More School Time In Hawaii, But Only For Some
The battle over mandatory school time in Hawaii has ended with a compromise: Half of elementary schools will be required to increase instruction time next year, while multi-track and secondary schools get a reprieve to sort out logistics and define “instructional time.”
All schools (except multi-track schools) also will be required to have 180 days of class, according to the compromise, which was approved 8-0 Thursday by a conference committee and goes to both Legislative chambers for a final vote next week.
The battle began earlier this Legislative session when Senate Education Chairwoman Jill Tokuda proposed delaying the implementation of , passed last year, which progressively increases the minimum number of hours and days that elementary and secondary school teachers are required to spend teaching.
“We wanted to reassure people that Furlough Fridays would never happen again,” Tokuda said.
Nearly a quarter of the state’s 172 elementary schools are already in voluntary compliance with Act 167. (The faculty at an individual school can vote to ask for permission to deviate from the statewide school schedule — including adding or subtracting teaching hours.)
Tokuda’s proposed three-year delay was meant to give the Department of Education some wiggle room given the tight financial situation. The department had projected that negotiating those additional hours with the teachers union would cost the cash-strapped school system an additional $55 million.
When Tokuda later publicly announced that she would like to discuss options for taking steps toward honoring Act 167 while still holding off on full implementation, the teachers union went on the warpath.
“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,” Tokuda said in response to the onslaught of accusatory phone calls and emails from teachers. “There has got to be a way for us to do more.”
At the same time, she and House Education Chairman Roy Takumi both said that delaying Act 167 for multi-track and secondary schools makes sense — for multi-track schools because their tight scheduling poses logistical challenges for implementing the law’s requirements, and for secondary schools because they need a more specific definition for “instructional time.” Some U.S. school districts, for example, include extracurricular activities in instructional time.
“In hindsight after we passed Act 167, we realized it was important for us to clarify at the secondary level what counts as instructional time.”
