Local political advocacy organization IMUAlliance is criticizing a legislative proposal that  asks lawmakers to increase the state GET on behalf of teachers and public schools. The proposal comes from Hawaii Teachers Work to the Rules (HAWTWORK), a grassroots advocacy organization formed in response to teachers’ ongoing contractual issues.

According to an IMUAlliance press release, HAWTWORK is asking that legislators raise the state’s GET by 1 percent to subsidize education costs, including

• Eradicating repair and maintenance backlog within four years
• Placing AC in every classroom
• Raising teacher salaries by 50 percent

The proposal — the “Penny for Education Act” — also asks that any revenue created by the GET hike go towards public education on top of what’s already set aside for the DOE, says the press release. 

“Such a plan is untenable for stark and obvious reasons, both economic and political,” wrote IMUAlliance co-founder and legislative director Kris Coffield. According to Coffield, implementation of the tax-hike proposal would have a disproportionate impact on Hawaii’s poor and encourage other bargaining units to seek similar pay raises, “amounting to a multi-billion [dollar] erosion of state tax dollars.”

Coffield wrote:

We certainly should incentivize the teaching profession, as educators flee Hawaii classrooms at a higher rate than teachers in any other state. But the “Penny for Education Act” is problematic, if for no other reason, because there is literally no way to write a 50 percent salary jump into state law, since the State Legislature doesn’t facilitate collective bargaining talks.

IMUAlliance instead proposes that legislators in the upcoming session pass…

• A statute in which salary raises are contingent on teacher evaluations and other measures of student success
• A bill that synchs school schedules 

— Alia Wong