have the paid 21 hours restored as a step to compensate for all the research, training and prep we do for our students.”

Speaking to lawmakers at the committee hearing, Tui said one of the ill effects of the pandemic “was the loss of 21-hours of job-embedded professional development that we’d seen since 2013. This resulted in our members taking home smaller paychecks and being left with less time to get important professional development completed.”

“Schools were using this time to get important work done like working on WASC accreditation reports and visitations or having deeper dives into data to help influence the direction that their schools should be taking,” Tui added.

Teacher pay bills garner community support thanks to teacher advocacy

Teachers in Leeward Chapter have won support from four Oahu neighborhood boards for increased teacher compensation in recent weeks. Neighborhood boards in Pearl City, Waipahu, ‘Ewa, Nānākuli-Mā’ili approved resolutions voicing their “full support of a robust and competitive teacher compensation package,” including salaries that are commensurate with educators’ years of service and experience as well as permanent funding of shortage differentials for special education, Hawaiian language immersion, and other hard-to-staff positions.

HSTA Leeward Chapter President Julie Reyes Oda, a teacher at Nānākuli High and Intermediate, spoke before each neighborhood board along with educators from nearby schools.

At the Pearl City board, Maile Yasui from Momilani Elementary, Christina Chan from Highlands Intermediate, and M. Kekoa Bay from Pearl City High testified. In Waipahu, Israel Chavez of Waipahu Intermediate spoke, along with Ryan Yoshizawa from Waipahu High and Bay from Pearl City High. At the ‘Ewa Neighborhood Board, Kari Handley from Lehua Elementary addressed board members and at the Nānākuli-Mā’ili board, Lani Alo-Chu, who teaches at Nānākuli High and Intermediate advocated for the resolution.

All three bills are 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 the governor’s signature.