Wil Okabe

While Wil Okabe was a football player at Waianae High School (class of 1970), or even when he was getting his degree to teach physical education, he probably figured exertions and strains would be part of his career landscape, but that they’d happen in the gym or on a ballfield someplace.

The rigors of a union leader — specifically, as president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association — probably wasn’t what he had in mind.

Now, after a stormy first year of contract battles with a new state administration, the clouds may be lifting a bit. In the past week there’s been an agreement over lengthening instructional time at 19 schools in a select "innovation zone" as part of a school-reform pilot project undertaken with a federal Race to the Top grant of $75 million.

"This is a positive thing for the students," said Okabe, 60. "It was needed in the zone areas, but it was also a win for the teachers to be compensated for the extra time."

The state Department of Education has been under considerable pressure to reach accord, given the warning from federal officials that progress under the grant has been too slow.

But the fight isn’t over yet. The HSTA plans to contest a Board of Education policy to require a new system of teacher evaluations, one based partly on student academic growth. That should be left strictly to collective bargaining talks to settle, Okabe said.

Several members of the Okabe clan — including his wife, a Keaau High School faculty member — are educators, and both of the couple’s kids went to public schools. Okabe believes teachers aren’t credited with all the work they do.

"I think teachers need that respect," he added, "so people understand that the teachers’ job isn’t only during the school day."

QUESTION: What’s the status of the contract challenge?

ANSWER: Right now we’re in the process of a listening tour, to listen to our members, to parameters of what they’d like to see in a contract. The governor has extended to us that he wanted us to give him a proposal. So we’re going to look at all that information that we have from our members. We’ve had about 6,000 responses to our emails.

Q: And  you’ve been going to different campuses?

A: I’ve visited schools. And what happened is we reached out to 80 percent of all our schools, by staff, by union leaders within their chapters, to go and ask questions and entertain questions from our members.

Q: This listening tour, how long is it going on?

A: We just went about two weeks, so right now we’re trying to get back to our teachers to give them some information of what we found.

Q: What have the teachers told you?

A: They looked at the evaluation piece; they want it to be clear and fair. And I think that’s one of the messages that we found, that they wanted basically the tools, in regard to the evaluation pieces.

Q: They wanted to know what tools would be used in evaluations?

A: Yeah, yeah. And that is something that the Department (of Education), and us, had an agreement that we would be working together to craft that message for the teachers. … We have an evaluation piece now from the Department of Education, which is in our contract, so this would be another way of doing evaluations, on multiple measures of student growth.

Q: Can you describe the system now being used? Classroom evaluations?

A: Observations, consultations with the principal. … I think the basic concern is that how are you going to evaluate a librarian, or counselor, or physical education teacher, or curriculum coordinator, or tech coordinator? All of these pieces are different in the sense of their evaluation process. So we’re going to be developing that with the department collaboratively, on how to assess those specific areas. But those particular tools were not developed yet. That was one of the things that was not clear, and that is one thing that we have to work on.

Q: Wasn’t this the major reason why the contract wasn’t ratified?

A: Let’s look at it like this: It is a democratic organization. And I don’t view that the vote was negative in any way. It’s an opportunity for the teachers to engage themselves to vote. It’s not a top-down situation; that’s why we have the members vote.

It (the HSTA) is a volunteer organization that involves teachers that volunteer to be leaders in their respective chapters. All of the board are classroom teachers. All of them. And every one of the board members, within the structure of the 12 chapters that we have, they have school-level leaders, who are teachers themselves who are called faculty representatives. They are all volunteers within the structure.

I believe that in this particular situation, the members have spoken in the sense that they want a clear and more fair opportunities to look at the evaluations. … If we had a lot of time to develop it … what do you think was the urgency?

Q: Race to the Top, right? Is it your sense the DOE wanted to get this done to satisfy the feds?

A: I think that it was a driving factor. There was a timeline, that it was going to be March 25 that the federal government’s coming down. Things that led up to that was that we received a letter from (U.S. Education Secretary) Arne Duncan, Sen. (Daniel) Inouye, because we have a master (labor) agreement, and the supplemental agreement would be for the Race to the Top.

Q: Do you think teachers feel it’s fundamentally unfair for them to be evaluated on the basis of student academic growth?

A: I think they do think it’s unfair. … But I think they want an opportunity to have it be fair and clear in regards of how they are going to be evaluated.

In regards to the student growth, as long as they know exactly how they’re going to be evaluated. … But there’s no clear measure, around the country; each of the states is trying to look at developing some kind of tool to be fair and effective.

Q: This is a kind of work in progress, you would say?

A: Yes.

Q: Would you agree that critics say the “bad teacher” never gets let go, which makes the public wanting reform?

A: Rightfully so. Teachers are parents, too. Teachers send their kids to public schools as well. Teachers do not want to be teaching next to a teacher that has challenges, OK? They don’t want that.

Because this is a teacher-run organization, what we are looking at is due process. … We’ve had many, many, many tenured teachers released.

Q: Really? Released to what?

A: To termination.

Q: The public has the perception that hardly anyone’s been fired from the DOE.

A: That’s not true.

Q: Do you have numbers on how many?

A: I don’t have any specific numbers. But teachers are suspended, disciplined, terminated.

Q: You must have heard this.

A: Oh, yes: “Tenure protects bad teachers.” No. It only protects their due process rights.

Q: How would you characterize the main challenges teachers face?

A: You know, the public school teachers in Hawaii, it’s a diverse group that the teachers are working under. It’s one educational system. It’s not like in the continental United States where it’s run by counties, districts. It’s a very unique place, and the teachers are always putting children first.

But we have such a diverse community that teachers are always trying to adapt to the wide diversity within the classroom. You might have students in the classroom that have challenges in ESL, English as a Second Language. You might have students that are special education. …

Look at our economy, what is happening. Many of our students’ parents have two jobs. We did a survey with our own teachers, that they also have two jobs. … Things have changed from the time we were in high school, to now. Technology has changed, right? … The attention span of a student, the teachers are faced with a situation where they must engage the student, try to be innovative, to engage the student in learning.

But they need also to have the support at home. … But with the economy and everything that’s going on, they’re not engaging the students, their own kids. That’s where I think there needs to be a partnership.

Q: So the challenges are socioeconomic? A lot of distractions they’re competing with?

A: Everyone has to be involved with the educational system. There are definitely a lot of challenges. But you know something? Teachers always put the students first. … You cannot compare a teacher to another job.

Q: How much do you think the whole issue of the furloughs damaged the brand?

A: Gov. (Linda) Lingle actually implemented that. She actually wanted 36 furlough days, remember? Because she couldn’t impose that, we were able to get it down … by that time, all the unions took furloughs. And it did affect all sectors.

Q: But it was parents of students who were hit most directly, wasn’t it?

A: That’s correct. Because what happened? The accountability shifted not only on the teachers but it also shifted to the parents as well. Teachers today still have furloughs, but teachers’ furloughs are professional development days.

Q: They gave those up?

A: Yes, because they understand the importance of the educational situation for our students. … Why do you think (the test scores) went up? One of the reasons we found it went up during those Furlough Fridays is because now the parents took ownership of their own children and helped them in the class. The teachers were able to provide lessons for them on those furlough days. So now the students and the parents were more accountable for the learning at home.

Q: That’s a theory, right? You don’t really know.

A: We can correlate that because the teachers in the field started to give more homework and tried to engage the parents with this information. … You can’t correlate that, by giving them another day off, they all got smarter.