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Former Governor and current U.S. Senate candidate Linda Lingle said on that the Hawaii State Board of Education promised her the now-infamous furlough days would not be scheduled on school instructional days.

Furthermore, she says she wishes she hadn’t trusted the board — and the fact that she did now ranks among her top regrets about her time as governor.

Furlough Fridays ended up robbing students of 17 school days in the 2009-2010 school year, before they were ended thanks to emergency appropriations from the state.

Here’s the statement ¹ Lingle made to Hawaii News Now’s Tannya Joaquin about that notorious time:

Well especially with the furloughs, I wish I had not taken the word of the BOE that they would implement a furlough on non-instructional days. And that was a promise they made to me, and so I went along with them. And when it came out that the schedule was on instructional days, my entire administration was shocked by that. I would not have believed them based on what ended up happening. So when I look back, I think it was a mistake to take their word at that time.

It’s not the first time she’s pinned responsibility for the debacle on others. in October 2009 that Lingle blamed negotiators for the furlough days that ended up on instructional days:

Lingle was candid when asked if she regretted allowing the contracts to include the loss of so many school days. “I rarely second guess myself, but on this one I certainly did,” Lingle said. “I assumed that they would do what was in the best interest of the students, and I don’t think they did. I don’t think their decision was in the best interest of the students. I think it was in the best interest of getting the contract resolved and we were all focused on that, myself included. But looking back, I think it would have been better to stand up and say, ‘Well, we just can’t settle it this way.’ But I did make that decision for them and the University of Hawaii.'”

She also told Associated Press reporter Mark Niesse in November 2010, just before leaving office, that the Board of Education with the school day furloughs.

Is she right to deflect the responsibility?

Civil Beat emailed Lingle’s campaign to ask for an explanation of her claim, as is our policy for Fact Checks. Campaign communications director Lenny Klompus, who was also Lingle’s senior communications adviser, responded:

To the best of several individuals recollection, on at least two or more occasions Governor Lingle, her Chief Negotiator and deputy, her Senior Policy Advisor, and Senior Advisor-Communications (me) sat across the table from the DOE superintendent Pat Hamamoto and at least one member of the BOE, who made representations that furloughs would be on non-instructional days.

Again, they said this on more than one occasion.

There is nothing more to add to Governor Lingle’s statement.

Civil Beat’s phone calls to Hamamoto were not returned. Former Hawaii State Board of Education Chairman Garrett Toguchi told us that the board “made no representation that furloughs would have been on only non-instructional days,” the same thing he told the Associated Press in 2010.

Statewide Furloughs

In June 2009, Lingle all state employees to take three furlough days per month to help close the state’s nearly $1 billion budget deficit. State law did not allow her to furlough Department of Education employees, however, because the department had its own elected board.

She instead imposed a 14-percent spending restriction on the department for the 2009-2010 school year, which meant a budget cut of about $192 million. That was the equivalent of three furlough days per month, said then-Board of Education spokesman Alex Da Silva.

The board tried to find other ways to save money by cutting funds for part-time jobs and supplies, closing a school, leaving vacancies unfilled and eliminating hundreds of positions.

Those actions didn’t absorb the full impact of the department’s budget cut, though, so negotiators had to find a way to absorb it through bargaining.

On Sept. 14, the Department of Education and Board of Education reached an agreement with the Hawaii State Teachers Association and Lingle announced that her negotiators, budget director and attorney general were and would soon reach a decision on whether to endorse it.

On Sept. 18, her administration with the union, which included a 7.9 percent pay cut for teachers and called for 17 furlough days for teachers on a 10-month schedule and 21 furlough days for those on a 12-month schedule.

Lingle released a that day endorsing the deal and acknowledging that her negotiators were involved.

“I am pleased that the State has reached a settlement with the Hawai’i State Teachers Association. This was a collaborative effort with the Department of Education and Board of Education taking the lead in the negotiations, in coordination with the Administration’s negotiating team. I appreciate the hard work and commitment of all the parties involved in the negotiations.

“This has not been a normal or easy process given the unprecedented economic and fiscal challenges, and there are things that none of us necessarily wanted to do, but that we had to do in order to address the growing budget shortfall, and live within our means.

“We greatly value our teachers and respect the work they do every day to teach our children. I appreciate the patience they have demonstrated throughout this process.

“It is important now that we all move forward so that our teachers can focus on their students to ensure they get the best possible education.”

Lingle doesn’t blame anybody in her statement, the way she did recently. And she says there were things “we had to do,” implying that while she knew the furloughs wouldn’t be popular, the administration and education leaders had no choice.

The schedule for the furlough days came out only after she released the statement. It was then that Lingle says she was shocked that some of the furloughs were scheduled for school days.

But she shouldn’t have been, former Board of Education chairman Toguchi told Civil Beat, because they weren’t a shock to anyone else involved in the negotiations for furloughs.

At that time teachers only had eight non-instructional work days in their contract, so it would have been mathematically impossible for teachers to take 17 furlough days without taking at least nine of them on instructional days, unless they took them on paid holidays. And because the deal was struck after the school year began, teachers had already used at least two of their non-instructional work days, so there were even fewer non-school days on which they could take furloughs.

Toguchi said it would have made no sense for Lingle to expect furloughs to apply to paid holidays.

“That would have been just a pay cut,” he said. “A furlough would have been a day when they would have been working — it’s the no pay, no work principle. Since they don’t work on a holiday, it wouldn’t have been a furlough. And that’s what Lingle wanted, was furloughs.”

While a member of the board may have told Lingle the board would try to minimize furloughs on instructional days, he said, he would not have promised that when he knew there were a limited number of non-instructional days to use for furloughs.

Civil Beat asked for further clarification from Lingle’s campaign after receiving its email statement, but did not receive a response.

“Her people were involved in it, and her people were the ones who ultimately signed off on a contract,” Toguchi said. “Not only that, the Budget and Finance director, Attorney General and chief negotiators reviewed the proposal with her before she agreed to sign off.”

Bottom Line: The grade must be unverifiable because we can’t confirm whether another Board of Education member promised that furloughs would be on non-instructional days. The only way the district could have achieved the savings it needed without losing instructional days would have been to furlough (not pay) 10-month teachers on all but one paid state and national holiday. (Few teachers work 12 months.) But taking an unpaid day on a holiday doesn’t meet the definition of furlough, which is a leave of absence from work. Lingle had representatives at the bargaining table and she had to sign off on the agreement. She didn’t criticize furloughs until they became a lightning rod for parents and a black eye for the state. So it’s understandable that there are questions about her assertion that she was surprised and that it was the board’s fault.