Hawaii Public School Teachers To See Long-Awaited Pay Raises In November 1 Education officials said the final implementation plan presented Thursday will help efforts to retain experienced teachers.
Nearly 9,200 public school teachers should see a significant bump in their paychecks starting in November, several months after the Legislature approved the move to retain teachers by fixing longstanding pay inequity issues.
Teachers returned to work July 26 and classes began Aug. 1, but nearly 11 weeks into the school year, teachers had not seen their pay go up and were not told when they could expect the raises, which are to be retroactive to the start of the school year.
On Thursday, the Board of Education heard the DOE’s final plan to fix salary compression, a problem in which teacher pay is not commensurate with experience. Unlike the vast majority of U.S. school districts, Hawaii does not automatically increase teachers’ salaries with years of service. Each step up in pay must be negotiated by the Hawaii State Teachers Association, which means on or years when no negotiation takes place, often the result of budgeting, teacher pay stagnates.
