No second bonus for teachers
By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer
The state Department of Education says 6,675 teachers with advanced diplomas won't get bonuses this year because it is out of money.
Superintendent Pat Hamamoto and state negotiator Davis Yogi told officials of the teachers union last week that there is no money to pay for a second year of bonuses that teachers had expected.
Union officials have said they are disappointed with the decision and are looking at their legal options.
The so-called "P-track" bonuses for teachers with master's degrees and professional diplomas played a major role in settling a three-week strike by 13,000 public school teachers in April of last year but have been a bone of contention between the union and the state ever since.
Within days of the end of the strike, the state and the Hawai'i State Teachers Association disagreed over whether the bonuses applied to one year or both years of their new agreement.
The Hawai'i Labor Relations Board ruled in February that the bonuses applied to the first year of the two-year teachers contract and that both sides would have to negotiate bonuses for the second year.
But the board also found that the state has a commitment to provide "some sort" of bonus in the second year, and ordered the teams of negotiators back to the table.
The DOE received an additional $12.7 million in federal impact aid this year, which could have been used to pay for teacher salary bonuses under the labor board's ruling.
But DOE officials say that they have had to use the money instead to cover a $32 million shortfall in their budget and that there was never a commitment to use all of the excess federal impact aid for the bonuses. If the $12.7 million had to be used for bonuses, the DOE would have to cut programs further and eliminate positions, said spokesman Greg Knudsen.
"The second-year bonus was dependent on the availability of funds," Knudsen said. "We had a $32 million shortfall that had to be met."
Gov. Ben Cayetano said yesterday that the state clearly is facing a shortfall. Now didn't seem to be the time to consider a bonus or pay raise, he said.
"You can't squeeze blood out of a rock," Cayetano said. "If you don't have the money, you don't have the money."
The HSTA board will consider its legal options at its next meeting.
"They are going to be angry, but more so, it's really a feeling of disappointment, a feeling of not being valued, a feeling of being left out again," said HSTA President Karen Ginoza.
Cayetano said he hopes that HSTA leaders would recognize the state's tight finances and how it is still obligated to serve the needy and deal with expenses surrounding the federal mandate to improve services for special-needs students.
"I would hope that instead of talking about legal options and going out and riling up the rank and file ... , perhaps they would come in, be briefed by us as to what the state's fiscal situation is and perhaps go out and explain it to the rank and file," the governor said.
"And I think that most teachers are reasonable people."
Cayetano said the bonus issue could be raised in the next round of contract negotiations as the economy improves. Negotiators are supposed to start the next round of contract talks late this year.
Impact aid, which the bonuses were supposed to have come from, is federal money that compensates school districts that have a large military presence, but it can be used at the department's discretion. The excess is the difference between what the state originally expected to receive and what it actually received in federal impact aid — an amount that fluctuates every year. The state had expected to receive about $26 million this year but it received about $38 million instead.
"We are working with our attorneys to get this resolved," HSTA spokeswoman Danielle Lum said. "We are going to do everything in our power to get teachers the money they deserve."
Staff writer Lynda Arakawa and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
