EDITORIAL
An obligation remains on state teachers' pay

Gov. Ben Cayetano may be right that the negotiations are over, for all practical purposes, on a bonus for teachers with advanced degrees this year.

A return to the table was ordered by the Hawai'i Labor Relations Board after a dispute arose shortly after the settlement of last April's teacher strike. The board, as Advertiser education writer Jennifer Hiller has reported, ruled in February that the teachers indeed had won bonuses at the negotiating table, but that they applied specifically only to the first year of the two-year teachers' contract. The teachers maintained the state agreed to bonuses in both years.

But the board also found that the state has a commitment to provide "some sort" of bonus in the second year. And the board said that bonus must come from "excess impact aid funds available."

Cayetano and Superintendent Pat Hamamoto have made it clear that those funds are gone, necessarily spent to cover the DOE's budget shortfall. Had the money not been spent on the shortfall, there actually were other provisions of the teachers' contract that would have gone unfunded.

The Hawai'i State Teachers Association presumably isn't ready to give up on this fight; they may sue or revisit the HLRB. But the money is still gone.

Moving forward, then, we know this much:

• The state still has an obligation, as pointed out by the HLRB, to the 6,675 teachers with advanced degrees. If that obligation can't be met this year, as it appears, then it should carry forward to negotiation of the next contract.

• The teachers, for now at least, have lost in their battle to have advanced degrees rewarded with an ongoing pay differential, as opposed to a one-time bonus. That's progress; former superintendent Paul LeMahieu had set the department in motion toward a scheme that rewards classroom performance rather than past credentials, and we hope that momentum continues.

• It's not too soon for the state and for candidates running for state office to give serious thought to the next contract negotiations. Money will continue to be tight; and although starting teachers received a big raise in the last pact, we have a long way to go in creating appropriate incentives for the classroom results we demand.