Strike talks must be open to all new ideas

It was a clearly irritated Gov. Ben Cayetano who put it bluntly when Hawai'i's public school teachers announced they would strike.

All offers, including a last-minute 14 percent pay package, are now "off the table," Cayetano said.

In other words, it's back to Square One.

These are chilling words to teachers who might have thought they struck to move the state beyond where it stood just before the walkout. Instead, they are back to Ground Zero.

But in a strange way, this may be precisely where the two sides need to be to settle things. In the final days of negotiations, it appeared that the teachers and the state were locked into a clumsy dance, where the only movement possible was backward or forward and was measured in dollars and cents.

The real solution to this matter is to wipe everything from the table and begin anew. What is needed here is fresh thinking — completely unexpected ideas — about how to manage our education system and reward our teachers.

Each idea will come with a price tag, of course. But fighting over the price tag first and then attaching it to the ideas that happen to fit will never lead to true change.

And the ideas need not come only from the two sides in these negotiations. It is time for the community to step up with its own ideas and offers of help for a public education system badly in need of support. The support can be anything from financial backing from the business community — which has a vital stake in improving education — through innovative ideas drawn from private schools, from home-schoolers, from other jurisdictions and elsewhere.

If that happens, and if the two sides are flexible enough to recognize and embrace new ideas and outside support, then something good can come out of this unfortunate public school strike.