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Furlough Fridays have become as Hawaiian as pau hana. The topic dominates the state’s conversation, with officials and parents wrestling over how much money and how many people are necessary to end them.

But little attention is paid to what could have been done to prevent them. The lessons from what happened in 2009 before Furlough Fridays were implemented might help prevent in the future other steps that damage education.

When board members announced that they would furlough education employees for 34 Fridays over the next two years, they said it was in response to dramatic budget cuts by the Legislature and Gov. Linda Lingle.

Lingle had for every state employee. But because state law does not give her the authority to order furloughs for the Department of Education, Lingle instead imposed a $270 million, or 14 percent, cut. This came on top of other substantial cuts earlier that year. The $270 million was roughly equivalent to three furloughs per month — or 30 per school year — and Lingle encouraged the board and department negotiators in that direction. She also suggested the department supplement its savings from furloughs by shutting down some schools.

The board of education was stunned by the scope of her proposals and sought other alternatives to keep children in school.

“The (board of education) protected instructional days by reducing funds for part-time jobs and supplies, closing a school, eliminating hundreds of positions and leaving vacancies unfilled,” Hawaii State Board of Education spokesman Alex Da Silva said.

The board, education department, teachers union and governor then resorted to furloughs to absorb the remainder of the budget cuts while still resisting mass layoffs and increasing class sizes — “actions that would have lowered educational quality instead of quantity.”

Just as the governor, education board, department and union have been at odds over how to end Furlough Fridays, they couldn’t find agreement in 2009 on steps that would have avoided them in the first place — and in at least one case, a potentially significant idea was never considered.

“The most obvious alternative was for teachers and other essential school-workers simply to take temporary cuts in pay — i.e., without reduction in work days,” said Randall Roth, a professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law and former adviser to Lingle.

He and his colleagues in the University of Hawaii system accepted temporary pay cuts, to be repaid with raises when Hawaii regained its financial footing.

Hawaii State Teachers Association President Wil Okabe said pay cuts were part of the board and union’s original agreement in 2009.

“At first, all the unions tried to have a global agreement for a 5 percent cut in pay,” said Okabe. “But the governor’s stand was for furloughs, so we went back to the negotiating table to work out an agreement for furloughs.”

But the cuts weren’t enough for the governor or the board.

“The state made an across-the-board pay cut offer (to all state employees) for more than five percent,” said Marie Laderta, Lingle’s chief negotiator. “But the United Public Workers were the ones who came back and were the first to mention furloughs.”

Laderta, of the Hawaii Office of Collective Bargaining, said she could not disclose the exact amount of the original pay cut proposal, due to collective bargaining confidentiality agreements.

Because the UPW is the biggest state government union, Laderta said, Lingle took its furlough suggestion and in July last year proposed furloughs instead of pay cuts. Lingle does not have the legal authority to furlough department of education employees, so she cut the department’s budget and advised the board to consider furloughs.

“But the governor has never tried to dictate to them what to do,” said Laderta, who added it is not unusual for the board and union to negotiate themselves. “I can personally testify that she always said furloughs should not be taking away from classroom time. She said it many, many, many times.”

The other alternative to Furlough Fridays, as one school finance expert pointed out, would have been for the board to institute furloughs but extend the length of the other school days to mitigate the loss of instruction time. The board could have extended each of the remaining 163 school days by approximately half an hour to make up for the roughly 93 hours of lost instruction time. But this idea never came up until after an agreement had been reached.

Extending the length of the school day would have involved the same collective bargaining process that ended in a stalemate between the governor on one side and the board and union on the other. But Roth, a member of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, said it is possible to find resolutions that don’t end up costing students instructional time the way Furlough Fridays have.

Okabe of the union said that by the time they thought of lengthening school days, they had already reached a two-year furlough agreement.

Garrett Toguchi, chairman of the Hawaii State Board of Education, said the union had no incentive to discuss the length of the school day because it already had a two-year agreement in place and had made some other concessions.

“We were even surprised they gave up planning days,” Toguchi said.

The problem with the public school system, Roth said, is that state law allows unions like the HSTA to “hold students hostage” during negotiations.

“I certainly did not enjoy taking a cut in pay for the same work,” Roth said. “But to me it was virtually unthinkable simply to teach less class sessions and thereby endanger my students’ academic progress.”

Okabe said the union has demonstrated its commitment to the students and their parents.

“We have shown repeatedly that we were willing to compromise and be flexible, and we listened to the parents and what they said they wanted,” he said. “We feel that was more than the governor did.”