Deal may help teacher recruiting

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

As new "Mahalo" posters replace the torn down "On Strike" signs decorating school buildings across the state, educators and administrators have started picking up the pieces of an interrupted semester and evaluating the potential aftermath of the longest teachers strike in the state's history.

The morning after the HSTA settled its strike, Nu'uanu Elementary School teachers Linda Kato, left, and Allicia Lopez gathered strike signs, converting them to welcome-back-to-school signs for students. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

In reality, the Department of Education is in the middle of its worst teacher shortage.

The state must hire 1,400 educators each year to fill its classrooms, hundreds more than it had to a few years ago. And administrators are hoping the new contract negotiated between the state and the Hawaii State Teachers Association will help fill the employment gap in a traditionally low-paying field.

"Salaries are one of the critical issues to attracting teachers," said Joan Husted, HSTA executive director. "What we've done is stop some of the bleeding. We have not created a utopia."

In the mid-1990s, the Department of Education had to recruit nationally for teachers in a few of the harder-to-find specialties: math, science, special education, industrial arts, counseling and library science.

Today, it sends recruiting specialists to giant teacher employment fairs in New York, Illinois, Washington and California to try to lure people with English and elementary education degrees — the mainstay of teaching — in addition to those with expertise in the traditional shortage areas.

"We have to go out of state to recruit," said Bruce Shimomoto, a personnel specialist in teacher recruitment at the DOE. "We don't have a sufficient number of local graduates. We don't have enough applicants in all of the certification areas."

Fewer teacher candidates

The DOE hired 1,454 teachers this school year, 1,376 in the 1999-2000 school year and 1,006 in the 1998-99 school year, Shimomoto said.

At the same time the DOE has had to fill an increasing number of vacant teaching positions, the number of education graduates from the state's largest university has dipped slightly.

While the University of Hawai'i-Manoa in the mid-1990s was graduating about 700 students a year with education degrees or teaching certificates, by 1998 that number had dropped to around 400.

Now, Manoa awards about 350 degrees each year and about 65 diplomas for people who will teach in specific fields, such as social studies or math.

Randy Hitz, dean of the College of Education, said higher standards have meant that not everyone gets accepted into the college.

Also, the decreasing number of education graduates can be attributed to budget cuts the college sustained along with the rest of the campus in the 1990s and the subsequent loss of 20 full-time faculty members. In general, Manoa has seen enrollments drop slightly in recent years.

The state used to hire Manoa graduates to fill about 40 percent of its new teaching positions. Now, about 29 percent, or 500 of the state's new hires this year, came from the campus.

Another 200 teachers came from other colleges in the state with education programs such as UH-Hilo, Chaminade University of Honolulu, Brigham Young University and the University of Phoenix, Hitz said.

Teachers from the Mainland filled 52 percent of the positions the DOE had open this year, Shimomoto said.

But the department is hiring a large number of people who have either taken a break from teaching or did not get into teaching right away, even though they have education degrees.

"They're obviously drawing into a pool of reserve candidates," Hitz said. "If this continues, that reserve pool will be diminished."

Hitz said the state will need to keep recruiting teachers from outside Hawai'i to fill positions.

"Hawai'i has always had a problem recruiting and retaining teachers," he said "We've always been an import state."

But he said he is hopeful the strike will not have a negative effect on recruiting or retaining teachers.

"Strikes are never great," Hitz said. "I think in the long run the fact that they did get a pretty nice package will serve the state well. It will make it more attractive to people. I am very optimistic about the future of it."

Nation's first shutdown

Resolving the teachers' contract proved to be the toughest of all the labor deals the state has negotiated this year. As all other public employee unions settled, the teachers were left out on the picket lines as negotiators struggled to find middle ground.

With UH professors striking simultaneously, it became the nation's first shut down of an entire state education system, from kindergarten through graduate school.

Nearly 13,000 public school teachers and 3,100 university professors walked off the job April 5.

The dual strikes closed down schools, stranding more than 220,000 students and attracting international media coverage for the sheer spectacle.

Many people worried the negative publicity would harm recruiting, while others focused on the horn-honking in support of teachers.

"Maybe the strike has a plus side to it," Shimomoto said. "Hopefully it's brought teaching into a positive light. I hope people who are going through teacher education read it that way. The public was supporting a teachers strike."

'They were striking for us'

More than 99 percent of the state's teachers marched the picket line during the Department of Education's first strike since 1973. Contrary to expectations, the numbers stayed strong as the strike dragged on.

Kori Shlachter, a first-year graduate student in the masters in education and teaching program at UH-Manoa, said she was rooting for the public schoolteachers during the strike and even dropped off brownies and bottled water for the pickets.

She and other students carefully watched the negotiations.

"We are going to be HSTA teachers," Shlachter said. "They were striking for us."

The strike has done nothing to dissuade Shlachter from her dream of teaching high school social studies. She found it inspiring to watch and thinks the teachers got a good contract and more respect in the end.

"It was sort of a rallying cry," she said.

The teachers union was able to boast it hauled in a settlement worth more than 18 percent, including a 10 percent pay increase, salary increment raises worth another 6 percent, and an $1,100 bonus for every teacher that amounts to about 2 percent.

Among other benefits, the contract provides a new pay increment system and new rewards for teachers with advanced degrees.

Clayton Fujie, principal of Noelani Elementary School, said the strike actually brought his staff closer together.

"The people who went out are pumped," Fujie said. "Wow. They've bonded. You're all put in a situation where you have to go through something difficult together."