Budget & Finance

Furloughs Bedevil Hawaii Lawmakers

By Katie Ash — May 11, 2010 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

| Hawaii | Faced with a $142.6 million hole in the education budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which prompted the state to declare 17 furlough days for both the current and upcoming school year, educators and officials in Hawaii are struggling to find solutions to restore the lost instructional time.

Gov. Linda Lingle
Republican
Senate:
23 Democrats
2 Republicans
House:
45 Democrats
6 Republicans
Enrollment:
178,650

Legislators passed a bill that would pull $67 million from the state’s Hurricane Relief Fund to eliminate the 17 furlough days scheduled for the 2010-11 school year, but Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, must sign the bill into law before the money can be released.

Gov. Lingle has indicated that she would agree to release $57 million from the relief fund to ease the use of furlough days. Schools would need to decide which essential employees could come back during the furlough days.

The bill did nothing to restore the remaining three out of the original 17 furlough days in the 2009-10 school year, although Gov. Lingle has encouraged teachers to work voluntarily on the scheduled furlough days, something that the Hawaii State Teachers Association says is a violation of teachers’ contracts.

The governor has until July 6 to sign or veto the bill, or it will become law without her signature.

Separately, meanwhile, Interim Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi took over Hawaii’s single statewide school district in January after former state schools chief Patricia Hamamoto announced her retirement Dec. 31, 22 months before her contract was scheduled to end.

A version of this article appeared in the May 12, 2010 edition of Education Week as Furloughs Bedevil Hawaii Lawmakers

Events

Student Well-Being Webinar After-School Learning Top Priority: Academics or Fun?
Join our expert panel to discuss how after-school programs and schools can work together to help students recover from pandemic-related learning loss.
Budget & Finance Webinar Leverage New Funding Sources with Data-Informed Practices
Address the whole child using data-informed practices, gain valuable insights, and learn strategies that can benefit your district.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Classroom Technology Webinar
ChatGPT & Education: 8 Ways AI Improves Student Outcomes
Revolutionize student success! Don't miss our expert-led webinar demonstrating practical ways AI tools will elevate learning experiences.
Content provided by Inzata

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Budget & Finance Opinion Could the Nation's Largest District Afford to Double Teacher Pay and Triple Counseling?
Seeing what’s conceivable in N.Y.C. schools might give us the confidence to stop settling for what’s customary everywhere.
3 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Budget & Finance If You Gave Elementary School Students $2K, How Would They Spend It?
Some Arizona elementary students opted to add healthy snacks to campus, sports equipment, and a game room.
6 min read
Second grade students on the steering committee at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School take a break from assisting with polling on April 14, 2023.
Second grade students at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School take a break from assisting with polling how $2,000 in school improvement money should be spent, on April 14, 2023. The Phoenix school allows young students to lead plans for beautification or enrichment.
Courtesy of Aimee Marques
Budget & Finance Special Education Is Getting More Expensive, Forcing Schools to Make Cuts Elsewhere
States and districts share the disproportionate cost burden of supporting a complex, growing, and vulnerable population.
8 min read
Special education teacher Savannah Tucker works with Bode Jasper at the Early Childhood Education Center in Tupelo, Miss., on May 14, 2019. As the special education population has grown, so has mainstreaming - bringing these students into regular classrooms for at least part of their school days.
Special education teacher Savannah Tucker works with Bode Jasper at the Early Childhood Education Center in Tupelo, Miss., on May 14, 2019. Special education costs are rising, particularly as student needs have grown more complex since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thomas Wells/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP
Budget & Finance From Our Research Center Inflated Costs, Growing Needs: Why Educators Are Pessimistic About School Budgets
More than half of educators believe increasingly complex needs of students are driving up per-pupil expenses, new data show.
5 min read
Illustration of a female standing, and her shadow forms a dollar sign symbol.
uzenzen/iStock/Getty