Backed by everyone from parents to politicians, Hawaii NEA members wage an historic 20-day strike to boost their pay-and their profession.

Hawaii's not much of a paradise for an underpaid public school teacher who has to shell out three bucks for a gallon of milk or $1,200 a month for a decent one-bedroom apartment.

But the islands' small-town atmosphere, born of strong social relationships and tight family links, can make the 50th State something of a safe haven when educators face a crisis.

That's what the 13,000 members of the Hawaii State Teachers Association found out last spring when they waged an historic strike to put "a qualified teacher in every classroom." They were buttressed by an extensive support matrix of school parents, neighbors, business owners, trade unionists, and even state and federal lawmakers.

That 20-day work stoppage, which coincided with a 13-day strike by the 3,100-member University of Hawaii Professional Assembly/NEA, briefly shut down the islands' entire K-graduate public education system and grabbed media attention across the country.

HSTA members succeeded in bargaining a new four-year, $125 million contract with the Hawaii Department of Education, which runs a single statewide school district.

This groundbreaking agreement addresses issues central to educational quality, from money for teacher recruitment and retention to support for new and struggling teachers.

The spring bargaining offensive, says HSTA President Karen Ginoza, was just the latest in a series of "risks this Association has taken to set the agenda for the teaching profession."

The list of risks extends from joint work with state officials on development of teacher standards, state tests, and school report cards to successful grassroots HSTA campaigns to include special education students in official class counts and to bring down K-1 class sizes.

HSTA's "futuristic agenda" includes recruitment and retention of qualified teachers in the face of strong competition from the mainland, Ginoza adds. "Our newly bargained compensation package is just another piece of a larger campaign for quality."
In the build-up period before the April walkout, building-level Association reps conducted a survey of unfilled teaching positions and unlicensed teachers who work with nothing more than a high school diploma. HSTA then carried the survey's findings-amounting to a total of 69 empty classrooms-to meetings across the state of community residents, business people, and union leaders.

State residents connected with HSTA's announced goal of a "qualified teacher in every classroom," and questioned Governor Benjamin Cayetano's 9 percent salary offer to educators-at a time when island living costs were 33 percent above those on the mainland.

HSTA's intensive planning carried over to the strike itself, which kept 99 percent of Hawaii's teachers off the job for 20 days and actually saw the number of picket line crossers decrease as the stoppage wore on.

"HSTA did a great job of preparing people, right down to getting a 99 percent strike authorization vote before the walkout. We really amazed ourselves," says Russ Woolsey, a registrar at Wainanae High School and a veteran of HSTA's last strike, in 1973.
"Morale stayed up, and not one of the 140 staffers at my school crossed the line," Woolsey stresses. "In fact, people from our crew would drive to nearby elementary schools to picket each morning."

Also helping make the Hawaii strike a success was the enthusiastic participation of many probationary teachers, like Kimberlee Greer, a special/regular ed teacher at Maunawili Elementary.

"Nobody crossed the line at my school," reports Greer, who served as head picket captain. "We met with people thinking about crossing and said we would support them in all aspects, be it through helping with child care or donating money, as long as they didn't cross the line."

Greer, then a second-year teacher, felt she was fighting for professional respect. Greer was particularly incensed that the state was enticing mainland special ed teachers to the islands with a $100,000 recruitment package, while paying her, a lifelong state resident, just $29,000 before taxes. "I said, 'Hey, what are you doing to keep me in Hawaii?'" she recalls.

The collective commitment to professionalism-and to equity-welded Greer and her colleagues together. "We were so cohesive," Greer concludes, "that now, after the strike, we like each other more than ever!"

Beyond unity between new and veteran teachers, what really made this strike succeed was community support. It's impossible to sum up the enormous backing given HSTA strikers, but special thanks go to:

• Hawaii's average residents. Countless bystanders donated food, water, or rain ponchos to the striking teachers.
  Incredibly, strangers would often just stop their cars, bring food to the lines, jump back in their cars, and disappear. A chiropractor donated thousands of bottles of water, and ranchers slaughtered cattle and shipped ground meat to the teachers.
  
• Parents of children in schools. Kimberlee Greer and other picketers at Maunawili Elementary were stunned when parents, with their kids, appeared one day at lunchtime to relieve picketers on the line. "The support was definitely there," says Russ Woolsey. "Low-income parents in our community see the schools as a place for kids to get better, and they understood HSTA's bargaining issues."
  
• Union members. Both before and during the HSTA strike, island teachers received support from the Hawaii state AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions. Members of other unions joined the picket lines, helped HSTA members lobby and rally in Honolulu, and donated tons of food and water to strikers. Honolulu bus drivers displayed HSTA signs and pamphlets in their buses, and members of one construction union honored the picket line, stopped campus construction work, and reported to the unemployment office.
  
• Political leaders. HSTA members knew they had a winning cause when many politicians, dismayed with the governor's hardline bargaining stance, walked the picket lines, donated food to strikers, and pressured the governor to settle. Walking the lines were such notables as U.S. Senator Patsy Mink, Hawaii Lieutenant Governor Mazie Hirono, and Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris. It was a strike for the history books.

Hawaii Update
At press time in July, the State of Hawaii had decided not to ratify the contract it signed with the Hawaii State Teachers Association-focusing objections on the pact's 3 percent differential for teachers with a master's or professional diploma.

For news on HSTA's battle to implement the contract, go to www.hsta.org.

The New Hawaii Contract in Brief

The new contract bargained last spring by the Hawaii State Teachers Association boosts the salaries of teachers, librarians, counselors, and registrars by 19.5 percent over four years. It also reinstitutes annual increments, boosts the salary range to $35,373-$64,202, and provides a 3 percent differential for teachers with a master's or professional diploma and a 6 percent differential for those with a doctorate.

The agreement also halves the credits needed, to 15, to move into a new salary classification and creates a large pay differential for National Board Certification-$5,000 for each of the 10 years the certification is in effect, along with a total $2,500 stipend for out-of-pocket Board costs.

The Hawaii pact addresses teacher quality by creating the nation's fastest fair dismissal procedure. And it tackles professional needs by converting four instructional days to professional development days and establishing a peer assistance program for new and struggling teachers.

One very welcome boost for new teachers is the contract's reimbursement-up to $800 annually for every educator-for classroom supplies. "This dramatically helps first-year people who arrive in bare classrooms, with no books, no nothing," says Kimberlee Greer, a third-year teacher at Maunawili Elementary on Oahu.

Your Dues Did It
Hawaii State Teachers Association members didn't fight their contract battle alone. NEA and its state affiliates pitched in by providing:

• Direct financial contributions.
  
• Extra staff for strike organization. HSTA reps were backed up by some 11 NEA staffers and more than 45 out-of-state UniServ staffers-thanks to NEA's interstate shared staffing program designed for "unique organizational or programmatic difficulties."
  
• A secure Web site for picket and welfare captains. Among other things, this NEA-created site-maintained by a cadre of HSTA members-offered quick, consistent bargaining updates and made possible a swift contract ratification process.
  
• Moral support. Be it through a Hawaii strike rally speech by NEA President Bob Chase or supportive E-mails from colleagues across the U.S., HSTA members realized that they're part of a larger Association family.