Wai'alae teachers negotiate new pact

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

They started last summer: a dedicated group who admitted they weren't quite sure what they were doing.

Now a year and more than 52 weekly meetings later, the members of the bargaining team have led Wai'alae Elementary School to become the first public school in the state to negotiate its own teachers contract.

"I think the wonderful thing about it was you had lay people doing contract negotiations.," Wai'alae Principal Susan Miname said. "It is possible. We did it in as simple language as possible."

The contract falls outside of the behemoth state agreement that covers the state's 13,000 public school teachers and is unique to Wai'alae, which was the state's first regular public school to convert to a charter school.

While the school's negotiating team used the contract of the Hawai'i State Teachers Association as a jumping-off point, their agreement reflects issues unique to their charter school: a slightly higher pay scale, more teacher and community involvement in key campus decisions and the recognition that the charter school cannot afford to give sabbaticals to teachers.

The contract was ratified unanimously by teachers this month.

The HSTA has memorandums of agreement with all of the state's 22 operating charter schools, but will encourage others to follow Wai'alae's lead and negotiate their own contracts.

"Your faculty and your school board and your parents and your kids got into this charter school because they had a vision of why this school would be different than other schools," said Joan Husted, executive director of the Hawai'i State Teachers Association. "You can't just adopt the contract everyone else has."

The novice negotiating team worked with a federal mediator and an HSTA representative. They chose an interest-based bargaining model, a collaborative method in which the group tries to design the contract around specific campus goals. If, for example, they agree that they want teachers to have time for preparation, they might work out an off-period or work days.

"You put on the table the things you really care about and you don't have to hide the ball," said Mary Lucasse, a school board member. "We also had a commitment to not exhaust ourselves. The teachers had been working all day. We would meet from 6 to 8 p.m. and we tried to not go past that."

Everyone did homework and research.

Lucasse, an attorney, said the bargaining group would work on what they wanted in the contract, then she would go back to her office and shape it into legal language. Then the group would review and tweak the wording.

"I think it took us so long because we were all volunteers and were new at it," Lucasse said. "We had a commitment as a group to not doing less than the HSTA and DOE. We had to work through the contract and make sure that it didn't conflict with anything in the HSTA contract. We taught ourselves as we went."

"We were thinking of all of the work that has gone into teacher contracts since the first one in 1973," said Lloyd Nakamura, technology coordinator at Wai'alae. "There's a lot of work and a lot of history as to why things are the way they are. We wanted to make sure that we didn't set a precedent that took away from anyone else."

The group reached agreement easily on some issues such as the pay scale, which goes about $4,000 beyond the DOE contract at the top end of the scale.

"To be honest, there were some points of disagreement," Nakamura said. "We didn't see eye to eye on everything."

The group had to work through issues of accountability and evaluations, eventually agreeing to adopt a DOE pilot program for teacher evaluations.

"Basically for us I think the significant thing with our contract is that there is a commitment to professionalism," Nakamura said. "We're trying to raise the respect and the recognition that teaching is a profession. In our contract there's a stated commitment to decision by consensus, shared leadership and shared decision-making."

The contract goes into effect in July. When the Wai'alae bargaining committee returns in November to work on a two-year contract, Husted said she doubts they will have to make major changes in the document they already have.

"They've come up with a contract tailored for that school," Husted said. "It's a public pronouncement that they actually like each other and trust each other and don't have any problem involving each other in the running of the school."

Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.