Teachers recruited to instruct in rural schools would get a housing allowance of up to $12,000 a year to help with the state's perennial teacher shortage under a measure at the state Legislature.

Sen. Norman Sakamoto, who introduced Senate Bill 206, said that the state needs to be more creative in how it recruits and retains qualified teachers, citing an average of 1,300 or so vacancies at the end of every school year.

"Somehow, we need to address this issue. How do we keep the ones that we hire? Because of the cost of housing, some of the teachers are pressured economically and they leave," said Sakamoto, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

"Broadly speaking, the goal would be thousands per year — something like $10,000, $12,000 a year. That kind of incentive would encourage teachers to stay and teach in hard-to-fill positions."

The Education Committee deferred the measure last week, but the bill may come up again later in the session.

Each year, the state Department of Education recruits several hundred teachers from the Mainland to teach in some of Hawai'i's rural schools. Many new recruits will stay in Hawai'i for several years, DOE officials say. But many also leave after their contract ends.

"One of the biggest issues for a new teacher in Hawai'i is the cost of living," said Judy Toguchi, personnel officer for the DOE. "It would be very helpful for recruitment. It might be easier to get people from the Mainland, knowing that they'd get a housing allowance."

The allowance would be tied to the statewide median cost of housing over a four-year period. The median rent in Hawai'i was about $1,144 in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That compares with the national average of about $781.

Hawai'i has about 13,500 public school teachers. Vacancies fluctuate throughout the year, with the largest number occurring at the end of the school year when teachers decide to retire, move, switch professions or leave for some other reason.

Toguchi says the department has been doing a better job recruiting teachers, citing just 45 classroom vacancies at the beginning of this school year. That compares with about 400 vacancies at the beginning of the 2005-2006 school year, she said.

But Roger Takabayashi, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, estimates that 30 percent to 50 percent of teachers recruited from the Mainland leave in three to five years.

"The high cost of living in Hawai'i is definitely a deterrent for a teacher coming to Hawai'i or staying in Hawai'i," he said.

A housing allowance would also help retain local teachers who decide to teach in rural schools, he said.

"A recent UH study found that only about 40 percent of (UH College of Education) graduates remain in Hawai'i. So an allowance would even help with hiring local kids and helping them deal with the extravagant cost of living here," he said.

Sakamoto's measure seeks to retain teachers in hard-to-fill positions, such as those on the Neighbor Islands or the Leeward Coast of O'ahu. A housing allowance also would be offered to teachers in a hard-to-fill field, such as special education, mathematics or science. Sakamoto could not say exactly what such an allowance would cost, but education officials generally estimate that it would cost the state several millions of dollars a year.

Catherine Cunningham, a special education teacher at Nanaikapono Elementary School in Nanakuli, moved to Hawai'i in July after she completed college in Massachusetts.

She saves on rent by sharing a house in Makakilo with four other teachers who were also recruited from the Mainland to work on the Leeward Coast.

"Coming from the East Coast, I didn't find rent to be that much more expensive. Food is more expensive out here," she said. "I'm probably spending three times as much as I would back home."

A housing allowance would help to offset some of those expenses, she said.

"I love my job and I love my school," she said. "Personally, I'm planning on staying at least another year. For a lot of teachers, it would be a huge incentive to stay out here."

Sakamoto says he realizes that the state's fiscal situation makes it difficult to pay for housing allowances.

"Like you, I'm not holding my breath thinking we can fund millions of dollars to do this even though the need is there," he said.

The senator said he's introducing another measure to help pay for various recruitment and retention programs. He's proposed increasing the state's general excise tax by 1 percentage point to raise money for the public education system. He's also proposed dropping the excise tax on food and medical expenses to lessen the impact on the general public.

That proposal has not received the support of Senate leadership.

Meanwhile, with expected budget cuts of at least $30 million each year for the next two years, education officials say recruiting from the Mainland may be hindered. Toguchi said the state does not plan to send recruiters to the Mainland this year.

The state does provide some incentives to recruit teachers. For instance, it provides a one-time bonus from $2,000 to $5,000 to teachers who move to Hawai'i to teach special education, one of the hardest positions to fill in the public school system, Toguchi said. The state also provides a $1,500 relocation bonus to regular education teachers, she said.

"It's not enough," Toguchi said. "The challenge is, they come here and realize what the cost of living is."

The state also provides an end-of-the-year bonus of about $3,000 to teachers at hard-to-staff schools, such as those in rural Neighbor Island communities or on the Leeward Coast of O'ahu.

A recent report by the National Council on Teacher Quality gave Hawai'i a "D" grade for its work to retain teachers. However, the report did praise state support for pay differentials for teachers who take jobs in underserved areas.

Nelson Shigeta, principal of Makaha Elementary School, said the annual bonus has been a great incentive to help keep teachers.

"More than half of our staff drive in to Wai'anae each day. It's a big sacrifice for teachers who don't live out on the coast. There's a distance involved," he said.