Editorial
Pay for sloppy teachers contract, move on

It is almost incomprehensible that the fall public school season is about to begin without a contract for our teachers.

The dispute that is holding up a contract is complex, with substantial blame for the confusion going to all parties involved. This was sloppy.

But the bottom line must be this: We cannot afford to begin a new school year without a settled contract.

Lack of a contract would be a distraction for individual teachers. And it would divert attention from the effort to create a more professional relationship between teachers and their employer.

What's needed is statesmanship and — yes — a willingness to spend money to get beyond this impasse.

That may ultimately mean that the state, which has already given ground to the teachers union since the contract was ratified, may have to give a little more.

The absolute amounts of money involved are relatively small in context of the entire education budget. If spending that money creates peace in the classroom and movement toward a truly professional public school system, it will be worthwhile.

Some background:

It seems quite clear that teachers who did their homework believed they were voting for a contract that gave certain "professional track" teachers bonuses in each of the two years of the contract.

Here's the language circulated to rank-and-file:

"Teachers who hold professional certificates based on a Masters Degree or a Professional Diploma shall receive a 3 percent differential calculated on their current salary each year."

Each year. Nothing terribly ambiguous there. But the state's negotiator says it was crystal clear to the negotiators that the bonus was to be a one-time, one-year thing. There are numerous documents to back up that claim, mostly paperwork that puts a price tag of $6 million on the bonus program.

The union says it always thought of the professional bonus as a two-year deal.

And here's the rub: That is how it was described in the language circulated to the teachers; language, by the way, that was reviewed and OK'd by the state before it was circulated. State negotiator Davis Yogi says it was simply an oversight on the state's part, and once the language was spotted, the union was notified.

That may be so. But the plain fact is that the contract given to the teachers for their vote said two years. Even if this was the result of subterfuge, creative ambiguity, confusion or simple error, it was what the teachers voted on. The cleanest solution now is to pay for it.

But the teachers are on dangerous ground if they try to drive too hard a bargain. The state has bent considerably on who will qualify for the bonus. An early HSTA proposal said the bonus would go to those teachers with a masters of education or a "professional diploma," which the state says is well understood to mean just the University of Hawai'i.

The union says these words should mean any recognized diploma and any master's degree related to the individual's field of teaching. The state has conceded that point, and is prepared to add considerably more teachers to the pool.

In the long run, the push for true professionalism will move away from rewards based on seniority or even credentials, to rewards based on classroom performance. So this is by any measure an interim step.

It is an interim step worth funding.