Editorial
A certified teacher in every classroom

"The teaching shortage has reached crisis levels," said Karen Ginoza, president of the state teachers' union, on many occasions before and during the recent teachers' strike.

Desperate times require desperate measures.

In a letter to Board of Education Chairman Herbert Watanabe, Gov. Ben Cayetano says there are 324 resource teachers and 267 student services coordinators who are certified teachers but who are not working in classrooms.

Cayetano's suggestion is that the board get these teachers back into classrooms.

Watanabe points out that resource teachers and student services coordinators do important work, and Joan Husted, the HSTA's executive director, says removing them would dump more work back onto the teachers who are in classrooms.

All well and good, but it was the HSTA that informed us that as of February there were 69 classrooms that had no teachers at all, and 55 with unqualified teachers.

Is this teacher shortage a crisis when teachers need a pay raise but something less urgent when it's only a matter of 2,100 kids sitting in classrooms without teachers?

The answer seems clear enough to us. Certified teachers should start taking jobs outside the classroom only after there's a certified teacher in front of every blackboard.