HSTA, legislative leaders oppose governor’s plan to cut salaries for public workers
Legislative leaders joined HSTA educators in opposing Gov. David Ige's initial pay cut idea, and he said Wednesday “no decisions have been made yet.“
If approved by lawmakers, salary adjustments would bring $46M worth of raises
“This is a bold step to finally take care of this problem to make sure that every keiki in Hawaii has a qualified teacher,” said HSTA President Corey Rosenlee in testimony to the BOE Thursday.
DOE asks lawmakers to fund salary adjustments
Veteran teachers statewide would receive salary increases by moving up anywhere from one to five steps, gaining millions of dollars worth of salary increases if lawmakers approve a proposal from the state schools superintendent.
BOE approves $14.7 million in shortage differentials to start next month
DOE, BOE leaders commit to a multi-phased approach to help end the teacher shortage crisis.
Millions worth of differentials make up first phase of plan to end teacher shortage crisis
The proposals to address compression, create shortage differentials for SpEd and Hawaiian language immersion educators and expand hard-to-staff bonuses are a positive step forward in the HSTA's five-year plan to end the statewide teacher shortage crisis.
Increasing hard-to-staff bonuses would ease Hawaii’s teacher shortage crisis
The HSTA suggests significantly boosting the dollar amounts bonuses each year at locations plagued by a high percentage of unlicensed teachers, in geographically isolated complexes and where the combination of vacancies and emergency hires makes up more than 10 percent of the teaching force.
Teacher shortage crisis forces principals to hire Hawaiian immersion teachers who don’t speak Hawaiian
Being a Hawaiian immersion teacher is "more than just a job, it is a mission," say those devoted to the field, which requires huge amounts of extra work creating and implementing curricula in the Hawaiian language that's not readily available.
SpEd teachers say more prep time, pay would help ease special ed teacher shortage
The National Council on Teacher Quality reports at least 35 of the major school districts across the country already offer SpEd teachers a financial bonus of some kind, ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 a year. Hawaii offers no pay differential for SpEd teachers.
New DOE AC policy will bring relief to many hot classrooms
The Department of Education is making it easier and significantly less expensive to install classroom air conditioning.