At the heart of our determined push for added compensation for public school teachers is an explicit motivation: achieving equity. Equity for our most vulnerable and underserved students.

Amid the discussion and debate over the details, timing and cost implications of the Department of Education’s ambitious proposal for pay differentials, we must not lose sight of why we are doing this.

The fact of the matter is we have students in this state who lack equitable access to a highly qualified teacher by virtue of their individualized learning needs, their geographic location, or their preferred language for instruction.

In the area of special education alone, we have more than 300 classrooms across the state without a certified special education teacher. This is unacceptable and unconscionable.

Guaranteed access to a quality public education for all students is a foundational pillar of our democracy, and one of the Board of Education’s highest priority areas. A critical part of ensuring this access is making sure that we have certified educators in every classroom for every student in every school across the state.

At the start of this school year, only 84% of our special education positions were filled by a qualified, licensed teacher, a rate that has not improved over the last four years. Meanwhile, just 34% of our Hawaiian immersion teaching positions are filled by a licensed immersion teacher. In some of our most geographically isolated schools, vacancies and emergency hires comprise more than 10% of teaching positions.

Our first major step toward addressing this challenge is to target persistent teacher shortage areas with pay incentives. Teachers in the field have repeatedly said that the state’s pay scale is insufficient to support the cost of living in Hawaii.

On Jan. 7, the department implemented pay differentials for certified classroom teachers in our three highest need areas: hard-to-fill geographic areas, special education and Hawaiian language immersion. The effective date was strategically scheduled around a crucial period when teachers have the option to transfer to a new position or school, giving us an opportunity to track the impact of the differentials, which range from $3,000 to $10,000. An estimated 3,900 teachers this year are eligible.

With the Legislature convening the 2020 session this month, we will be actively advocating for funding to support this effort until the shortage challenge is addressed. We knew there was an inherent risk — as with any investment — in implementing the differentials before securing legislative funding. It was a risk the department and the board was willing to take on behalf of our most vulnerable students, recognizing that Hawaii’s teacher shortage has been at a crisis level for too long.

We are appreciative to Gov. David Ige for including multi-year funding for the differentials in his executive budget, and look forward to working collaboratively with legislators to advance this urgent initiative.

This is just a first step. We know there is much more to be done to ultimately eliminate our teacher shortage and to validate the work of all of our teachers.

Why are we doing this now? In my message to school leaders at the start of this school year, I told them this is the year to disrupt. I empowered them to take risks and to experiment with new ways of improving student learning and success. In leading by example, the Department of Education is taking bold action to begin seriously addressing our chronic teacher shortage because we simply cannot wait any longer.

Christina Kishimoto, Ed.D., is superintendent of Hawaii’s public schools.