A long story by Alia Wong at Civil Beat yesterday looked at the public schools as an issue in the governor’s race this year (“Teacher Morale Emerges as an Issue in the Governor’s Race“). The Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA), still smarting over their clash with the governor in their last round of contract negotiations, has endorsed David Ige in the primary.
But do teachers still have the political clout to make an electoral difference?
A knowledgeable insider recently compared the “glory days” of HSTA, from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s, to the situation today.
We had a real political machine then. 80% of the members were women. 80% of all teachers were AJA. 90%+ were registered to vote and 90% voted the union line…not out of mindlessness, but because we communicated.
It is different today. Way. Today, according to internal sources at HSTA, only 40% of the 13,500 are registered to vote and only about 28% actually follow the union line. That is about 3300 out of 13,500. Amazing if true!
Even more amazing, only 9.2% of the public school population is AJA today. That is to say, the AJA population, along with Caucasians, have pretty much abandoned the public schools which are, primarily, home now to Hawaiians and Filipinos….even the teaching population itself has dramatically changed, with only about a quarter of the teaching population now AJA…..
My friend’s calculations appear to miss the mark a little. Twenty eight percent of 13,500 would be 3,780. But is it true that the HSTA is no longer the political “machine” that it once was? I don’t know if there’s any simple way to “confirm or deny” this assessment. But, if true, it would certainly make a big difference in assessing the political impact of the unhappiness in the ranks of teachers.
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It all starts with the money. Hawaii’s public school teachers are unhappy because of the unending drama over their contract and salaries.
Contrast HSTA’s always contentious contract negotiations with HGEA. When was the last time you saw headlines about its contact or its workers salaries? Then look at the effectiveness of HSTA vs. HGEA.
If HSTA hopes to have political clout, they need to do much more education of their members and see to it that they register to vote. I’m appalled that so few teachers are registered! No wonder the governor felt free to walk all over them.
Plantation days are over, not only where sugar is grown but also where children are grown. Unlike many other public employee unions where poorly educated workers do mindless jobs and can be herded like sheep by their lunas (union stewards), the teachers are well educated, think for themselves, and can be herded only as successfully as cats. Furthermore, I suspect there are a lot of teachers — maybe most — who resent being forced by law to pay huge union dues which go to high-salaried local honchos and most of which go to the faraway national union which spends a lot of money on political lobbying for leftwing causes which many independent-minded teachers might actually oppose.
I believe that about half of public school teachers send their kids to private school. Last I heard, the figure was 45%. It might be higher now, judging from what you state above.
But I think that percentage was about that high even in the 1980s. Even back when the teachers’ union was mighty, and the teachers were largely Japanese and tied to the Democratic Party and politically conscious, so many of them were sending their own offspring to the private schools. The kind of people who care about educating the young can be expected to care most of all about the education of their own young. The changing demographics of the student body don’t help, but for a long time now among the core of Hawaii’s Democratic Party, it has been all about money.
The problem partially resides with HSTA’s leadership. They lack the capacity to think strategically, and thus wind up on the wrong side of too many elections and too many people. HGEA does a much, much better job of knowing when to take a risk in an election and then committing the resources to make sure that gamble pays off.
That being said, HSTA is putting a lot of resources behind David Ige. If they pull that election off, they’ll deserve a handsome amount of the credit.
Here’s an embarrassing topic for the HSTA: What percentage of teacher actually attend the Teacher Institute Day workshop and general assembly? The union will never release it to the public because it is appallingly low. Don’t believe me? Go visit a public school campus on the morning of Institute Day and see how many teachers are in their classrooms instead of at the assembly site. And there’s many more who are just plain taking the day off at home, even though it is a paid work day.
How to explain the teacher apathy towards the HSTA? Me thinks today’s generation of teachers are not aware of the sacrifices made by their predecessors in fighting to improve working conditions in the schools. For example, they take for granted that a full-time teacher is assured of a line that contains at least 3 classes of one subject. But that was something that HSTA had to fight for. Before that, a principal who had it in for a teacher could give him/her a chop-sui line with one class each of, say, math, science, language arts, practical arts, and social studies. Pity the poor teacher who has to prep for all that! But teachers today take stuff like that for granted and think the rights and working conditions they enjoy now were simply handed out instead of bargained for.
As the adage goes, it oftentimes takes a dire crisis to get people to vote in large numbers. Same thing for unionized employees. It will take intolerable working conditions to snap the rank-and-file from out of their complacent attitude.