Key Education Reforms Depend on Bargaining
Hawaii leaders may have rejoiced too soon over last year’s education victories.
A longer school day and teacher evaluations, depend on collective bargaining agreements with the unions — the Hawaii State Teachers Association, and — and possibly two school boards.
Board of Education and HSTA negotiators have already begun meeting to hammer out a new two-year contract, but if last year’s Furlough Fridays taught us anything, it’s that union negotiations do not always yield the results lawmakers and education leaders expect.
Longer School Days
Nonetheless, education advocates celebrated last May when the Hawaii Legislature passed that set a minimum of 190 instructional days for Hawaii public schools beginning in 2015. The current school year contains 180 instructional days. The bill instructed schools to begin phasing in the longer school year by first adding on to the number of instructional hours in 2011-13.
| Instructional Hours | Elementary | Secondary |
|---|---|---|
| 2009-11 Contract | 849 | 771 |
| 2011-13 Requirement (not yet negotiated) | 915 | 990 |
| Difference | +66 (7%) | +219 (28%) |
The national average of hours spent teaching for elementary teachers is 1,097, according to by the , an international policy forum. The national average for secondary teachers is 1,068.
Although the new minimum instruction hours are already law, Department of Education Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi told legislators at a budget hearing in January that they are going to have to be agreed on in collective bargaining negotiations.
It’s also going to be expensive, Matayoshi observed, because the unions are going to expect something in return for the additional time they are expected to spend at school.
The going might be even tougher because teachers are already smarting from having to take furloughs on some of their planning days. They sacrificed six of their eight planning days in collective bargaining last year in order to end the 17 scheduled Furlough Fridays for students. The state came up with the money to reinstate the remaining 11 days.
There might be alternatives that wouldn’t require collective bargaining though, former HSTA director Joan Husted told Civil Beat. For example, the board of education could make a policy change that would hire more teachers to allow existing teachers to spend more time on instruction instead of preparation.
Regardless of whether instructional time is lengthened through collective bargaining or board policies, it’s going to cost money.
“Money has always stopped a lengthened school year for kids,” Husted said.
Accountability
Hawaii promised in its successful Race to the Top application last year to develop an “annual performance-based evaluation” for teachers and principals, with 50 percent of the evaluation based on student achievement. Although both the principals and teachers unions signed the application, HSTA executive director Al Nagasako told Civil Beat last fall that nobody knew yet what those teacher evaluations would look like. Even less has been said about principal evaluations.
Because the new collective bargaining agreement for Hawaii teachers is scheduled to go into effect July 1, negotiators are going to have to figure the evaluations out quickly.
It is possible the contract could include a new plan for evaluating teachers, Husted said, but there is a lot of disagreement about the most judicious formula for judging teacher effectiveness.
Hawaii is not alone in its uncertainty. Grading teachers has become one of the most controversial education subjects nationwide in the last year. Most states and even districts have their own differing theories about the best method for determining which teachers are most effective, and how they should be rewarded for their success.
Even if the board and the union come to an agreement about how to hold teachers accountable, the solution also will inevitably cost a lot, Husted said. Teachers are currently evaluated once every five years on a rotating schedule.
“We used to have evaluations every three years, and principals were telling us they just could not do it,” said Husted. “The only way we’re going to make any kind of evaluation meaningful is to invite other people to do it. Any way you look at it, it’s going to be expensive.”
