 Welcome viewers to thinktechhawaii.com. This show is the will of the people, and I am your host, Martha E. Randolph. Today we'll be discussing the proposed tax amendment to the state constitution, also known as CON-AM, which would allow the legislature to add a tax to investment properties in order to fund public education in Hawaii. This could affect the income and taxing powers of the various counties. My guest today is Cory Rosally, he is president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association. He is a teacher with 20 years in the public school system and has been an activist for improving conditions in the classrooms for teachers and students. I feel very lucky that he could make it today to discuss this hot button issue for the upcoming elections. Thank you, Cory, for coming in today. And if you don't mind, I'd like to start right off the bat with a little background on this amendment. This getting it on the ballot is a big deal, and the people may not know why it's such a big deal. So let's tell them how long this has been in the works and some of the obstacles you faced. Well, for the last three years we've had a campaign called the schools our keiki deserve, and we were trying to find a way to improve our schools. And one of the big problems we have in Hawaii is our schools just are not well funded. When you adjust for cost of living, we're 45th in the nation and per pupil expenditures, and we're last in the country in teacher pay, which means that this year, for the first time in Hawaii's history, we actually surpassed 1,000 classrooms that did not have a teacher. So by our estimate, every day, about a third of Hawaii's public school students go to school and at least one of their teachers is not qualified. And so we have been pushing to try to get additional funding so that we could pay our teachers better, lower class sizes, make sure that our special needs students get the services they do, and so many of the other things that require funding. Yeah. And so how long has this been going on? I think this almost made it to the ballot box a short time ago and was past every hurdle except one, a specific individual who used their political power to stop it, which does not to me reflect the will of the people or their representatives. I leave you to say as much about that or as little as you want to. So for decades, we haven't funded our schools. And like there's consequences I shared before. So the question is, how do we do it? But three years ago, we actually tried to do a 1% increase in the GT. And the reason why we picked that is, is that if you compare ourselves to other districts with similar cost of living, they spend on average about $6,000 more per pupil than we do. And if you put the number, we have about 180,000 students in our public school system, that's about a billion dollars. So 1% of the increase of the GT would have brought us close to $800 million dollars. That the legislature is we're not going to do. And then we went to the solution we've been trying for the last two years. Hawaii is actually the only state in the entire country that is not used property taxes among schools, the only one in the entire country. We actually have the lowest property tax rate in the country. And the reason why is we don't fund their schools. So we've been trying for two years to correct the social wrong that has happened. And I'll just show you the story. So the question is, why don't we use property taxes to fund our schools? And you have to go back about 100 years ago. At that time, there was only a few wealthy landowners in Hawaii. Right. And just like today, those wealthy landowners didn't want to pay to fund the children of the plantation workers. They said, if you educate them beyond the sixth grade, they become a menace. Which I believe was in the response article in this past Sunday's inside, in response to the negative comments from the other side. Go ahead. And so now you have very wealthy landowners who are again trying to make sure we don't fund our schools this way. It feels like things haven't changed in 100 years. You have a very wealthy class that is trying to make sure that children of the middle class and the working class don't have that opportunity to get an education and to move up themselves. Well, certainly, and we've seen it with the current federal government as well, an undereducated electorate is the best one to manipulate and to lie to because they don't have the knowledge base or the skills of thinking to challenge. And this would seem to be something similar, although I'll give them credit. I have a feeling that real estate people are just wanting money. I don't think they're even thinking about the kids or keeping them in their place. They just want to make more money. But I was wondering if you would like to address some of the key arguments that were raised in the article in that insight section of this past Sunday's paper, only the most important ones. There were comments about the Board of Education. There were comments about teacher qualities, and they did not use the important term adjusted for the cost of living in any of their assessments. So if you'd like to address any of those, let's do it right now. So the article that came out in the Sunday's paper had many wrong facts. The first thing is that we're 17th in the nation and per people expenditures. Well, that sounds great until you adjust for cost of living. And then we dropped to 45th. The argument they made is don't give the DOE any money. It's any more wasteful. Well, even if the DOE was 100% efficient, we'd still be 45th in the nation and per people expenditures. Their biggest argument is don't ever give the education more money. And that's a way to make sure that we don't educate our children. I think the other argument they were trying to make is I love this one. There's nothing to suggest that if you pay teachers better, it's going to increase the performance of teachers now. And I'll tell you as a teacher, that was the most insulting argument because the argument is not that if you pay us better, we're going to somehow work hard. We're already working hard. It's an insult to believe that teachers are not working hard. The idea is why we need to pay our teachers better is because right now our teachers are leaving. In the last six years, we have seen the amount of teachers from Hawaii leaving to go teach in the mainland increased by 84%. This is insane. Okay. It is insane. And wouldn't you also say that I mean, I, every teacher I know, did not get into the profession because it was a great moneymaker. And most of them spend an extraordinary extra amount of time on extracurricular events for their students, which are not usually subsidized or paid for. And many of them spend their own money to help give the students the tools they need. And it's just recently that Governor E. Gay was able to get a lot more air conditioning into classrooms, but that problem has been going on forever and it is inexcusable. So if it takes more money, we've got this thing on the ballot, let's vote now. And for those people who say, yes, but it's too vague, which we will admit the house removed certain restrictions, which I think you put in, which had to do with properties over a million dollars and a certain specific percentage of tax, they remove that and left it open. But you guys have in your responses always said our intention is so how is Hista going to fight to make sure the legislature keeps it on point and what can we do as voting citizens to help you make sure that they don't abuse these funds if they get them, that they don't shift them to other places. So by our estimates, only about 3.8% of people actually or 3% 80% of homes or second homes over a million dollars and vast majority of these are owned by outside foreign investors that are profiting off of what is I know. They can't win this question. Unless they convince renters that it's going to go after them. So they're going to spend millions of dollars trying to get people to vote against their own self interest, to vote against their own kids. Exactly. And they're going to do that by scaring them. No one in two years has suggested that we're going to tax everyone. We've only the only conversation has been second homes over a million dollars. Yeah. And the reason it's in the Constitution was taken out was because constitutional language is supposed to be brought. But that doesn't mean next year everyone's going to go in with a very clear bill to tax second homes over a million dollars that can only be used for education. And all that fear, all that fear is just doing so that people will support the outside investors rather than the cake. Let's clarify then there is a difference between an amendment and a bill. Now what we're doing now is an amendment to the state constitution to allow you to even have a bill proposed that will be more specific. Am I correct? Absolutely. OK, so this has to come first or there will be no bills that will help us specify where these funds come from and where they're going. So don't be fooled by the stories that are out there. Will the counties suffer? Not if the bill that comes after it is properly written and there's lots of battles that will happen with that as we both know. And that's one of the things too is the counties are trying to scream we're taking away the money and to be very clear we are not taking one dollar away from the counties. This is a surcharge and the best way to describe it is when you pump your gas you pay a local, a state and a federal tax and each one is a surcharge and it's independent of each other. So the same thing happens here. So the fear again that we're taking counting money is wrong. And on the other side the idea is this these counties are the only ones that are not funding education in the entire country. And because of that that's why our schools are underfunded. So we're not trying to tax commercial businesses. We're not going after Kuliana lands. We're not going after you know renters. Right. Second homes over a million dollars to fund our schools and to do it in a way that has done every other place in this entire country except for Hawaii. Right. And so like I said there are things that have to come first before you can do anything else. Now one other question that was raised was had to do with the way in which the board of education hires additional teachers. Now I have been aware of substitute teaching for a while. Personally I'd love to get in on it. I have got myself a master's degree and I'm a good teacher. The problem is it's not in education specifically and the rules would keep changing whenever I went to the board of education website. You need a 30 hour course then you don't need a 30 hour course. You different things for different people. Not to mention there was a big brew ha ha about substitute teachers not being paid according to the standards that were set. And there is a great deal of back pay owed which we are pretty sure is never going to get paid because that money is also not there. What do you have to say to the comments about the standards by the board of education when we both know that in a desperate pinch there are people coming into teach who don't even have the minimum qualifications way less than I have certainly to get out there and do my thing. So it's very easy to be a bad teacher and what I mean by that is this you can put any adult into the classroom but being a successful teacher is very difficult. We have been consistently lowering the bar in order to make sure they're teaching the classroom. And the biggest example right now is this about the beginning of the year we have about 1600 openings and we're only getting about 400 from our local universities and that number has decreased by over 20 percent in the last five six years. So we keep on we get 400 students we go to the mainland and grab another five or six hundred more then we run out of qualified teachers. Then what we do is have emergency hires. OK. These people lack some qualification. We put them in a classroom and then we run out of emergency hires. So last year there were six hundred and fifty classrooms that had substitutes in them. And then they start running out of substitutes. So now the bar is this. All you have to do is have a high school diploma and you can teach in our classrooms. And so people without college degrees certification are teaching these classrooms. Now my daughter has done this. My daughter is a freshman at she's a sophomore sophomore at Campbell High School. But when she was at the Lima Intermediate she had four subs in two years. And one of them was for an entire semester because they could not find a teacher. I'll give you this example too. Can a sub can a sub then be hired as a permanent teacher if they're good and they're willing so a substitute can they teach for longer than 90 days. They become an emergency hire. OK. OK. And then they are given those benefits. The problem is is that after three years they have to get a degree. OK. And substitutes many substitutes do not want to be emergency hires. And the emergency hires are not getting their degrees. So we keep on lowering the bar but I'll give you this example. So last year in Nanakuli Waianae Compact Area. Can we just I'd like to pick this up. I need to go to break. OK. But let's let's not drop this. We're going to pick it up right here about the emergency hires and the substitutes and what we can do. So ladies and gentlemen we'll take a short break here and we'll be right back and continue this conversation with Corey from the teachers union the president of the teachers union. I'm sorry I blanked I'm so into the conversation. Let's go to break. This is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness. You can be the greatest. You can be the best. You can be the king come playing now your chest. You can be. You to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at Think Tech Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii who joins us from time to time who talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday. Hi this is Martha Randolph on the show The Will of the People and my guest today is Corey Rosenley the president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association and we are talking about why it is important in this election year for you to get out and vote for the amendment that will allow the legislature to tax second investment properties in order to fund public education. Please understand we've already established if you do not pass this amendment then no subsequent bills which may qualify and otherwise control what properties get taxed how much of the percentages are they can't even be introduced. And the intention has always been to do this for properties that are million dollars or more only second hand homes or investment properties only and the percentage is not that high and the earlier part of the show explain that however when we went to break we were Corey was about to tell us the exciting story of special education needs and the problem that teachers who do want to teach or even substitute or even willing to be emergency hires will have getting from their home wherever they are to some of the locations where the teachers are most desperately needed so take it away Corey so last year they had 19 openings for special education teachers and on the Cooley why not complex area and they can only find one qualified teacher which means that they had a higher 18 people that were not qualified in special education in the last three years they've had 65 openings in the 255 teachers. So when we talk about the teacher shortage the reality is is that it may not affect some kids and for other kids every single year that they go to school they don't have a qualified teacher. Teaching is difficult it is hard. Yes. And people think that anyone can do it go try to manage 30 you know eight year olds and try to do it in a way that you can be able to individualize teach all of them and help them improve and that is a very hard skill. It is very hard and as a woman who just recently got higher degrees in college not all professors who are experts in their field have any knowledge of what it means to communicate information. And that's why sometimes you know they talk about well why can't have someone as an experienced engineer come in and teach math at a school and there's a difference between knowing your subject and trying to educate a bunch of 16 year olds at 8am in the morning and make it interesting enough that they're going to be you know learning a subject. It's a very difficult skill and so for some of our kids there's a 2015 equity report that came out again I was looking at schools and it said this that if you're native Hawaiian you're more likely to have an unqualified out of field inexperienced teacher and somewhere between it can be somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of the teachers that are nonically Hawaiian I close that's the problem that they have. How can we justify that some children because of where they live or how much they their parents make don't get the same opportunity as other children. That is discrimination. That is our current school system. That's why we're trying to ask even in the system if we were to raise these taxes we are not making these people pay more than their fair share. Because right now in Hawaii because of our low property taxes the poor actually pay a higher percentage of their income than the wealthy do. Absolutely this would make it equal so all we're trying to do is asking these wealthiest among us to pay their fair share. Yeah I think I think this is absolutely true and necessary I also would like to raise the question of without these additional raises and salaries teachers cannot live in these areas where they are needed because the accommodations are few where they do exist they're not as affordable as they are supposed to be and there's a shortage out these areas there's lots of buildings going up here in town and not a whole lot of housing going up in these other areas at an affordable price and you you're just not going to get a lot of teachers who want to drive 45 minutes or an hour out to a long distance place to do their teaching unless they are committed to this profession which they're definitely committed individuals yes. And so you know when we are a contract you know two years ago we put in provisions let's pay the teachers better to go to work in hardest staff areas yeah and we were told no money we had 17 pages of proposals of how to fund a special education no money and that's why you know we had to put these ideas out there of how are we going to increase additional revenue in order to fund our schools. The opponent to this they have no suggestions of how to improve our schools you know really a lot of times their ideas are not thought out and so if this proposal dies what we're really saying is we're not going to invest in our cakey. And look at look at what the two sides are on this debate you literally have you know Trump towers they were able to sell out $700 million worth of property in one day. And if they could do that I'm sure that they could spend a little more money to invest in our schools. Absolutely they certainly can and this has been a chronic problem I think in the state of Hawaii and in the government of Hawaii that they simply will not all unite even though we're all democratic this is what I find very interesting the democratic party has taken a very firm stand as to what they feel is important in Hawaii to do and they are not holding their legislators accountable to follow the party position as it is voted on by Democrats in the party who come to their conventions and meet and vote on what they want. So there are many people who need to do the job that they've been leaving hanging by the way there are also many innovative actions that have been taken in education I know that in Hawaii University we have the philosophy for children program which I have studied with the professors over there and it is very exciting what they have been able to do in schools where the principles invite them in as part of an experimental program. Better grades all the way along better thinking and we need the students to know how to think. So my question is are there any other initiatives that the teachers union are taking to help improve the way in which education is delivered in schools if we are fortunate enough to get some money. So first of all when we talk about the underfunding of our schools people say we're trying to bash our current teachers and talking about that it can be the absolute opposite. We have amazing teachers. I am a public school product. My daughter is in public schools. We have great teachers doing great things across the entire state. So one of the things we're trying to say is this funding our education system is like two wheels of a car. You know you're not going to fix everything only with funding. If you increase teacher salaries but they're still not feeling empowered at their schools you're not going to improve the environment. If only we're working on high stakes testing and not going to creative authentic assessments that won't change anything either. So one of the things we've been trying to pursue is this project based learning is one of the best things for students. Right now ever since the no child left behind act of the George Bush era the idea was test kids make them take a standardized bubble test and that's going to improve our schools. And so basically our schools became test factories and now with a new change under the Every Student Succeeds Act we're trying to move away from that and we're trying to do something called authentic assessments project based learning higher level thinking. And so we're excited that the Department of Education in Hawaii is actually looking to apply to be one of the seven states in the entire country that can start to use authentic assessments. And that's a good thing that's going on. That is fantastic and I'm very interested to note that none of those subjects were raised by the people who are opposed to this. That the Board of Education is really doing some things that they did not note down. So all I can do is ask the public I'm going to ask you public right now please get out and vote. Please come to the voting. Make sure you pass this amendment so that we can have the bills that will address these issues in the future more specifically. I remind you that the reason we are dealing with a rail situation in the first place is because when it came up for a vote the people who did get out to vote and it was a very small percentage decided to say yes to it. If you want to get the job done you have to raise your opinion. You have to put it on paper, go and vote, get a mailing list, go early, do whatever you have to. But make sure you read what is there and be sure to vote because if you don't then you are just as responsible for what you get as those who voted for it or against it. All right that's the end of my lecture. Corey if there's anything else you'd like to add go ahead because we actually powered through this subject and now I leave it to you to decide what else. I think teachers making it more accessible telling more people that you are open to hiring people to do teaching as substitutes or emergency hires who are qualified. People like myself who are seniors who have the degrees but haven't filled a 30 hour program or something else who might say I'm a good teacher I just don't know about all the paperwork you want me to do. Help me do that. Find me someone who will help me how to do that and let me do the thing I do best. Can I get out there into the public or is the downtown Honolulu area so saturated with plenty of teachers that where you need me to go is where I can't go which is out in Wineye Coast. So let's take the first thing you're talking about because the biggest concern that people have been brought up is well the language doesn't say a million dollars therefore let's be against this First of all the Constitution is supposed to be broad as a teacher put it best in me the Constitution doesn't say where he's supposed to put stop signs and that's a good way of putting it but it's also paramount is doing this that when the Constitutional Amendment passes we've got to also make sure that we push our legislators to do a right. Absolutely. And we don't give up our right as democracy and we just vote and that's it there's a you know we do have to pursue this. So if they try to switch the money somewhere else or change the percentages we have to support you we have to get out there and go into the legislature and say no no no you don't do that. And it has to be paramount to our public that we have to demand good public schools. You know one of the saddest parts we've been discussing this thing about taxation but countries around the world they understand that investing in education is one of the best things a society can do. It improves the economy when we talk about businesses it makes sure you have better workers in your businesses it lowers social costs. I remember there was a point a couple weeks ago in the newspaper at the same time they're talking about the constitutional amendment and people were against some of it they were trying to do an article spending four hundred million dollars for a new prison. You know wouldn't it be great if we were actually invested in our kids and so they didn't have to you know drop out of school and we're going to prison. I love or feel helpless helpless and hopeless and therefore maybe getting out there not knowing what they're going to do because they don't have an education that gave them options so they turn to their local drugs or whatever. Despair is one of the worst enemies humanity faces. So if you look at Hawaii statistics and ask is there an impact on having a thousand teacher shortage it is actually Hawaii ranks third worst in the nation and what's called the ninth grade of college pipeline. Somewhere between 70 about twenty to thirty percent of our students will drop out of high school. Of the ones that actually graduate high school only half will go to college and the ones that go to college only half will graduate. Right. And so the thing is is every single level the statistics are very clear the more schooling you get and whether that's going to college or vocational school or getting a trade. Exactly. Any of those is going to help your future earnings and the problem is every single time we deny that access and ability it's shooting ourselves in our foot. Absolutely. And I remember that I was talking to a legislator one time and he said you know what we can't find our schools anymore because we have to build more prisons and we have a homeless population. And I was sitting there thinking do you really not see the problem. Right. Invest in kids early and maybe you don't have to spend so much on the back end. Exactly. So Cori I want to ask you that in 2019 once we get through this I'd like to ask you to come back for a follow up whether it passes or not let's talk more about this because people need to be informed and everyone I want to thank you for tuning in today. We will follow up and do more on education. If you have comments please let them know let us know what they are so we can put those in our follow up. Thank you for joining me today on the will of the people with Mr. Cori who is addressing Vote yes on the constitutional amendment and then we can fix everything else. Bye bye.