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Turns out teacher absenteeism in Hawaii isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be.

That was the conclusion Hawaii Board of Education Human Resource Committee members came to after perusing data presented to them at a meeting Tuesday.

BOE members in February demanded that the department explain why teachers take so many sick days during the school year. They were referencing published in a local newspaper earlier this year, which reported that Hawaii teachers last school year were absent from the classroom 17 days on average.

The board was also disturbed by turnover statistics, but data presented Tuesday indicated that many teachers leave their jobs for reasons beyond the department’s control.

With regard to absenteeism, teachers were indeed absent 17 days each year, Diana Niles-Hansen, the DOE’s senior director of human resources, said Tuesday. But that figure oversimplifies what teachers are actually doing with their time, she said.

“‘Sick leave’ may be one of the primary misnomers,” Niles-Hansen said. “It (the number) was, in effect, correct — but let’s drill down.”

Niles-Hansen at the February meeting attempted to reassure board members that the numbers they read in the newspaper article — which were provided by the department’s Office of Human Resources — didn’t accurately depict how often teachers take sick days. But BOE members were dissatisfied with the information provided at that meeting, requesting that officials prepare more concrete and precise data that would better help the board guide policy addressing personnel concerns.

The statistics alarmed board members, who pointed to that showed strong correlations between teacher absenteeism and student achievement.

Officials returned Tuesday with charts and tables breaking the data down by various types of absences and by complex area. The data was also narrowed down to only reflect the state’s roughly 11,000 classroom teachers — not librarians, counselors or other state educators, which previous statistics included.

The newly assembled data seemed to satisfy the board members. “This granularity is very helpful,” said BOE Chairman Don Horner.

“I’m reassured. They did a good job,” Human Resource Committee Chairman Jim Williams told Civil Beat. “I’m also pleased with the results. While we should monitor them, they don’t to me ring alarm bells.”

Absences are broken down into sick leave, DOE-sponsored activities and other absences, which include military leave, jury duty and funeral leave. And sick leave, Niles-Hansen said, doesn’t always mean absences due to illness.

Aside from illness — which also includes absences due to temporary disability insurance and workers compensation — teachers can use their sick leave for self-defined family, personal and other activities.

Hawaii’s teachers on average used about 10 of their 18 allotted sick days last year, data show. Roughly seven of them were actually because of illness.

That’s well below the national threshold, which stands at 10 sick days per year, Niles-Hansen emphasized.

Williams pointed out that sick leave can function as pseudo paid time off.

“Of course teachers get vacation, but it’s structured,” he said, because teachers can’t choose when they go on vacation. Sick leave was in part instituted so that teachers can decide when to take time off during their normal work year, he said, adding that about 1,700 teachers didn’t take any sick days.

Moreover, Williams underlined that an average of about five of a teacher’s 17 absences last year were devoted to DOE-sponsored activities, which include workshops and on-site training.

“I wouldn’t consider these absences,” he said. “They’re away from school — but they’re not away from work.”

Horner also cited maternity leave as another factor that should be taken into account when calculating illness days. Officials agreed that teachers often choose to use some of their illness-related sick leave for maternity in addition to their designated maternity time, which technically falls under family leave.

“I’m hopeful we’re more supportive of maternity leave,” Horner said, pointing to a color-coded chart indicating that Hawaii teachers on average take about half a day per year on average for family leave.

But Niles-Hansen said the department didn’t yet have the tools to determine how many illness days teachers use for maternity leave. Both Horner and Williams requested that Human Resources officials develop a means for calculating that figure.

All in all, board members said the data didn’t present any red flags. Averages are more or less the same across complex areas — minus a few outliers — and show that teachers rarely use their sick leave for personal or family reasons.

“If we’re looking for abuse or extremes, I don’t think it’s an extreme … and I don’t see any evidence of abuse,” said Williams.

Hawaii Teachers Leaving Their Jobs for Variety of Reasons

The discussion then turned to turnover, which has become a major talking point amid teacher contract negotiations and national studies that show teachers are at an .

The Hawaii State Teachers Association has repeatedly said that half of all new hires leave within five years. But after looking at data provided at the Tuesday meeting, board members again concluded that there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to teacher turnover.

Williams at the February meeting had requested that officials prepare specific data on teachers who have left the department in recent years.

Glenn Kunitake, a personnel specialist in the DOE’s Records and Transactions Section, provided tables indicating the number of teachers who’ve separated from the department and why they did. The data is based on answers departing teachers provided in exit surveys last school year and the year before.

Roughly 1,000 teachers leave the department each year, about half of which resign. About 300 retire and roughly 200 are terminated, data from recent years show. Turnover rates experienced a slight uptick this year — 1,111 teachers departed from the DOE — but officials didn’t break that figure down into resignations versus retirement and termination.

Williams pointed out that many of the resignations seemed to reflect reasons beyond the department’s control. Among the options teachers can check off on the exit survey are another job, child care, health reasons, relocation and spouse.

“There’s a wide variety of reasons — not all are negative,” he said.

Still, the new turnover data wasn’t as clean as some board members would’ve liked.

Many of the 30 or so options could be interpreted in different ways and reflect the subjective responses of the departing teachers. For example, teachers can choose from “Another Job – Mainland,” “Other Employment (Private)” or “Teaching Other” if they’re leaving their position at the DOE for an outside teaching job.

And one of the options is “resignation,” which in theory encompasses all 30 reasons.

Kunitake said that the department doesn’t yet have the data processing capacity to decipher why exactly teachers leave the department. The DOE doesn’t conduct exit interviews, either.

Horner also said he was surprised that, given the department has to fill roughly 1,000 vacancies each year, it doesn’t keep data on recruitment.

The department doesn’t track which colleges and universities recruits come from, Horner said, adding that local institutions don’t produce enough students to fill in the vacancies.