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The optimistic talk about everybody working together to improve Hawaii’s schools went out the window Wednesday.

The Hawaii State Teachers Association went on the warpath against the chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee.

Jill Tokuda said she was “upset and disappointed” by the union’s effort to shut down her attempt to increase class time for students.

The drama started Wednesday morning when the union sent out an email encouraging members to protest Tokuda’s proposal.

“We have just been blindsided by Senator Jill Tokuda,” the email states. “She is amending the bill that delayed implementation of Act 167. Her amendment means Act 167 will begin next school year and may add two additional instructional days and/or more instructional hours to the school calendar. The implication is that this comes without compensation.”

By 2 p.m. Wednesday, she had received hundreds of calls and more than 1,200 emails from teachers. The senator’s office phone was ringing “off the hook,” she said.

At issue is , which progressively increases, over a period of five years beginning in 2011, the number of hours that public school teachers must spend instructing students. Last year, incensed parents successfully petitioned for Act 167 after their students lost 17 days of class to the infamous furloughs.

Last month, Tokuda proposed delaying implementation of the new law until 2014, but she told the union Tuesday night that she doesn’t think that meets the intent of the law or satisfy parents who were already upset over last year’s Furlough Fridays.

“I wanted to show a good-faith effort for meeting the requirements of Act 167, and I wanted to have an open and transparent discussion about the possibilities for making good on some points of it,” she said. “There has got to be a way for us to do more.”

The Senate Education Committee recognized last month that money woes would make it difficult for the Department of Education to afford paying teachers for the additional hours this year. So the committee used to propose postponing Act 167 until 2014.

“My main concern was making sure that when we got out of session, we would not be placing the Department of Education and the governor in a difficult position where they would have to cut schools in another area to pay for implementing Act 167,” Tokuda said, about delaying the measure. “There weren’t any options on the table for them at that point, and we felt we really needed to put that out there, given the budget cuts the department is already facing.”

If Act 167 were enacted this year, it’s estimated that it would cost the Department of Education about $55 million to negotiate the additional hours with teachers. That $55 million would have to come from some other area of the department, Tokuda said. It might result in teacher layoffs, larger class sizes, reduced allocations to individual schools, or any number of other measures that would have a direct impact on students.

But Tokuda and her colleagues came to believe that a total delay would send the wrong message to constituents, parent groups and students who fought last year for a minimum amount of instruction time.

“The whole reason we passed Act 167 was for the kids,” Tokuda said. “The intent of it was to show that we really mean never to compromise their instructional time again, no matter what kind of fiscal crisis we are in.”

She said Hawaii ought to be able to at least keep the intent of the act by beginning to take steps toward more school time — even if the department can’t promise all the hours laid out in the original law. She hoped to open that dialog with an amendment to her postponement proposal.

Tokuda met with lobbyists for HSTA on Tuesday night to share her intentions and request their participation in finding a solution to the dilemma. By 6 a.m. Wednesday morning, though, the union had all hands on deck in protest.

The same lobbyists Tokuda met with Tuesday sent out the email Wednesday morning (Read the union email¹). The email, Tokuda told Civil Beat, contains a lot of misinformation.

“I’m a calm person, but I am very upset and disappointed by the responses I’ve seen from teachers telling me to kill the bill,” Tokuda said during a conference committee meeting Wednesday, her voice shaking.

The irony, she said, is that killing this bill would mean teachers will be required to fulfill all the requirements of Act 167 beginning this school year, while HB945 was intended to alleviate some of the deadline pressure.

“I’m frustrated,” she said. “I’m discouraged by the tenor the emails, which say essentially that we don’t appreciate teachers and what they do.”

Tokuda is most frustrated by the fact that groups who have prided themselves lately for their collaboration on education efforts like Race to the Top are once again digging into their respective trenches.

“I am really hoping that we can put all of our differences behind us and find a way to make this work for the students,” she said. “I’m hoping calmer heads prevail here. The Legislature is just trying to do what is right for the kids.”

House Education Chairman Roy Takumi said that both he and Tokuda believe it would be prudent to defer some of the hours for schools, but he said both committees remain open to working something out. Meanwhile, he reiterated the importance of remaining faithful to the intent of Act 167.

The committees meet in conference again Monday, April 25.