Hawaiçi public school teachers today ratified a two-year contract that amounts to a 7.9 percent pay cut and will shut down the school system for 17 Fridays beginning in October.
The new agreement also postpones the implementation of random drug testing and guarantees no layoffs for two years.
Officials said 81 percent of the Hawaii State Teachers Association membership voted to accept the contract at 26 schools across the state. The union needed a simple majority of those who cast ballots to approve the new contract.
An estimate three-fourths of the union’s 13,500 members cast ballots, a higher percentage than unusual, HSTA President Wil Okabe said.
Several teachers expressed ambivalence. They acknowledged the need to make concessions because of the state’s budget shortfall but were concerned about the loss in wages and time spent with their students.
“Right now everybody needs to make sacrifices, we understand that. But the students are the ones who will suffer because of this,” said Shannon Kaçaça, a preschool special education teacher at Fern Elementary.
Kaçaça said she fears her school will have a tougher time meeting the federal No Child Left Behind standards because of the loss in instruction time.
“I’m the kind of person who believes in longer school days, longer school years. We’re already shortchanging the children,” she said.
Okabe said this is the first contract in recent memory where teachers were asked to make concessions. He also noted it will equate to the most lost school days since the 2001 teachers strike, when 13 school days were missed.
Okabe noted that the agreement on furloughs is substantially less than the three furlough days a month — or 14 percent pay cut — that Gov. Linda Lingle had wanted. Of the $227 million in cuts to the public school system mandated by Lingle, the state Board of Education voted to only seek $117 million in furloughs and labor savings, while cutting the rest in programs and school-level funding.
“No question it will have a big impact on student learning. We’re very concerned about that,” Okabe said. “Teachers, I’m sure, are going to be very innovative in giving homework, trying to give alternative assignments for kids. But it has to be a collaborative effort for parents,” he said.