But that hasn't happened, said substitute teacher David Garner, of Maui. "I've been cheated along with all thousands of the other substitute teachers," he said.

Garner is among substitutes who filed a class-action lawsuit against the state and the Department of Education demanding back pay based on that 8-year-old law, known as Act 89. At stake is an estimated $25 million for an estimated 9,000 substitute teachers.

State attorneys say substitutes already earn the correct amount, the same as instructors with four years of college education or who hold a bachelor's degree.

This morning, Circuit Judge Karen Ahn will hear arguments from lawyers representing the substitutes and the state attorney general. One of those attorneys, Paul Alston, says the substitutes now earn $119.80 a day but should be getting $150.

State attorneys say the total amount is significantly lower than $25 million, but can't say by how much because of the variables used to calculate back pay.

No matter how Ahn rules, the decision will be appealed to the Hawai'i Supreme Court. But if the substitutes prevail, the state will have to pay them even more money because they will be entitled to interest on the amount owed, their lawyers say.

No one disputes that substitute teachers play a key role in the state's public school system. The role is even more critical with the current teacher shortage, says Randy Hitz, dean of the College of Education at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

At the start of the current school year, Hawai'i's public schools had 357 teacher vacancies. The DOE had planned to continue hiring new teachers and to bring in substitutes.

"Anybody who goes into a classroom and takes charge of students for any length of time is important," he says. "Hawai'i is challenged right now to find qualified teachers for classrooms and especially challenged to find qualified substitute teachers."

Unlike the full-time teachers, who are represented by the Hawai'i State Teachers Association, substitutes have no union representation. The DOE pays them at a daily rate based on HSTA collective bargaining agreements.

The case hinges on Act 89, which says the daily pay rate for substitutes "shall be based on the annual entry step salary rate established for a Class II teacher on the most current teacher's salary schedule."

Class I teachers at the time had teaching certificates; Class II teachers had a certificate based on four years of college education; and higher classes of teachers had certificates with more years of higher education.

One defense raised by the state is that the statute of limitations bars any recovery of back pay for the period before November 2000, two years before the suit was filed. That would knock out an estimated $9 million of the $25 million, according to the lawyers for the substitute teachers.

The attorney general's office also contends in its court papers that the law is unclear. They say the lawyers for the substitute teachers have taken a "limited and distorted view" of the legislative history and HSTA collective bargaining agreements.

They say the law referred to collective bargaining agreements by saying it is based on the "most current teacher's salary schedule," which is negotiated by the DOE and HSTA.

The collective bargaining agreement later reclassified the teachers, essentially saying a teacher who once fit in the Class II category now would be in the Class I teacher category, they say.

Under the bargaining agreements that redefine the qualifications, substitute teachers' pay should be based on the pay for instructors and teachers who have bachelor's degrees, the rate of pay the substitutes now receive, the state attorneys argue.

But lawyers for the substitutes say the state has "blatantly violated" the law.

The DOE "dreamed up" linking the substitute teachers' pay to the lower pay for instructors once it realized it did not know where to find the extra money and only after it faced a lawsuit, according to court papers filed by their lawyers.

The DOE knew it was paying substitute teachers illegally at the lower rate and has "lost all credibility" with the substitutes, they say.

They argue that the state is essentially urging Ahn to ignore the language of the law and substitute "Class II teachers" with instructors and Class I teachers. They also dispute that the reclassification justifies a lower pay for the substitutes and point out that the 1996 provision was never amended.

Alston says the driving force behind the lawsuit is Garner, 54, a substitute teacher on Maui for 12 years.

"David was the first person to see the issue," Alston says. "He repeatedly raised the issue with the Department of Education, with the Board of Education and worked with a group of other substitutes on Maui who worked very hard over a long period of time in trying to get the DOE to pay attention to this."

Garner recalls that he first started really wondering about his pay after the HSTA won a pay boost for teachers in 1997, but he never saw any increase in his paycheck.

"I was getting all kinds of conflicting answers from the governor's office, the DOE, the HSTA," he says.

In 2000, he found out about the 1996 law. "I thought I had been lied and cheated to," he says.

He says he didn't think he needed a lawyer.

But when he later saw the amount of money at issue, he decided to seek legal help. "I realized the astronomical amount of money they had cheated us out of," he says.

Garner doesn't know exactly how much he would get if he prevails in the lawsuit. He figures it will be in the thousands of dollars, but it won't come close to covering what he's invested in the case in terms of time and postage, ink, paper and long-distance phone calls, he says.

But he says money isn't his motivation.

"The state should follow its own laws and do what is right for the nearly 10,000 people who have worked as substitute teachers since 1996," he says. "This is not about the money as much as the respect we deserve from our employer."