 I'm Marianne Sasaki. You're watching Life in the Law on Think, Take, and Why. It's been so long. Boom. So we're delighted today to have our guest, Dr. Amy Peruso. Welcome, Amy. Thank you. I would love to call a doctor throughout the show, but I'm not going to torment you in that way. Thank you. And you're the head of the HSTA, right? I am not the president, so I am the HSTA treasurer. Okay, so okay. And you're also an educator. I am. I'm a social study teacher at Milani High School. Okay, great. And we have some thoughts about public education, don't we? We might. You know, I'm a product of public education, and you know, I look, I went to Harvard, I went to Columbia. Public education can be very, very, very good education. If somebody's minding the store, somebody cares, right? Yes. I think that's sort of the issue, right? Exactly. So I think that, well, one of the issues facing public education in Hawaii is we are struggling to prepare our students for that kind of future in higher education. And now we have entirely different new national contexts that might make that even more challenging. How so? Well, our situation here is that we have the highest rate of private school education in the nation. Oh really? That's too bad, actually. Yeah. So it does, yeah, it does tend to weaken our public school system. And our public school system is underfunded. So when we have now a new secretary of education at the federal level, the attacks that are going to be coming from the federal level are going to be coming towards a weakened system. So we already have a fairly weak public education system, I would say, in terms of the statewide system. And so we need to really pay attention to how to strengthen it in this time of crisis. I see it as a time of crisis for us. You know, it takes some parent's commitment to not, you know, to say, I'm not going to send my kid to private school. I'm going to send my kid to public school and then demand the best of the public school. I mean, in New York there are definitely some public schools, well, they're generally, you know, not the greatest, not as good as private schools, but there are several, a handful in neighborhoods where people have obviously money in education. And the parents, you know, demand excellence in education. And I think part of it is educating the parents about what you should expect from your child's education. Right. I think one way that it's, there's a really important difference between what happens on the continent and what happens here in terms of funding of public education is that we have the only state in the country that doesn't use property taxes for public education. So that has a positive consequence and a negative consequence. So the positive one is that it's fairly equitable. So we fund our schools equally across the state. We don't have these rich schools right next to very poor schools. But we also have the negative consequence is that we're all equally underfunded, right? There's not a lot of just support for public school system because so many children are attending, so many children, I would say, of the social elite are attending private schools. I know. I found the shocking when I came here. I found the hierarchy shocking. And I went to Ivy League schools and for me to be like, wow, this place is really hierarchical and you, who you know and where you go. And I'm like, wow, it was just really founded stunning. You know, because I'm like the children of the working class, you know, and I'm like, what about all these other kids, you know? But I think that actually our structure gives us a remarkable opportunity. So if we can figure out how to decentralize power to move more authority and decision making power to the school levels. And if we can figure out that funding question so that we can increase funding to all of our schools, we will be the only state in the country that is able to address that question in an equitable way. So we will be able to be able to provide really good public education to all of our students who attend public education. And that's part of the purpose of our constitutional amendment. And I don't know if you and I have talked about that before. We haven't, but I look at it now. So essentially, we, for the past more than two years, we've been working to develop a mechanism for funding the public schools that would really get at some of the problems that we've seen. So we initiated our tenure and leadership by going out to teachers and asking them to develop a vision for public education. And we call that the schools our Kiki deserve. So if you go online at HSTA, you can kind of see an elaboration and articulation of that vision. But we recognize that to realize that vision, we needed to fund the public schools in a much different way and much more substantively. So last year, we tried to argue for the GET. We went to the legislature and asked for funding with an increase in the GET. And that was not supported. And I'm sure, you know, it's so funny, because when you said it, we have to find more equitable funding. I'm like, raise taxes. But nobody ever wants to hear that. But that's what you're really, what's important to you. Right. I mean, it is about priorities. But we did some polling. So after our setbacks with respect to GET, the GET, we actually didn't really want to push because it has regressive implications, right? So it takes most money away from lower income folks. So that was a problem for us. We didn't want to do that. You didn't want to tax. Yeah. Unduly. Unduly. And so the only other mechanism that would be adequate to really do what we need to do in public education is property tax. So our constitutional amendment, which if it gets on the ballot, will be in front of voters next year, would provide a property tax surcharge on visitor accommodations and non-owner occupied residential properties. So if you have a second home or residence that you rent out, and it meets the threshold, so it's worth over it, so they haven't established the threshold, so it may be $1 million or maybe $2 million has that value, then you would be subject to this surcharge. I think it's a great, the people here can't really complain about it because it's not going to really hit them. It's really on people coming from the outside. I mean, when you explain to somebody that schools can't be properly funded without property tax, you talk about places that have good schools and why they have good schools. It seems like an easy sell, but I'm sure it's a very hard sell. Well, we are going from community to community and we're talking to neighborhood boards and I think one of the interesting objections is that we should, everybody should pay for public schools and everybody should pay a property tax. And I think that's a noble sentiment and I agree with that. I do think that all I agree too, but you can always have people who are like, I don't have kids, you know, I don't. Right, right. And also people may say that, but our polling suggests otherwise. I know. So we need a measure that is going to be acceptable for not just for the legislators to put it on the ballot, but then also for citizens to vote to amend the constitution. I don't understand, you know, I don't understand this push toward like zero taxpayer. Like the cost of living in a civilized society is taxes. I mean, this tension, I find it just abominable. And you know, I was talking to somebody because we were talking about the new Trump tax plan and I said to somebody said, you know, it'll benefit us because it will benefit. Yeah. And he's like, yeah, I said, you know, that's not good. That's not a bad thing. We don't need it, you know. Right. I don't think actually like in terms of that taxation plan, I don't think that that zeroes out taxes or the deficit. I think that it just shifts the priorities to weaponry and militarization. Right. So I think in our state, and I think that's one space in which we can work in this very, I would say frightening national climate, we can work at our state and for public education, what has been happening under DeVos and under Trump is and even under ESSA. So the new federal legislation ESSA that was passed in December of 2015, devolved power to the states. So the state policymakers, although they haven't taken advantage of that power yet, have a lot of big space of freedom that they can actually do really important work in public education. And I think they should take advantage of that. Oh, okay. So who, who would that be here? That would be so our superintendent, our department of education, our governor has a huge role to play. And so we know who to put pressure on. Right. And also like his appointees to the board of education, they can do a lot in terms of policymaking to improve teacher practice, our teacher retention, we have a huge teacher shortage crisis, and they have a lot of work that they can do to. I know everybody tells me, you know, everybody in New York is like, oh, I wish I could work in Hawaii and I might become a teacher. You'll definitely get a job. That's what they need there. You know, but yeah, I mean, I think, but they won't stay because we can't retain teachers. So we started, we ended last school year with 1600 openings. We still have almost 600 vacancies. Really? So that means around 10,000 students this year will have a long-term sub. They won't have a teacher. The New York game is like that in some, in some years, sometimes it depends, right? Yeah, yeah. Over time it's getting worse. Is it really? So it's a pattern. Yeah. So it's a, it's a long-term crisis that we have been using short-term measures to address. So doing mainland recruiting trips and then people will come for two or three years and discover the pay is not enough. It's not enough. I don't know what it is, but I know it's not enough. I have no idea. It's a country. When you take cost of living into account, it is the lowest in the country. Yeah, I'm not surprised actually. We have a huge teacher retention problem. Right, right. Yeah, teachers never get, my mother's a teacher, right? So I'm very attuned to teachers not getting enough money. You know, like the difference between what I, graduating from law school and her teaching and what she does and the kind of work she does and the amount of work she does, there's no parity in income. But this parity of work, I mean, it's ridiculous. And I don't understand why teachers salaries aren't viewed well. Well, I think it's a gender issue. I honestly think that it's one of the caring professions and it's been undervalued for a long time and women have dominated the profession. Our HSTA is about 80% women. And I think that the, when you look at how different unions are treated at the bargaining table, there is some research that should be done in terms of a gender analysis. I think you're right. I think, but of course, I see everything through gender. Everybody's like, oh, you're so sensitive. And I know I'm not. I know I'm right. But nobody ever wants to hear it. But you know, lawyers, for the first time, lawyers are graduating law school, women lawyers are graduating law school. And I said, somebody, this is going to have a depressive rate on salaries because it's going to become a woman's enclave. And you'll wait and see. You should be afraid of that. I am afraid of that, believe me. That's a horrible thing to be afraid of. I know. It's a horrible thing to sort of know or even have to know. Yes. It's just, yeah. And teachers, oh, God, it's such a hard job. What made you decide to pursue this path? Did you? So I come from a family of teachers, actually. So everyone on my dad's side of the family and my siblings were all teachers. But I never intended actually to become a classroom teacher. I was headed towards academia or law school. And I just found myself, when I began teaching, I just fell in love with it. Let's just take a quick break on that note. See, all teachers feel this way. This is why they don't get paid any money. They love doing it. So I don't love doing the law. I do it. But no, I do. I love the law. I can't say that. That's not true. So we're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to come back with Amy Peruso. Talk more about public schools under attack. Hey, has your signal just been taken over? Or am I supposed to be here? This is Andrew, the security guy, your co-host on Hibachi Talk. Please join us every Friday on Think Tech Away. I'm Carol Mon-Lee, and I want to welcome you to our newest series called Education Matters, where we will explore education-related topics that touch everyone, not just formal programs in K-12 and higher education, but also broader issues and information that affect our community. My name is Mark Shklov, and I'm the host of Law Across the Sea. And Law Across the Sea is a program that brings attorneys who have traveled across the sea and live in Hawaii or are staying in Hawaii for a time to talk about their travels, where they're from, where they're going, and bring it all together, because really we're all connected some way, although we travel across the sea. So I hope that you'll tune in and watch our program. Thank you very much. Hi, you're watching Life in the Law. I'm Marianne Sasaki. I'm here with Amy Peruso, talking today about public schools, public school teachers, public school under attack, and the very last thing that Amy said before we went to break was that she loves it. And while we were on break, she said she loves it and she would do it for free. And I tell you, my mother is a teacher and she feels the same way. And so, okay, so you have all these people who that are dedicated to this profession, above and beyond. I mean, it's really amazing to behold. So what kind of remuneration could you give them? Okay, so you can't give them a big salary increase maybe, but what kinds of things can you do to entice people to come and teach? I mean, what kinds of perks? Okay, so I may be willing to teach for free, but I think that I couldn't sustain my life if I, and also like it's barely sustainable now in terms of salaries for teachers. So I have worked with so many amazing teachers who have had to leave the profession because they can't actually make it. They're working two or three jobs and it's just too draining. They can't even teach properly. No, yeah, definitely. In New York, there are people that teach and then it goes on tiers and also the contracts change from time to time. So the contracts have been getting less good actually. And they work in Macy's during Christmas time and stuff like that. I mean, these teachers, you know, they work. And it's not just at breaks. Like a lot of teachers will leave school and go to their second job. So I think that the finances, the salary part, the material conditions for existence are really important. Let's talk breast tax. What is the beginning teacher make in Hawaii? About $45,000. That's not bad. So it's not bad. Right. But it's bad for Hawaii. Yeah, so here's what we found out in our research. When we looked at districts with similar costs of living that our beginning teachers are making about $4,000 less than the average given the front with those similar districts. Our teachers who are near retirement, so they've taught like 25 years, they're about $7,000 to $9,000 less than what they should be making. No, but then in the middle is where we see the huge gap. So really? Yeah, if you're teaching, if you've been teaching like 10 to 15 years, then you're making about 15 to $25,000 less than you would be making anywhere else with a similar cost of living. That's not an inducement to stay. No, and people, I think it affects morale. So that combined with like the teacher evaluation system, the demoralizing impact of salary combined with that system. What's tell me about the system? I don't know anything about the system. Yeah, so under race to the top are the leadership of the Department of Education and the Board of Education and the governor decided to create policy, board policy, board of education policy that puts into place a teacher evaluation system that is fairly punitive and onerous. So it's really time consuming for teachers and it basically forces you to prove every year that you're a professional. Really? Yeah, and it takes an incredible amount of time and it's demoralizing because you have to, well, there are lots of reasons as demoralizing, but teachers are very critical of it. And over the entire state, our data, our survey data suggests that that's what the one of the, if not the most important factor in teacher, I would say loss of job satisfaction or lower job satisfaction. I understand that because you know what? My mother loved teaching, but I don't think she loved any administrative work. I think any administrative work she viewed is time she could be actually teaching. So anything that burdens the teacher and makes, I mean, and that's unpaid, right? That's unpaid work. You have to do that, you know, before class or during lunch or whenever, whenever at night or whatever whenever you need to do it. So, yeah, I can imagine that that would diminish job satisfaction. It's, listen, you know, even as a lawyer, when I have administrative tasks, I'm like, I wish I didn't have to do this stuff. And you guys really shouldn't have to, I mean, because you're doing important work. It just takes away from the time that we can be working with students, and it feels fake and manufactured, kind of artificial, putting on a show. Is it teaching to the tech, like, do they, how do they, how do they, so there are multiple parts to the teacher evaluation system. One of the parts is looking at student learning outcomes over the course of the year. And that part is extremely time consuming and problematic, because it's based on how well you predict how well your students will perform at the end of the year, given your preliminary data. So it's not even about like, how far did you move them. It's how accurate are your predictions. You were. And did you do it with a crystal ball? How do you figure that out? I know. And that really doesn't account for like, children's lives during that year. They could, their parents could go through a divorce. They could be, you know, they're good things too. I mean, you know, you can have a really favorable outcome in a kid that you didn't anticipate. I mean, that's also a problem. That's the fun of teaching, I think, is the road, you know, it's a new path every day. But such a system induces you to under-expect. And the research has shown that that has negative consequences for the students learning. So if you're expecting less of them so that you can meet your predictive goal, then that totally makes sense. That totally really makes sense. So it's crazy. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, just so we can hit our marks, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna tell you that you're, you know, you could only do, you're gonna do the X when you could do X plus Y plus Z. Exactly. Yeah. That's just ridiculous. So you want to tell us about your big election race? Okay, so it's not really a big election race, but I'm running for neighborhood board in part because we want to have teachers be part, more part of these public policy making discussions and part of the democratic process. So myself and other teachers are running for neighborhood board. We're talking about running for office. In the fifth district. This is really important. See now, you're, you're, you know, you think it's, it's only neighborhood board and whatever. But you know what? It's so critical during this election period. We know, we talk about it all the time when we go to the meetings, the women's march meetings. It's so critical at this time to sort of start packing the ranks with people that can, you know, do things in, in the next election in the next, in two years, you know, and yeah. And for me, actually, this is connected to the work that I'm doing with the union as well, because what I've seen in my work around the asset task force is that there's a huge chasm between the communities and the public schools because the school community councils are not working because the community has no power in those conversations anymore. So the communities are not connected to public schools. And I really see the neighborhood boards as a way to reconnect public schools and the communities. You know, it's funny that property tax would, would actually, actually help that because you, because if you start paying for something, all of a sudden you have like a sense of pride in it, even if you don't have kids, but you know, I have the, this is the best school district. People want to move into the areas with the best school district. Yeah. So how, like, so what do you like, how do you, you know, do you go door to door? What do you do? I haven't started going door to door yet, but I think I'm going to have to because, because there's, there's this increased attention to local politics. The races are much more competitive this time. So I think I am going to go door to door in my community. And I think that that's a good thing that actually, it's, it's kind of surprising to me how little neighbors know each other or how unfamiliar they are with each other. That's surprising to me too, because you know, you think New York, you think it's big anonymous city, right? But you know, we live in apartment buildings and each apartment building is like a little tiny ecology. And you know, at least, I'd say between five and 10 people that you can really count on it. I don't know if you're going away on vacation, whatever. Yeah. And, but here, everybody's in their car. It's really hard to socialize. I think I told you that when I, when we had dinner, it's really hard to connect with people. There's no public spaces really that people connect in, you know. So yeah, you should go door to door. Yeah. And just introduce myself and find out their concerns. Right, right. You'll probably be the only one that does it. I don't know. I mean, if, if, if I, somebody came to my door and asked for my vote, and like nobody else did, I would, yeah, I mean, even, you know, I, I worked for Obama. And basically they said you go door to door and ask for each person's vote. Like each person's vote is, you have to individually ask for it. That's essentially what they did, you know. So, well, so when's the election? So the election time period. So there's a mailing process. So it begins at the end of April and ends in early May. District five. Amy Purr or so. And I think that that is actually really nicely connected to the organizing around the Democratic Party. So the Democratic Party will have its convention on April 22nd. So I think that there are a lot of things happening in this state that kind of lend themselves to folks increasing their participation. And I think that's really important right now. I feel like it's urgent. Well, you know, it's funny, you said this thing about, I don't know, I'm paraphrasing, but, you know, crisis since the election or turmoil since the election. Yeah, I, I don't know a person that doesn't feel it that doesn't feel disoriented. And you know, the news every day is doesn't help calm you down. It sort of stirs things up. It's just it's the most, you know, it's it's just it's unbelievable what's going on, you know. So I should say that Amy and I met on the Women's March to Washington, which everybody knows my sad story. I didn't get to Washington. And, well, so what, how are you? Last week, our last meeting, we had those little groups, and we discussed how we were going forward with our, you know, with with the operation with the plan. So have you done anything? I haven't. I have been working around the labor issues. Okay. So we are planning an action on May 1st. Okay. So we'll be gathering at the Capitol, and it'll be public and private sector unions, gathering at the Capitol and marching to the federal building. Oh, okay. I'll join you there. No, I always like to celebrate. It really irks people. So May Day is late day. And but it's a it's a labor day. And I think that for working women, which is Hawaii May Day irks people. Oh, it's because it's because it's associated with, you know, socialist communist values and, you know, workers rights and the labor movement. Exactly. Workers of the world unite. So, so, you know, the the international left-wing implications of May Day is what I think here are very muted. But historically, the labor movement here has been very important and powerful. Oh, it's the most powerful. Social change. I'm so impressed by the labor movement here. It really made inroads. Like, I was a corporate lawyer in New York. I'm a corporate lawyer here. When I advise my clients here, and they want to do something here, I said, I have to advise you. Labor costs are high here. They really are. Because why? Because people make a decent, they're subtraction at least, that makes sure that people make a decent living. Right. And they're the most unionized state in the country. But I think that that is part of what I see as a crisis, that unionization is part of the prosperity. And it's part of, like, if you pay attention to Robert Reich's arguments about the economic change, we are going to see that undermined, I think, under Trump. I think there's going to be an attack on the unions. Oh, absolutely. And I don't mean to cut you off, but the unions, you know, it started under Reagan with Paco, and it's just this lovely Republican, this is like their hobby, the dismantling unions. It's like, I don't know. I don't have anything to do tonight. Let's see how many unions we can take apart. But I love having you. Thank you so much.