An across-the-board increase will be reflected in Aug. 20 paychecks
Posted: July 31, 2026
Public and charter school teachers will benefit from a 3.5% across-the-board pay raise at the start of the 2026–2027 school year under the current Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association contract.
HSTA’s salary calculator allows educators to enter their step and class to see their pay rates for this school year. See Exhibits E and EE on pages 81 and 82 of the HSTA contract for those salary schedules.
Need to find your class and step? Toward the end of every school year, HIDOE sends a link to each teacher’s HIDOE email address containing their personnel action form (Form 5) for the next school year, along with all their previous Form 5s for reference. The link does not expire. Charter school teachers may receive their annual personnel notification via other means.
Ten-month teachers will see the increase reflected in their Aug. 20 paychecks. This means 12-month and multi-track teachers should have seen the increase starting in their July 20 paychecks.
Under the contract, this is the second school year when we celebrate a significant victory for our most experienced educators, since the salary schedule has been amended to create a Class VIII, with a 4% raise higher than Class VII. As of last fall, more than 4,500 teachers were at Class VII and began moving up to Class VIII last school year.
Effective the first working day of last school year (2025-2026), teachers on Steps 5 through 14A of the salary schedules moved up one step within their classification. A step increase is equivalent to a 3% salary hike, except for those moving from 14A to the last step, 14B, which results in a 6% pay raise.
Regular step movements acknowledge the increased skill, competence, and professional knowledge that come with experience. They also prevent salary compression, which, if not regularly bargained, results in swaths of employees with varying years of service who are not at the top of the pay scale earning similar pay.
Gov. Josh Green signed a key bill into law July 13 that ensures Hawaiʻi public and charter school teachers receive annual step pay increases once the necessary bargaining process is completed for implementation. After those negotiations, the Legislature will need to allocate funding for those step increases in the next calendar year.
Annual step increases are the norm in most other school districts across the country for decades and have been written into HSTA’s contract for years, but have just never been funded.
An in-depth, independent study of Hawaiʻi’s teacher compensation system, completed last fall, recommended that the employer consider funding automatic step increases for teachers.
HSTA President Osa Tui, Jr. said, “We look forward to engaging in the necessary negotiations authorized by this bill to now make annual salary step increases a reality.”
Any annual increment or step movement in the 2027-2028 school year and beyond will require legislative funding. As updates become available, HSTA will share the latest information with members of Bargaining Unit 05.
This is the last year of the four-year contract reached in April 2023, an agreement overwhelmingly approved by HSTA members and subsequently funded by the state Legislature that same month.