Posted on: Monday, October 18, 2004
3,900 teachers facing pay cut
By Suzanne Roig
Advertiser Staff Writer
Hawai'i substitute teachers, already pressing a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in back pay, now have been told they're getting a 7 percent pay cut on Nov. 1.
An Oct. 8 Department of Education memo to the public schools' 3,900 substitute teachers states they will be paid $111.41 per day — $8.39 less than the current per diem pay of $119.80 for substitutes.
Pay for regular teachers is not affected, said Joan Husted, executive director of the Hawai'i State Teachers Association.
DOE spokesman Greg Knudsen yesterday said that because of legal issues, he could not comment on how the pay cut for substitutes came about. Husted said substitute teachers are not HSTA members and that she was not aware of the memo.
"I don't follow the substitute teachers, so I don't know what's involved," she said yesterday. "I have not seen the memo. The salary for (unionized) teachers is exactly the same as what we negotiated in April."
Pay for substitute teachers is the same as the entry pay rate for a certified teacher with four years of college education.
But there has been no recent change to regular teacher pay rates, so it was unclear yesterday why substitutes' pay is going down.
"There are a lot of substitutes who say they won't work after November 1 because of the lower pay," said David Garner, 54, a Maui resident who has been a DOE substitute teacher for 12 years. "There's a lack of respect from the DOE. These substitutes say they'll work somewhere else."
Garner is among substitute teachers who filed a class-action lawsuit in 2002 against the DOE seeking an estimated $25 million in back pay. The lawsuit claims the DOE has not paid substitutes in accordance with a 1996 law known as Act 89.
One of the lawyers for the teachers, Paul Alston, has said they should be getting $150 a day.
State attorneys say substitutes are being paid the correct amount.
On Oct. 7 Circuit Judge Karen Ahn ruled that the substitutes would not be able to seek back pay for work done before 2000, because of the statute of limitations. That means teachers will not be able to seek about $9 million of the $25 million they originally asked for in back pay.
Deputy Attorney General Jonathan Swanson that day urged Ahn to dismiss the lawsuit based on the doctrine that the state cannot be sued for money damages unless it authorizes such claims.
But Ahn said she wanted further research on whether the lawsuit can proceed on grounds that the state violated a contractual agreement with the substitutes for allegedly not paying them what they deserved.
About 1,000 substitute teachers, from a current pool of 3,900, are called in to work on any given day to fill in for teachers who are sick or can't otherwise work. The public school system has about 12,660 teachers.
Reach Suzanne Roig at sroig@honoluluadvertiser.com or 395-8831.
