Hawaii teachers’ $2,200 bonuses may be in jeopardy

The governor is under pressure to veto the $2,200 bonuses that legislators voted to give every public school teacher, but hefty pay “differentials” for classroom teachers in shortage areas are on track for next year.

The Department of Education has affirmed that the shortage differentials, which range from $3,000 to $10,000 annually, will be paid. That’s despite the fact that the Legislature did not fund them for the fiscal year starting July 1. About 4,000 teachers statewide earn that incentive pay at a total cost of $32.5 million a year.

Asked where the money would come from, DOE spokeswoman Nanea Kalani said this week that “we’re not sure at the moment, but as a department we are committed to finding the resources for this expense.”

“We’ve already made that commitment to our teachers,” she said. “We know teachers made decisions based on that. However, the Legislature did not accommodate that expense in their budget plans for the department for the year that starts July 1.”

One possibility is federal funding. As required by federal law, the Department of Education is now seeking public input on how to use the latest round of coronavirus relief money. The legislation puts a priority on in-person learning and mitigating learning loss resulting from the pandemic.

Members of more than a dozen stakeholder groups, from students and staff to parents and industry partners, are invited to share their priorities via an online survey at hawaiipublicschools.org. The Public Input Survey on the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund State Plan is open through the end of the day on June 4.

“Right now the department is engaged in getting public comment on how to use these funds,” Board of Education Chairwoman Catherine Payne said. “That’s one of the conditions of the federal money.”

The survey notes that the money could go toward filling budget shortfalls to maintain school operations; reopening school campuses to in-person learning; addressing students’ academic, social-emotional and mental health needs; and teacher compensation, resources or professional development.

Board of Education members have stressed that they are committed to continuing the pay differentials, likely with federal money since no state funds were allocated.

Payne said it would be an appropriate use of pandemic relief funds, “especially because it is targeted to areas where we are losing teachers, and the teachers in those areas are working with our most needy students.”

Since Jan. 7, 2019, fully qualified special-education teachers in Hawaii have received an extra $10,000 in pay annually; Hawaiian immersion teachers, $8,000; and teachers in hard-to-staff areas, $3,000 to $8,000, depending on the severity of the shortage.

Teachers who qualify in multiple categories may collect up to three differentials at once. The money comes on top of their base pay. The current annual salary for teachers with bachelor’s degrees and five years of experience is $50,800, according to the salary schedule.

The pay boosts have helped recruit and retain teachers in areas with chronic shortages, with special-education vacancies, for example, dropping by 43% between Oct. 1, 2019, and Oct. 1, 2020, according to department data.

Legislators did allot $32.5 million of federal coronavirus relief money for the differentials in the current fiscal year, as approved by the Board of Education. But they did not set aside state or federal funds for them in the 2021-22 fiscal year.

Instead, lawmakers opted to issue $2,200 checks to every full- or part-time classroom teacher, at an estimated cost of $29.7 million in the next school year. The payments were described as a “workforce stabilization” measure and were included in a long list of federal spending prescriptions inserted at the last minute by legislators into HB 613.

The Hawaii State Teachers Association supports the $2,200 pay boosts as a way to retain teachers, but the bill faces major opposition for a variety of reasons, including the way it was altered at the end of the legislative session, without the public having a chance to weigh in on those changes.

The Hawaii Government Employees Association is calling for a veto, decrying the bill for rewarding classroom teachers over all other public workers, including other school employees and those on the front lines of the pandemic. It also says the bonuses are unconstitutional since they were adopted outside of collective bargaining.

“At a time when our state should be coming together in a unified effort to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic, this divisive legislation sets us back immeasurably,” HGEA Executive Director Randy Perreira wrote in a letter to Gov. David Ige.

The governor has until June 21 to indicate which bills he might veto and has not tipped his hand on the issue.

Payne and other education officials say legislators overstepped their bounds in using HB 613 to dictate how to use the federal pandemic relief funds, since the federal government requires the Department of Education to develop its own spending plan for that money in consultation with stakeholders.

State Rep. Jeanne Kapela (D, Naalehu-Captain Cook-Keauhou), vice chairwoman of the House Education Committee, noted last week that the Legislature had left “significant holes” in the public schools’ budget, including for the differentials. She urged the Board of Education to use some of the federal relief money that is targeted for learning loss to cover them.

“These differentials are critical to maintaining quality educators in my community’s schools,” Kapela said. “Nothing could be more critical to preventing learning loss than ensuring that our most vulnerable children are taught by highly qualified teachers.”