Substitutes may have to sue DOE for pay increases

The Maui News
May 3, 2002

By CLAUDINE SAN NICOLAS
Staff Writer

WAILUKU — Substitute teachers may have to sue the Department of Education if it follows advice from the state attorney general’s office to give some substitutes pay cuts instead of pay hikes.

Maui attorney Eric Ferrer said he stands ready to represent the substitutes in court after hearing Thursday that the DOE may implement a lower salary scale for his clients.

Earlier this spring, Maui substitute David Garner pointed out that a salary increase given to starting teachers last fall was also due to substitutes. Garner pointed to a 1996 law that states, in part, that the per diem rate for substitute teachers’ pay shall be based on the salary of a starting teacher.

Since the starting teachers got a raise, Garner argued that substitutes should get a raise as well.

“We’ve been real patient,” Ferrer said. “It appears the only real recourse is in the courts.”

Schools Superintendent Patricia Hamamoto was unavailable for comment Thursday, but DOE spokesman Greg Knudsen confirmed that Hamamoto is considering pegging a new salary scale for substitutes to the amount an uncertified starting teacher makes. That salary would be $28,457, approximately $5,000 less than the $33,700 earned by a fully certified starting teacher.

Substitutes and Ferrer believe that the scale should be based at $33,700.

Both starting teacher scales are classified at the level of Class II, the designation stated in the law outlining salaries for substitutes.

Most recently, substitutes have been earning $97.90 to $113.30 per day, depending on their educational and teaching experience background.

Ferrer estimates that the new rate should be $133.73 a day, but DOE’s estimate is lower, perhaps as low as $110.71.

Knudsen said the law merely sets the scale by which substitutes will be paid. There’s nothing in the law that says substitute teachers get pay raises because regular teachers get pay raises, he said.

“There’s no linkage to any kind of rationale for that,” Knudsen said.

DOE officials do not know how many of the state’s 5,286 substitutes would be affected by the new, lower pay. Pay adjustments would go into effect on July 1.

Knudsen pointed out that eventually substitutes will get pay raises, given that a starting teacher’s salary of $28,457 is set to go up by 3 percent in the fall and then another 3 percent in spring 2003.

But Ferrer said starting out at a lower rate, even temporarily, would be an injustice.

“To go backwards doesn’t make sense. . . . It’s absolutely wrong,” he said.

Ferrer said he’s been sending to Hamamoto’s office correspondence requesting that the pay raises be implemented and that a time schedule for substitute pay hikes be set.

Knudsen said the department is committed to paying what’s owed, but it does not have the estimated $3 million to $5 million it would take to cover the raises.

Hamamoto has said publicly that her department hopes to get the raises out before the school year ends.

“We’re just conscious of trying to get it paid as quickly as we can,” Knudsen said.

Ferrer said substitutes would turn to the courts for a remedy, in part because they are not represented by a union and have no means to appeal the DOE’s decision within the state government.

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