Posted on 04/28/2005 12:21:28 PM PDT by MikeHu
The Hawaii State Teachers’ Union (HSTA) is asking Hawaii teachers to ratify a new two-year contract Thursday, April 28, that will reward the HSTA’s upper echelon with the largest salary increases while cutting entry-level Class II teacher pay to $28,357 from the $35,486 won during negotiations last year.
A computer assisted analysis shows the contract will allow teachers on Step 1 and 2 on the salary schedule to move up in 2006 after a year stuck at the lower pay scale.
Some teachers believe the cut to new teacher pay is the unintended result of Superintendent Pat Hamamoto and HSTA Executive Director Joan Husted’s October 2004 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) designed to cut the per diem rate of substitute teachers rather than follow a 1996 law tying substitutes’ pay to entry-level Class II teacher salary.
Critics of the new contract say the cut to new teacher pay is hypocritical of the Hawaii State Teachers’ Union, because its leaders made pleas to the public via media and press releases to convince them higher teacher pay is the only way to attract and retain quality teachers. Yet the Hawaii State Teachers’ Union and Department of Education goal for retention of new teachers is not provided for in the HSTA contract.
In addition, although new teachers will pay a disproportionate portion of their salary on the unions’ annual dues of over $600, they will not have the same rights as their colleagues under their collective bargaining agreement.
Specifically, probationary teachers (1st or 2nd year) will not have access to the grievance process beyond the informal Step 1 meeting with the principal.
Also the salary schedule will not go into effect until the 6th pay period after the start of the 2005 school year. Increased HSTA dues, however, will be removed beginning with teachers’ first paycheck of the 2005-06 school year.
Under the new union contract, tenured teacher will only be evaluated once in a 5-year-cycle. The contract contains no reference to non-tenured teachers being evaluated. Non-tenured teachers may only take procedural errors to Step 1 of the grievance process. The principal will have the sole discretion of firing the new teacher.
Probationary teachers also will have to remain in hard-to-fill and hard-to-staff areas such as Waianae, Nankuli, Pahoa, Kohala, Hana, Molokai, Lanai and so on for a minimum of two years.
Movement to a single calendar instead of a 3-month stretch during the summer will mean less opportunity for professional development for the new teacher who will need it to move up to higher classes within the HSTA salary construct.
Nevertheless, new teachers may suffer temporarily, they say, because the DOE has declared the PRAXIS test will be "no-fail" for the next two years, thus insuring certification as "highly-qualified teacher" under that provision of the No Child Left Behind Act at the beginning of the 2005 and 2006 school year for any taking the test.
The net effect of the new contract will be to take money out of the pockets new teachers and substitute teachers – many of whom are retired HSTA teachers – and pad the wallets of the top-scale union teacher veterans. At the same time, the contract imposes penalties on some "expendable" teachers and not others.
Laura Brown is the education reporter and researcher for Hawaii Reporter and the education analyist for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Reach her via email at mailto:Laurabrown@hawaii.rr.com
When I was in teaching, I felt the new teachers should be paid as much as the oldest teachers because the job was more difficult for a new teacher than someone who is supposedly experienced in the filed. If the job is not a whole lot easier after twenty years of doing the same thing, you're in the wrong field. And really, what the teaching profession wants to be doing is attracting people who can do, and have done more than just gone to school all their lives taking education courses; those are the people who have a lot to teach and not those who have only learned to be "teachers." The only reason a longstanding teacher should remain in the profession is because paid the same as any other job, teacheing is what they'd really want to do and enjoy and are rewarded in that way.
As a former union organizer, the major rationale for underpaying those at the bottom was so that they'd complain loudly so those at the top could justify their disproportionate grab of the across the board raises. In the case of Hawaii, they lower the pay of those actually doing the classroom teaching to raise the salaries of "educational administrators." I'm sure it's the same deal with all the teachers unions. Please confirm.
$28,357 really does not seem like a wage someone could live on in Hawaii.
That will ensure a qualified generation of new teachers does something else. How can someone earn 28K in Hawaii and not live in a van/stationwagon parked close to a public restroom?
Yes, the teachers with seniority (and tenure) are the ones who control the contract megotiations, and will ALWAYS line their own pockets first.
Plus, it is to the union's advantage to keep entry-level salaries low, to use as a weapon in public relations campaigns. Many naive taxpayers look only at the first-year salary, not at how the money is distributed across the pay scale.
(Ex-teacher here. Been on two contract negotiation teams.)
>>Unions are the only reason teachers get paid a wage that's close to fair.<<
Hmmm. Texas doesn't have teacher unions and have a much higher starting salary.
Now, that's just plain silly.
Think about what you're saying. In essence what you're saying is that the new check out person should be paid as much as the long time check out person, the new fireman as much as the old-timer, the new pilot as much as the senior pilot. All because the new guy always has to work twice as hard just to keep up. What are you gonna do with the new baseball player, spot him a couple runs to make sure it's fair?
Earth to Mike...........time to leave la la land and come to earth.
They lowered the pay of the substitute teachers from $119 to $112 a day -- to fund raises for the highest paid "educational administrators" prior to this contract -- which merely exacerbates this trend of unfairness. So they're making it virtually impossible to get new teachers into the field -- guaranteeing higher paying salaries for those already in it and should be fairly well established. That seems to be the only function of unions these days -- to artificially keep salaries high while limiting those who would do the job in an unrestricted labor market. They create artificial scarcities. If they paid all teachers the same $50,000 and eliminate all those rules and hoops one has to jump through to get the job and stay in favor, it'd be a whole other story.
And of course, classroom achievements must be plummeting to underline the urgency for $100,000 salaries for kindergarten teachers.
They lowered the pay of the substitute teachers from $119 to $112 a day -- to fund raises for the highest paid "educational administrators" prior to this contract -- which merely exacerbates this trend of unfairness. So they're making it virtually impossible to get new teachers into the field -- guaranteeing higher paying salaries for those already in it and should be fairly well established. That seems to be the only function of unions these days -- to artificially keep salaries high while limiting those who would do the job in an unrestricted labor market. They create artificial scarcities. If they paid all teachers the same $50,000 and eliminate all those rules and hoops one has to jump through to get the job and stay in favor, it'd be a whole other story.
And of course, classroom achievements must be plummeting to underline the urgency for $100,000 salaries for kindergarten teachers.
So why should they be lowering new teachers pay to pay more for senior pay of those who aren't even in the classroom?
And the media reports only the distortions -- and not the clarity of the process.
Like everybody else, I used to think the media was just naive and uninformed. It is much more insidious than that.
Sure doesn't. When my wife was looking to get hired on somewhere, the folks from Hawaii were at every single event and job fair she went to. Everyone always came over to their booth and looked - wow, Hawaii! - but after seeing what they were offering, just about everyone realized that the salary levels were such that the only way it was affordable was if you lived in a refrigerator carton under a bridge and ate cat food.
You are absolutely right when you say that teachers get their current wages because of unions. Unions have absolutely nothing to do with the education of our children. Their sole purpose is to get more money for their members, nothing else. In Hawaii, education takes nearly 1/3 of the state budget and is centrally controlled. Many schools are in a state of disrepair, teachers are underpaid (unions responsibility) and more schools are in corrective action. Charter schools, out of control of the unions, are making steady gains in test scores, new Charter schools are started every year and teachers leave public schools for Charter schools or private schools as fast as they can. All the while, the state legislature and Department of Education continue to underfund Charter schools and unions demand more money. The NEA, unions and political pandering are major impedements to education in Hawaii as I'm sure it is elsewhere.
$28K is probably at least the median income for an individual even in Hawaii. But when the union tells its story, the median is $100,000 -- or should be. Or it is the median household income. Or the median income for a household of four. Or the median for the top half of the population. Always some bogus statistic because the education is so bad nobody can tell the difference! -- and the writing in the newspapers is always this kind of obfuscation for corruption.
If I'm really good at what I do, it takes me one hour to do a job a less skilled person may take all day to do -- if at all.
That's the case for averaging out the salaries. The problem is attracting new teachers and keeping them beyond the first years. But a person who's already been there for twenty years is not likely to be going elsewhere -- yet those are the very ones whose pay is being boosted, to the detriment of those we really need -- those fresh, idealistic people with a passion for teaching. And not only those who are looking towards retirement so they can collect a pension as well as be rehired back at their old jobs -- for double pay! That's the new gambit in civil service.
If you had been in the trenches of the public school system teaching for the past 25 years and the powers to be decided to pay a teacher fresh out of college the same as you, YOU WOULD BE PISSED OFF! Now think about it!
No, think about it. If you like what you do, you do it without making financial compensation your primary goal. You mentioned pilots... A LOT of them do it because they really like zooming around in the skies, the money sometimes comes later. Good teachers like to teach, and if thet get paid well, that is good also. But pay is not the determining facter.
MikeHu makes some thoughtful and reasoned arguments. Please give them some thought before blindly responding with a knee-jerk reaction.
Well, yeah - you reward the burnouts who don't give a crap about their jobs and are just looking forward to retirement, at the expense of new teachers, and then I bet they're actually surprised that the average age for teachers is about 147. Rank hath its privileges, after all.
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