Publicity could hurt recruitment efforts

By Alice Keesing
Advertiser Education Writer

It's on CNN. And in the New York Times. Even Radio New Zealand is talking about it.

The sheer size of Hawai'i's education strike has garnered widespread media attention as observers wonder how a strike can close down an entire state school system and strand 183,000 children.

Hawai'i's teachers were fighting for better pay to combat the state's severe shortage of teachers. But all the national attention also has the teachers union worried that the reputation of Hawai'i's education system could be further besmirched, scaring away teachers who may have considered working here.

"It's such a two-edged sword to tell them what this is about, without dooming your school system to never attracting business," said Hawaii State Teachers Association Executive Director Joan Husted, who has been fielding inquiries from curious Mainland media representatives.

"You have to talk about the shortage, you have to talk about our inability to attract and keep teachers, and by that very implication it seems to say this is a poor school district," she said. "And so you've always got to reinforce it with we have among the best-educated teachers in the U.S. and we have a number of schools that are national award winners."

Husted said much of her time is spent undoing myths about Hawai'i's schools.

"One thing they're very surprised about is that we're the second oldest school system in the U.S.," she said. "They kind of think we just discovered public education and our kids are just now learning to speak English."

Department of Education recruiters have been working Mainland job fairs throughout the strike and personnel director Sandra McFarlane said prospective employees don't seem concerned that the school system has been shut down by a bitter labor dispute.

"They understand that Hawai'i has a collective bargaining unit and contract for teachers, so it hasn't been a major issue for anyone coming to any of the fairs," McFarlane said.

But with Hawai'i needing more than 1,400 teachers for the next school year, the question of pay is still a tough one.

"Recruitment is a serious concern of ours, and the people who do attend our interviews are concerned about what the starting salary is," McFarlane said. "I guess if they're applying at several places, they're doing salary comparisons, so we're struggling to be competitive."

Despite the media coverage, the strike by Hawai'i's teachers has not exactly been a water-cooler topic on the Mainland, according to Cincinnati resident Michael Zaret.

But he and his wife are paying attention because they are considering a move to Hawai'i. The Zarets, who both work in special education, are attracted by Hawai'i's melting pot society, which they want for the sake of their adopted African-American son.

"My wife and I want to make enough to survive," Zaret said. "I don't mind having a 15-year-old car. But I think a lot of the younger teachers wouldn't be willing to do that. People who are right out of college would be attracted if there's more money."

Zaret does like the contract's emphasis on professional development. Teachers in the Cincinnati Public District recently approved a pay scale that recognizes performance rather than longevity.

"If it's combined with more in-service training, I think it's really a valuable thing in terms of improving performance," Zaret said. "I know for my own part it's improved my own attention to detail."

If contracts can foster such education reform and improve teacher pay, the chaos created by strikes may eventually be outweighed by long-term gains, according to Paul Clark, who specializes in labor law and industrial relations at Penn State University.

Pennsylvania used to have as many as 40 strikes a year among its 600 school districts, but Clark said they have gotten fewer over time as contracts have improved.

"When they were first given the right to strike (Pennsylvania) teachers were really underpaid and they had a lot of ground to make up," he said. "I think in the 20 or so years since they (have been allowed to strike) they've made up a lot of that ground, so now the impasses are really over a few dollars here and a few dollars there."

Clark also said of the Hawai'i strike: "This is a good example of one of those relatively few states that allows public employees to strike. There's only, I think, something like 12 or 13 states that give any public employees the right to strike."

At the University of Rhode Island, industrial relations expert Matthew Bodah also has been watching the strike with interest.

"I wouldn't see it as they don't know what they're doing — there's this complete meltdown," Bodah said. "The fact that there hasn't been a strike in 28 years to me says that the system works pretty well in general. I don't see it as something that's really a negative on Hawai'i. In fact, I see the 28 years of labor peace as probably more of a story than the current strike."