Teachers put away their strike signs and returned to classrooms today after an 85 percent vote last night to approve the contract settlement reached late Monday.

The state and teachers' union yesterday put the finishing touches on the $125 million deal, and 9,208 teachers out of 10,787 added their seal of approval to officially end the longest public education strike in state history.

At one Makiki-area complex including Roosevelt High, Stevenson Intermediate and Lincoln Elementary, teachers were anxious to get back to work today.

Two students greeted senior advisor and social studies teacher Corey Rosenlee in the parking lot at 8 a.m.

"I've had to cut stuff already," Rosenlee said of the planned fourth-quarter activism project he had planned for his sophomore and junior classes. "I'm also planning to combine two tests, so rather than spending two days on the tests and two days on review for the tests, I'll condense everything into one week."

One of his major concerns was preparing the graduation ceremony for about 500 seniors, whose class field trip this week is likely to be canceled.

"We have lots of problems there," Rosenlee said. "There's no practice time. We normally practice four days on the song and program. We may have to do it on our own time, if the kids will come."

Senior counselor Danny Lum, noting that an average of 21 to 30 seniors a year do not meet graduation requirements, is concerned the numbers might increase this year for lack of make-up time.

"The big part of what we try to do (at this time of year) is double-check on how they're doing in the classroom," Lum said. "A big problem is that teachers will have to do highlights of the courses, which they feel bad about, so it's going to be a monumental challenge. Those students who need to make up work have less time to do it."

Jim Pepe and Marsha Murakami, special-education teachers at Roosevelt and Lincoln, respectively, are hoping to get their students quickly on track after a long layoff.

"I set up my (teaching) year according to the occupational skills program," said Pepe, who teaches 12 students ages 14 to 20. "They missed three weeks of valuable work experience time. Fortunately, I have only one senior. He'll get extra work study and go to summer school before we can put him in a vocational work program."

Murakami is confident her 16 students will get the academic work they need, but is worried that an annual "big reward" might be lost this year.

"We'll be taking into consideration academics and what they look forward to," said Murakami of the annual 50th State Fair "Special Friends Day" event for special- education students. "We don't want to differentiate between special-education and regular education students at our school by allowing some to go on a field trip while others are canceled."

Alison Inouye, who teaches eighth-grade science to about 100 students at Stevenson, goes into astronomy, geology and oceanography in the fourth quarter. But time spent on practice and conceptual things cannot be made up.

"What I have to revisit is the Hawai'i Contents Performance Standard, and develop different strategies to meet those standards," she said. "So it might entail doing more conceptual and practice work at home for students and more assessment in the classroom for me."

Roosevelt athletic director Rodney Iwasaki, meanwhile, said the O'ahu Interscholastic Association would meet today at Radford High to determine whether the league can compete in state tournaments, and to develop a strategy to crown OIA champions in sports affected by the strike. At Roosevelt, about 200 students competing in track, basketball, baseball, judo and golf are affected, Iwasaki said.

The Hawai'i State Teachers Association was pleased with the contract vote turnout yesterday. The deal gives most teachers 18 percent over four years.

"That's a wonderful turnout," said HSTA executive director Joan Husted. "What the vote clearly represents is an overwhelming acceptance of the contract. I think it also says that some were upset that the (senior teachers) didn't get as much money as others, and also there was some sentiment that if we'd held out and were tougher we might have gotten a little bit more."

The deal came after days of tough bargaining. At one point it appeared the two sides were unable to end the deadlock, but a breakthrough came Thursday when they agreed on a retention bonus in exchange for retroactive pay.

With that barrier broken, the two sides traded money offers before striking a deal late Monday night.

"I think it's the best agreement we could have gotten out of what we put into it," said Castle High teacher David Milks.

"I think this goes a long way to restoring the faith we have in the HSTA as a union," he added, referring to the 1997 contract that left many teachers feeling the union had sold out. Teachers received a 17 percent raise that year, but had to work an additional seven days.

The state gave back four of those seven days in this year's contract. Instead of classroom days, they will be used for professional development.

"It's better to have a teacher that is well-trained and better skilled, even if we lose four days," Gov. Ben Cayetano said.

As a hint of the rankling that still lingers beneath the settlement, both the governor and the union claim they put that idea on the table.

What became apparent during yesterday's ratification vote was that the toughest issue for the negotiators during talks was the biggest negative for some teachers in the final deal.

Instead of retroactive pay for the two years teachers worked without a contract, they will receive a $1,100 "retention incentive."

Both sides claim victory on that point.

"We knew Cayetano wouldn't go for retroactivity, so they just came up with another word," said Peggy Anderson, a physical education teacher at McKinley High. As a senior teacher, Anderson will not receive as much money as her younger colleagues, but she believes the contract is "wonderful."

Waipahu High teacher Dennis Hansen doesn't agree. He stood at the entrance to the Stan Sheriff Center yesterday holding a cardboard sign over his head: "Just Say No."

"This means I'm not absolutely happy about the lack of real retroactivity," he said. "I bought into the leadership's claim that we would get retroactivity of 2 percent for the first two years of the contract, and instead I'm getting a bonus of less than 2 percent."