LIHUE — Hawaii’s education system is in dire need of an overhaul, according to the Hawaii State Teacher’s Association. The organization has identified 10 areas that need improvement and is including them in an omnibus bill that will be introduced
LIHUE — Hawaii’s education system is in dire need of an overhaul, according to the Hawaii State Teacher’s Association.
The organization has identified 10 areas that need improvement and is including them in an omnibus bill that will be introduced during the 2016 legislative session. To fund the bill, it is proposing a 1 percent increase in the state’s General Excise Tax, with a few caveats.
The GET is currently a 4 percent tax levied on all Hawaii businesses’ gross incomes. It’s commonly viewed as Hawaii’s sales tax because the majority of businesses pass the GET on to their customers.
“We have a real problem in education in Hawaii and this needs to change,” said HTSA president Corey Rosenlee. “We don’t want children learning in classrooms where roofs are leaking, we want to make sure that every child, regardless of socioeconomic status has a qualified teacher in the classroom.”
Rosenlee said the goal is to enact “significant measures that focus on the needs of our students, support our teachers in meaningful ways, remove the harm caused by high-stakes testing, and provide the level of funding that our children deserve.”
HTSA polled Hawaii voters, asking if they wanted to see increased school funding and 74 percent of those polled said yes, they’d like to see more money in education.
The Hawaii Department of Education is reviewing the HSTA bill, said spokesperson Lindsay Chambers.
Ric Cox, president of Aloha Angels, which raises funds and support for Kauai teachers and schools, said he would guess most teachers, parents and principals would agree with the principles the bill outlines, but he’s less sure how they’d feel about the funding and implementation part of the plan.
“From my perspective, I would prefer that much of the needed money come to schools voluntarily, not from government mandated taxes, and that it not flow through the Department of Education,” Cox said. “Aloha Angels is having tremendous success tapping into the generosity of Kauai residents and businesses and giving the money they donate directly to teachers, who know best how to spend it on their students.”
Key educational principles
The bill calls for more instructional time and money to go toward teaching visual arts, music, theater and dance, as well as Native Hawaiian culture. It also asks for more money and time, as well as more instructional materials for special education and bilingual students.
Class sizes are also part of the bill, which proposes establishing a reasonable maximum class size for different levels instead of recommending a specific teacher/student ratio.
Also, the bill proposes that high schools provide more vocational, technical and career pathway programs, additional funding for building and facility improvement projects and increased money to go toward classroom supplies.
The bill also takes on high-stakes testing.
“Parents should have the unrestricted right to excuse their children from high stakes tests,” a HTSA press release said.
Public preschools and rural schools would also get more money if the bill passes the 2016 legislative session.
The last piece of the bill provides funding for recruiting and retaining high quality teachers.
“We sat down with Kauai teachers and (they said) there’s a huge problem of teacher turn-over rate,” Rosenlee said. “What’s occurring right now is you have a lot of substitutes teaching. We have positions that are unfilled because we can’t find anyone to teach. We’ve run into a teacher crisis and that needs to change.”
The money tree: GET
Rosenlee said HTSA is working on how much it would cost to put the bill into action. Some pieces, he said, already have some money attached to them.
“For example, there’s $25 million for air conditioning and $7 million for more arts education,” Rosenlee said. “Some of the parts of the bill have to be collectively bargained, like teachers’ salaries.”
Rosenlee said the HTSA considered different options for funding the bill before they landed on a GET increase.
“We looked at gambling and the lottery, and we even looked at marijuana, but I don’t think that teachers would want to be proponents of that,” Rosenlee said. “We looked at how much funding would be brought in and what could be done politically, and GET was the best answer.”
Raising the GET tax by 1 percent would add about $750 million to the money pot and get the project off the ground.
Because that tax is regressive, meaning it affects lower income families more than the wealthier folks, HTSA is proposing a sort of Robin Hood approach to taxation: charge the wealthy more and the lower income folks less.
“We’re throwing out ideas and a solution to start a conversation in Hawaii. Instead of saying 10 years from now, we wish we’d done something, let’s start the conversation now on how to improve schools,” Rosenlee said. “If you don’t like our solution, give us a better one.”
