Public schools are a necessity, which makes teachers essential, which makes holding onto the best and most experienced teachers critical.

The perpetual challenge of money (or lack of it) and the rare but brutal challenge of a pandemic have brought that critical issue of teacher retention to a crisis point that must be addressed.

Hawaii’s public school system, which currently employs nearly 13,000 teachers, lost 1,199 in 2021 — 428 retired, 771 left for other reasons, according to the Department of Education’s annual employment report. Although 1,057 teachers were hired last year, invaluable classroom experience was lost.

This is not a new problem, in Hawaii or the nation as a whole, but the numbers are up given the stresses of the pandemic — juggling remote learning, maintaining chaotic classroom health requirements, covering for other teachers who get sick, finding ways to help students overwhelmed by all the pressures. The words “mass exodus” are heard more and more frequently. A National Education Association survey of its members in January found that more than half — 55% — would like to leave the profession sooner than they had planned.

“I still have not been able to find people to do my regular teaching this year,” Waimea High School principal Mahina Anguay said during a Honolulu Star-Advertiser editorial board meeting last week. “I have long-term subs in a couple of key positions. And I just lost another huge position when a teacher just threw up her hands and said, ‘I can’t, I gotta go,’ because of her own stress level.”

It was a Zoom call, yet it was possible to sense her distress. Finding new teachers has been difficult. Anguay lost three new mainland recruits, she said, when they couldn’t cope with Kauai’s cost of living.

“You ask what keeps me up late at night? It’s that. It’s worrying about about how I’m going to staff next year knowing that.”

The DOE has a number of initiatives to bring new teachers into the fold. Interim Superintendent Keith Hayashi says the department is working to provide assistance to college students who pursue education degrees; has signed reciprocity agreements with other states to make it easier for teachers to move to Hawaii; and is sending a team of principals to a mainland teacher college to recruit. A slick new website, teachinhawaii.org, curates information for potential hires.

When it comes to keeping the teachers we have, the Legislature has rightly advanced a measure, Senate Bill 2819, to address salaries, specifically a situation called “compression,” which has locked many teachers in the mid-range of the salary scale. The Star-Advertiser’s Esme Infante, in an article Monday, broke down the DOE’s complex system of salary classes, and outlined challenges they face moving into higher pay classes.

The salary steps begin at $50,123 annually for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree and top out at $91,948, but even teachers with 30-plus years of service find it difficult to get to that last level, partly because the state has put off step increases in lean economic times. The teachers’ union estimates that about 8,700 teachers are underpaid by $7,700 to $26,000.

Money can’t fix everything, of course, but this legislation would go a long way toward establishing equity, keeping teacher pay from stagnating and giving the most experienced teachers a financial reason to stay in the classroom. The Senate estimates the cost to the state at $94 million, but in some ways it is money we already owe them.

Also pending is a worthy bill to establish pay differentials for teachers in the hardest-to-fill positions, such as special education and Hawaiian-language immersion, or for geographic areas where recruitment is especially difficult.

We are clearly at a tipping point, when public and political will must unite behind a goal of creating conditions that keep teachers in place and helps principals sleep at night. For the sake of students who need good teachers, we really don’t have a choice.