It’s reasonable for the state to seek adjustments to Hawaii’s public school teacher salaries to account for our high cost of living.
The problem is the disjointed way the Department of Education and lawmakers are going about it, as well as the bad idea the Legislature keeps pushing to pay for teacher raises.
Without appropriation from the Legislature, the DOE unilaterally increased annual pay for hard-to-fill positions, such as special-education and Hawaiian immersion teachers, by $3,000 to $10,000 in a move it said would improve recruitment
and retention.
The DOE is now asking legislators for $70 million to fund those differentials for this year and next, along
with its other proposal for pay bumps of $900 to $17,000 for high-seniority teachers.
The department has no data showing this will solve the retention problem. It’s being done outside of the collective bargaining process, which will bring its own set of compounding teacher raises, and without asking teachers for anything in return such as greater accountability or more class time for students.
The Senate Education Committee, in the first hearing on the proposal, recommended that funding be cut to
$25 million, which would leave DOE to either trim the raises or take the remaining $45 million from other funds.
Meantime, legislators are reviving a scheme to take the funding heat off themselves by raiding county property taxes for teacher raises.
A constitutional amendment proposed by House Speaker Scott Saiki would strip the counties of their exclusive right to levy property taxes and allow the nonelected state Board of Education to assess property tax surcharges for teacher pay.
The state Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a similar ballot measure before it reached voters, finding the language vague and misleading.
Even if the new language satisfies the court, it pointlessly constrains the counties’ ability to use the property tax — their main funding source — for their own needs.
Honolulu needs any flex in the property tax to pay for rail operations, and neighbor island counties have disaster relief challenges.
Arguments that property taxes are widely used on the mainland to fund schools are bogus; schools there are locally run, so use of local taxes is appropriate.
Hawaii schools are run by the state, and the Legislature has twice voted against returning schools to local control. If lawmakers want education maintained as a state function, they should pay for it from a state tax they’re accountable for: excise, income or hotel.
Teacher pay is a legitimate concern following a recent study showing salaries here are $8,000 to $26,000 below high-cost districts in West Coast cities.
But adjustments should be driven by data rather
than hunches, mesh with collective bargaining, assure taxpayer return and not needlessly intrude on already tenuous county finances.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
