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When considering whether the state adequately compensates teachers to achieve its educational goals, it’s important to consider benefits as part of the total package.

Benefits typically account for about one-third of a teacher’s total compensation package, said Michael Griffith, a senior policy analyst for the Education Commission of the States in Denver. A related article explores teacher salaries.

Because salaries and benefits are the biggest expense for operating schools, “detailed and reliable data on teacher pay and benefits are important in making informed education policy,” stated by the National Center for Education Statistics. The NCES is the primary federal source for data relating to education. “Unfortunately, available data do not readily permit reliable comparisons of teacher pay between states or accurate estimates of changes over time.”

Hawaii was listed as one of 10 states (out of 34 surveyed) that doesn’t keep teacher-level compensation data and one of nine that doesn’t collect any of the data elements the NCES sought in its survey.

The NCES concluded in 2006 that for tracking and reporting its teacher benefits.

The Hawaii Department of Education spent on salaries for instructors (the definition includes teachers, teaching assistants, librarians and library aides) for the 2007-2008 school year, and another $303 million on their benefits, which are paid separately through the Department of Budget and Finance. (To learn more about the education budget, visit our Education topic page.)

Parsing out what benefits teachers receive can be difficult. Based on interviews with officials from the Hawaii Department of Education, Hawaii State Board of Education and , it appears no one person can address the details of all the benefits.

Here are the details Civil Beat was able to pull together, using a combination of the teachers’ , information from the , information from the and information from the department.

Work Year

The work year for a teacher is 10 months long. The contract states it shall be no more than 190 days, which includes eight planning days. This amounts to 38 weeks of regular work.

The following is the other time off teachers can take during the 10-month year.

• Personal/Professional Leave: Up to five days per year with full pay, for tending to personal matters during the school day.
• Conference Leave: Up to three school days with pay.
• Sabbatical: The contract states that at least 50 teachers get sabbatical leave, granted at full pay for one semester or half pay for a full year. Sabbatical is conditional upon teachers meeting certain criteria.
• Sick leave: Maximum of 18 days of sick leave. If unused, teachers can carry over an unlimited amount of sick days. (The days they accrue can be used for additional pension credit.)
• Holidays: 13 state and national holidays.
• Vacation: 16 days
  

  • One day after Thanksgiving
  • Two weeks during winter recess
  • One week during spring recess

Health Insurance

Medical/Drug/Vision: Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association provides a number of health coverage options to all teachers and their eligible dependents. Eligible dependents are defined as a spouse, unmarried children under 19 and full-time students up to age 23. , the department pays¹:

To read examples of teacher health-care packages, turn to our teacher compensation page.

Here are a couple of examples:

• $177.87 per month for single coverage under Kaiser Medical & Drug, VSP Vision & ChiroPlan. Employee pays $148.90.
• $530.94 per month for family coverage under Kaiser Medical & Drug, VSP Vision & ChiroPlan. Employee pays $444.92.

Teachers have a pretax payroll deduction option for their part of the premiums. Retirees have .

Pension

Teachers are offered retirement through the Hawaii’s and are eligible for a . The three retirement plans available to them are a , a and a . All of them are indexed, with an automatic annual increase of 2.5 percent of the basic pension.

With the contributory plan:

• Teachers may retire at 55 with full benefits.
• With 25 years service, they can retire before 55 with a penalty of 5 percent per year.
• Teachers contribute 7.8 percent of their monthly gross salary, with 4.5 percent tax-deferred interest compounded annually.
• The pension formula is 2 percent x years of service x average monthly salary, which is defined as the average of earnings for the three highest paid years. So a teacher who worked for 25 years, from age 30 to age 55, would be eligible to retire at 55 with a pension of 50 percent of their earnings for their three highest paid years.
• The ability to make pre-tax contributions to supplement their regular retirement benefits.

With a non-contributory plan:

• Teachers with 30 or more years of service may retire at 55 with full benefits.
• With 20-29 years of service, teachers can retire between 55 and 62, with a penalty of 6 percent per year.
• Teachers do not contribute anything; the Department of Education contributes 15 percent of the employee’s compensation.
• The pension formula is 1.25 percent x years of service x the average final salary.

With the hybrid plan²:

• Teachers with 30 or more years of service may retire at 55 with full benefits.
• With 20-29 years of service, teachers can retire between 55 and 62 with a penalty of 5 percent per year.
• Teachers contribute 6 percent of their monthly gross salary, with 4.5 percent tax-deferred interest compounded annually; the department contributes 15 percent of each teacher’s compensation, but the amount is not credited to their accounts and is not refunded to them.
• The pension formula is 2 percent x years of service x the average final salary.

Other

• The Department of Education provides legal counsel for teachers sued for actions at work.
• Free counseling for up to three visits, available to employees experiencing personal problems that affect work
• Workers Compensation Benefits
• Temporary disability insurance benefits

Benefits for Hawaii’s teachers are roughly equivalent to teacher compensation packages on the mainland, said Wil Okabe, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association. But comparing all the possible benefits components can be complex because there are so many possible combinations. It is even more difficult when a state doesn’t keep the information in a usable format.