 Welcome to the Ruderman Roundtable. This is a program we do every other week here on Think Tech, Hawaii, about politics, environment, and issues like that. I'm State Senator Russell Ruderman from the Pune District on the Big Island, and my guest today is Corey Rosenly. Corey, thanks for being with us. Thank you for having me. Corey is the president of HSTA, the Hawaii State Teachers Association, and has been a teacher for over 18 years. He's a social studies teacher at Camel High School and comes from a family of teachers. Corey, congratulations on being president of HSTA. You just finished your first year, I think. I'm coming on and finishing up my second year soon. Already for time flies. I know you were very active in the legislative session that just ended, and you know it was an interesting session, because one word we could apply to it. What grade would you give this session? That's hard because our biggest bill died this year. One of the most things that we find most frustrating in Hawaii is the way we fund our schools. Hawaii is the only state that has not used property taxes in some ways to fund the schools, and because of that, Hawaii schools are chronically underfunded, which means whether we don't have enough teachers in the classroom, whether we have classroom buildings that are falling apart, or falling apart, or their classrooms, there's just never enough money. And this has devastating impacts on our students, so this year we try to change that. In fact, for the last two years we've tried to change that. You know, we've tried to find ways to be able to fund our schools. Last year we tried the GET and that failed. This year we tried a constitutional amendment on property taxes and hotel taxes to be able to fund our schools. And the one thing we had asked the legislators this, if you don't want to fund Hawaii's public schools, at least give the people of Hawaii the chance to vote on whether they want to fund their public schools. And unfortunately that died. And what you're talking about is the proposal this year was for a constitutional amendment to allow property tax. Originally it was just property tax to be used for teacher salaries and education. And because it's a new use of property tax it was going to require a constitutional amendment, right? Yeah, because, yeah. And then therefore the people would have had a chance to vote on it directly, right? You know, the question at the end of the day is would people in Hawaii decide to raise taxes to be able to pay for their kids' education? And those that already have the wealth in Hawaii already choose to do that. But how about for the rest of the kids? And so, you know, it's always difficult to raise taxes. And in Hawaii all the property taxes go to the county and not to the state. And again, that's why our schools are chronically underfunded. So we said let's change this. And at the end of the day the bill that we were proposing was suggesting that non-owner occupied, so the second homes, over a million dollars would have a surcharge. And then we'd also ask hotels tours coming in to pay, you know, four to five percent more on this one. And we thought we could bring in about five hundred million dollars more for education. And studies have shown investing in education is one of the best things a society can do. It helps the economy lower social costs. And yet we've still been so short-sighted on funding education in Hawaii. And this means too often in Hawaii that we don't have qualified teachers for our students. I give this my own story. My daughter is an eighth grader at Alima. In the last two years she's had four long-term subs. Across the state this is a problem. That's because our low pay for teachers results in not retaining teachers are always having to find new ones, right? No. There's lots of reasons for it, but yes. Salaries can't keep up. Too many of our teachers either have to work second jobs. They come from the mainland. And they try for a couple years and say, I can't live here. We have this constant revolving door. But, you know, in the community that you live is very difficult to recruit teachers, but that's not just there. I mean, too many of our students have this revolving door of new teachers. Teachers that lack licenses coming in and teaching them. And we don't see this because unless you're in the classroom and seeing that you don't see this. But the result is too many of our kids are dropping out. Too many kids are ill-prepared for college and drop out there. And very few of our students in Hawaii will actually graduate high school or graduate college. How do we compare to other states on that? We're one of the worst. No kidding, really. There's something called the pipeline. And the educational pipeline looks at how many students will graduate. So about one third of our students will not graduate high school. Of the ones that graduate a little over half of them will go to college. And those that go to college, half of them drop out. So in the end, you only have, I think, 12 or 13 percent of all ninth graders will finish a two- or four-year program in 150% of the time. It's the third worst in the nation. Wow. And, of course, that relates to the problems we have with poverty, houselessness, etc. Yes. Social challenges. You know, I totally agree with you that funding education would be the smartest thing any society can do. And not funding it is just one of the dumbest things we could do. So it's a political problem. We all know we should fund it more, but we don't seem to be able to find a way to do it. So in the end of your proposal this year, which, by the way, I commend you on a unique out-of-the-box approach to who I teach a funding situation. In the end, that went pretty far, farther than we might have expected, but didn't reach the finish line. Is that correct? You know, we had 6,000 teachers show up at the Capitol to demand better funding for public education. We had nearly 4,000 pieces of testimony sent in. We had over a thousand emails in the last couple days going out to legislators. You know, it's frustrating because all we're asking for is a chance, just a chance. And so your statement about it getting as far as possible, and it was, it was the farthest that an educational funding bill has gotten in legislature. But you wonder what is it going to take to get over that last hurdle so that we have equity for all of our children. You know, in Hawaii we have still very much a plantation mentality when it comes to our schools. And those that have the resources send their kids off to private schools. And we have the highest rate of private school attendance in the nation. Oh really? We do. There's no other place in the nation that's like this. In the Honolulu District alone, about a third of people send their kids to private schools. Really? Yes. And so we have a segregated society where you have those that have the resources, send their children off to private schools where they have qualified teachers and low class sizes and good facilities, and they're given this opportunity. And then for the rest of Hawaii's children, we underfund our schools. And the sad part was, this was purposely designed 90 years ago. At that time, most of the land in Hawaii was owned by a few wealthy sugar plantation owners who did not want to use property taxes to fund Hawaii's public schools. And so they lobbied the legislature at the time. And that's why Hawaii doesn't use property taxes. And instead, most of the funding comes from the GET. And so they didn't want it to make sure that the lack of educational opportunities so that those children would stay on the plantation. Interesting. And we're still still living that model. We're still living. Can you believe it? This 90 years later, we're still doing this model that that basically has tiers of education for our children. What do you see as the future for educational funding? Will we try again next year at the similar proposal? We're going to keep on going back. Okay. It goes down to this fundamental question. Can we justify that some children will get everything that we know is needed for education and others will be denied that? You know, going back to the days of Brown versus Board of Education, you know, the idea of equitable schools is at the core, I think of our values. And it's frustrating. We haven't got that. And as many teachers see it in their own classrooms, you know, I met Campbell, we would have 30 new teachers a year. You know, we got the air conditioning last year. We're still fighting for it. But you'd be in a classroom is 100 degrees. I have 40 kids in your classroom. And you would see these teachers leave and leave and teachers not be happening. And I've seen this with my own daughter. And you say this is wrong. This has to change. And that's why, you know, it's so important that we go out and try to change these things. So next year we'll come back. You know, I have seen in my short time there that a lot of times that initiative takes two or three years to get past. So you came up with a novel idea this year. And it got farther than we ever thought. And I do hope that you can be more successful with it next year. I'd love to see this happen. As I said to my colleagues when we voted for it, if we if we don't pass this initiative, let's think of something else. We got to find something to fix. You know, as you've taught me when we consider cost of living, we have the lowest pay teachers in the nation. And that's just unacceptable, I think to anyone in our society. And we have over I would put it statistic. Our estimate is that over 10,000 children every day in Hawaii go to school and don't have a licensed teacher. And what is the impact of that? That means they can go years without having a licensed teacher. And the frustrating thing for me is I and I watched editorials and people commenting. Yes, we agree we need to fund our schools, but this may not be the right approach. But no one ever comes up with the right approach. And the status quo continues. And so this is the best way. And if it's not that people vote that way, but when we've pulled it, two thirds of the people in Hawaii support funding our schools this way. So if the people want it, then we've got to challenge the legislature to either fund the schools properly or to give the chance to the people to fund the schools, put it on the ballot. Yes, put it on the ballot. I mean, look, let's let the people vote. I mean, how can we be so scared of letting people vote? That's right. That's what we said. Although this is we also don't have statewide initiative. And that's related to this issue. We're very hesitant to put things on the ballot here. How can our communities be more invested and help guide our education system and perhaps help solve this problem? What can people do? Well, one of the things I said before is this, and this is, I've seen this. People get frustrated with the system in Hawaii. And if they have the means, they they leave it. You know, I've always joked, do you think tomorrow they actually did this in film, they canceled all private schools. And so all the schools had to go there. So tomorrow, imagine if they said, Okay, no more private schools. Punahou students, you got to go to Campbell. Do you think that they those parents would tolerate 100 degree classrooms would tolerate that their child was in a calculus classroom in their calculus teacher didn't know calculus. There would be this huge demand for the legislature to do something. Right. And unfortunately, sometimes when you remove those parents, and a lot of those parents, you know, at Tata Campbell, they care about their children, but they're working two or three jobs. You know, unfortunately, too often times you would see children being raised by grandparents or their auntie or uncle or sometimes even their sister brother and sister. So you know, it's not like they don't care, but life intervenes as well. And that makes it one step harder to get involved in the process to try to advocate for our schools. But I think that it is essential that we do that. Alright, we're going to take a short break. We'll be right back. I'm talking with Corey Rosenly, the President of Hawaii State Teachers Association. I'm State Senator Russell Ruderman. We'll be back in a moment. Thank you. This guy looks familiar. He calls himself the ultra fan, but that doesn't explain all this. Why? Why? He planned this party, planned the snacks, even planned to coordinate colored shirts, but he didn't plan to have a good time. Now you wouldn't do this in your own house. So don't do it in your team's house. Know your limits and plan ahead so that everyone can have a good time. Hello, I'm Senator Russell Ruderman from the Puna District on the Big Island, and we're here at the Ruderman Roundtable. My guest is Corey Rosenly, President of the Hawaii State Teachers Association. We're talking about teachers and educational funding in Hawaii. So we talked a little bit about the big proposal this year, which was to fund education through property tax for the first time in Hawaii. And other than that, what were the some of the positives and negatives from teachers point of view in this year's legislative session? So one of the things we were still trying to advocate for is air conditioning. The governor last year in the legislature appropriated $100 million. The good news before the $100 million came out. This is for the coolest schools. Yes, okay. The contractors would say it'd be $20,000 per classroom. We have about 7000 classrooms that are non air conditioned. And $20,000 per we were looking at air conditioning, 5000 classrooms. After the $100 million came out and they said it's a thousand dollars, 1000 classrooms. Well, I guess people could do the math and the classrooms that got air conditioned started to average about $95,000 per classroom. Oh my gosh. Or an air conditioned just air conditioned that. Of course, that's frustrating because they only did about 1000 classrooms. They hadn't even finished it yet. So they're still doing that. So we know the long term, we still have to fix this problem. One of the solutions that the governor had last year was to use the infrastructure money to jump funding. And so we actually did advocate for that. So we were able to get another $35 million that could be used for heat abatement on that one. And we're still hoping that if they don't have to do it in one year that they're going to lower the price. So we do get more classrooms and air conditioning. One of the other things that passed this year and this is good is this is that children that are title I'm sorry that are free renews lunch for the first month of school can still get it even if they haven't turned on those forms. Because sometimes children didn't have those forms. The sad part is is that over half of all students that go to Hawaii's public schools are now free and reduced lunch. And so, you know, this is important that they can have at least, you know, that one or two meals a day. And I think we also passed a bill that they would. We would not take lunch away from kids that haven't paid yet at least 30 days or something like half of the students in public schools over which for those who don't understand that's basically a marker for living in poverty. Yes. So a lot of kids a lot of people don't know this, but a lot of kids get their only good meals on the average day at school, which is just adds to the challenges that we have. You know, how are do we prepare students for careers here in Hawaii and what age do we begin doing that? One of the things we must realize and I think that sometimes there's been this push to say that all children must go to college. But I, you know, I had a student come to my class and he didn't like doing essays. So he would stop coming to my class and I later found out that the student loved culinary but actually show up early in the morning to open the kitchen at our school and enjoy cooking. And he was great at it. And I think sometimes we must teach to the child's passion. There are many good jobs out there that are not necessarily have to go to college. I still think you may go to a community college or get career education, but we've got to help our students develop their own skills and talents. Unfortunately, we still do not have enough career pathways where students can take enough classes so that by the time they finish school that they are career ready. And so there are some, one of the programs that I like the best is in Massachusetts and they have separate high schools that are career and college. The kids take half of their classes and career, half of them in college, so that when they graduate they actually have a choice. And this statistic was the one that blew us all away. Those students that were in those programs were actually attending college at a higher rate than those that went to the college high school. Really? Yes, because they wanted to continue their education whether it was a two-year program or not to do that. So they actually had the options and they were going to school at a higher rate. Very interesting. I totally agree with you. I mean it's it's it's simply not correct to think that we should be preparing every student for a college career. It's just not what every one of them is going to do and if we can make them career ready we're at least doing, you know, doing something better than I think what we're doing right now in many cases. What about students with special education or special needs? How are we doing with addressing those needs in the state? Hawaii should be sued and we would lose the case, right? Felix is still so basically when we talked about a teacher shortage it's even worse in special education. About 15 percent of all special education teachers are non-licensed but what that means is if you look at a child's career they could go a couple years without having a qualified teacher. The workload is tremendous on our special education teachers and they have these high cases and they're leaving and when they leave they try to put in a substitute to do to be with those kids but substitutes aren't trained in special education and can't do the IEPs the individual education not plans. So that means it has to go back to the teacher that's with them and that means it's double the work but they don't get double the pay. So then they leave and that's just been this continuous cycle that is occurring and so when we talk about an achievement gap we really have an opportunity gap for these kids and we are not providing the services that are required by law to these children and because we are not the only thing that stopping a lawsuit against the state for failing to provide these kids with the education that's required is a lawsuit and the state lost before Felix and if there was another lawsuit they will lose again. Has this happened in other states? Yes. And how do we compare to the average? Well again we have the same problems because if we have a teacher shortage for regular education for special education it's even worse. If we have a class size for regular education it's even worse for special education. So I mean you know we on some statistics we have the lowest our special education students score the lowest on AP exams in the country. Our inclusion students have the lowest rate of inclusion. Preferably you want a kid in inclusion class but you need the services. So we rank towards the worst in the nation when it comes to providing for our special needs students. I'm just all happy news ain't I? Yeah I got it. But that's why I mean this is why those teachers that are in the schools seeing these problems are demanding action and that's why so many teachers are participating in doing this. And that's why you know the question is what is it what is it finally going to take? You know we're already one of the last in the nation what is it going to take for us to make these changes? So let's talk about that for a minute. What is what do we spend on education in our state roughly speaking? See this is the hard part people look at the overall education budget 2.7 billion they go so that's tons of money but there's no comparative. Everywhere else you have a state right next to your county so you have to look at per pupil spending. Okay. And so per pupil spending in Hawaii is about $15,000. Again so we look at that number and that number without comparison doesn't help us so we have to break that number down. First of all let's look at our comparables. Now the first thing people look to is other states. But the problem we do that is is there's no other statewide school district. So we have to look at districts with similar cost of living. Okay. Okay and we look at school districts with similar cost of living. I think New York Washington DC LA, San Diego, San Francisco. We spend of course less than most of them do. About $6,000 less per pupil. About $6,000 less per pupil. Yes. So instead of $15,000 they're spending $20,000 or more per pupil. Yes $20,000 more. Now again we have to break down that statistic because that statistic says $20,000 per pupil. Let's just send all those kids to Punahou. First of all Punahou is about $28,000 per pupil. But the other thing is that not all students are equal. That includes special education students. If you look at a regular education student in Hawaii they cost about $10,000, $11,000. Okay our private schools spend of course a lot more than that. Special education is very expensive and that's why you know it takes much resources. But if you break down those statistics like that you realize that you know not only we trailing our comparative districts we're also compare trailing those private schools in Hawaii that not only do tuition but also have endowments on top of that. How much more would it take to begin to fix these problems? You know when we were looking at our bill okay we were asking for that $500,000,000 and we think we can do a lot with that. You know raising teacher salaries is not just about raising teacher salaries. It's about having a surplus of people that want to be in that position. For example if I wanted to let's just say in order to lower class size and case load for special education teachers I wanted to hire 250 more special education teachers. We can't do that right now because there's no teachers to hire. So I would need to have a place where it's not just workload but salaries that attracts a surplus so then we can start lowering those case loads so that we have enough special education teachers. Same thing for class size. We can't lower these things or provide the services that we need. We can't even do the career and technical education part and have say for example a kid wants to go to auto mechanics. You think about it what person that has a bachelor's degree in education and knows auto mechanics wants to work for a beginning salary of in our new contract by the end will be $50,000. They can make more than that in the private sector. And so then we can attract those people can't get in the classrooms and that creates those problems. So it's not just about paying teachers more it's about paying teachers what it will take in the marketplace so that we have a surplus of teachers. And with the proposal that you would that have addressed our facilities funding also was or was it strictly aimed at teacher salaries for now? We had the only thing we took out was specifically facilities and we asked the legislature to fund that part. We were also trying to advocate for school impact fees to be used through the board of education so that we would have funding for facilities. But facility funding gets a little tricky because of bond issues. Okay. So next year we're going to come back with a similar proposal. We'll try to address some of the concerns that you heard along the way. And I hope that you feel heartened by them by the great amount of progress that bill did get. I mean to me considering what a new novel idea it was and how much money we're talking about I thought it got a lot of support. And as we talked before you know sometimes it takes more than one year to get a big idea through the legislature so I certainly do hope we'll come back with more success next year. And briefly how can people out there help encourage your success in this regard. It needs to be a community effort. I think that you know it was interesting to see what the air conditioning issue took many years but when it took 10 or 20 parents getting involved and sign waving in front of the board of education I think that put the extra pressure on there. And so you know I think it's essential that parents become part of this fight. I think if it's just teachers too often it's easy to dismiss just teachers but if it's parents as well that will make the difference. So next year we'd like to see more parent involvement as well as community involvement in general. Well I wish you the best I think that what you're doing is the most exciting thing I've seen happen to teachers in my time here and I thank you for your hard work. I'm here with Corey Rosenley president of Hawaii State Teachers Association and you've been listening to the Ruderman round table. We're here every other week on Think Tech Hawaii and other locations and thank you for joining us. I'm state senator Russell Ruderman Mahalo.