Less than one week ago, husband and wife Calvin and Sherry Abe, both teachers at Pearl City High School, waved signs with colleagues at the state Capitol as an end to the teachers strike loomed. Today, teachers statewide are assessing the pros and cons of their hard-won contract. The number of instructional days in Hawaii's public schools will dip back below the national average to make time for more teacher training, but education officials say that's a trade-off they're willing to make given the increasing demands on educators.
Time is the most precious commodity.
The new teachers' contract converts four instructional days to professional development starting with the 2001-2002 school year. Students would not come to school those days and the time would be used to train large groups of teachers in matters important to the whole school or even the entire system, Husted said. One possibility might be a training session on how to use the new computerized data collection system to track the progress of special-education students, she said. It was only four years ago that Gov. Ben Cayetano made adding instructional days a high priority in HSTA contract negotiations. At 176 days for students and 182 days for teachers, Hawaii's 1996-97 school year was among the shortest in the nation, Cayetano argued at the time.