The latest teacher contract was a good start. Time to start thinking about the next one.

A few hours after voting commenced last week, a verdict had been reached. Teachers overwhelmingly supported the new contract that, among other things, will increase starting salaries for new teachers and guarantee pay increases for all teachers every year for the next four years, no strings attached. It will take effect starting July 1.

Although there was some pushback against the contract for not going far enough, the broad sentiment from the time it was announced was one of excitement.

It’s easy to understand why. Who would turn down a 14.5% raise over four years, especially when the last contract’s biggest accomplishment was avoiding pay cuts. 

This was a much-needed win for teachers, but also for the Hawaii State Teachers Association and its president Osa Tui Jr., who took over in 2021 a month after the previous contract was ratified. This was the first major hurdle under his tenure, and he cleared it with relative ease. 

But it’s important to maintain perspective. The new contract is a step in the right direction, but it’s also just that — a step…

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Last month, the Hawaii Department of Education reported an alarming spike in teacher turnover.

Comparing the 2021-2022 school year to the 2017-2018 school year, turnover is up 12.3%, an increase largely driven by teachers leaving. Nearly three times as many teachers resigned than retired after last school year. 

For many, it came as a surprise to hear why teachers were leaving. Instead of pay, which has historically and notoriously been overmatched by Hawaii’s cost of living, the teachers who left cited work environment and student behavior.

Considered together, that sounds a lot like burnout. 

Hawaii’s teachers aren’t alone; a National Education Association survey last year found that 55% of educators are thinking about leaving the profession earlier than they had planned. Though we often think of burnout as the result of being perpetually overworked, that’s not the whole picture.

Burnout also means being confronted with challenges that seem insurmountable, immovable. It’s a concoction of helplessness and hopelessness, a belief that things are the way they are because of forces beyond your control, and there is nothing you can do to make it better. 

Both low salaries and burnout correspond to teacher shortage and turnover, the two biggest problems in education today. They are related issues — high turnover discourages people from entering the profession, and the shortage means there are fewer replacements for the teachers who leave — but they are separate issues, and their solutions are distinct.

It’s worth parsing them…

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In a 2019 study on housing demand in Hawaii, the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism determined that we need at least another 25,000 housing units over the next 10 years to meet demand, and as many as 47,000.

The Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp. had SMS Research run the numbers, and after taking into account the existing shortage from previous years, it upped the urgency to 50,000 units over the next five years.

For a state that typically builds between 2,000 to 4,000 new units per year, 50,000 is a tall order. If we maintained the high end of that range, it would still take 12 to 13 years to reach 50,000 units.

That’s a long time to wait, and that’s assuming housing demand and general economic conditions don’t change, and the existing housing stock – much of which was built half a century ago – remains in functioning use.

This all sounds bad, and it is bad, but as out of reach as 50,000 new units in five years feels, it’s still an underestimation according to local economist Paul Brewbaker…

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A lot of popular ideas about the problem are focused on trying to reduce “bad” demand for local housing: taxing owners of perpetually unoccupied units, cracking down on short-term rentals, disincentivizing quick-flip investing. Those kinds of things might help a little, but in the absence of developing more affordable housing, they’re likely not enough.

Development in Hawaii is fraught. Some challenges are unavoidable. Since Hawaii is so geographically isolated, building materials will always be more expensive than they are on the mainland, and the history of development in Hawaii is inextricably linked to the disenfranchisement and displacement of Hawaiians, still ongoing. There’s no easy way around these issues.

But some of the challenges to developing new housing are self-inflicted, specifically when it comes to zoning laws. A growing body of literature suggests a direct correlation between strict zoning requirements and housing affordability…

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A part of me has always hated parades. I can understand why parents take their kids to them – it’s something free and different to do, a way to spend time together outside without having to plan or do much. But I don’t have kids, and my memories of going to parades when I was a kid are generally defined by being bored and uncomfortable.

I remember sitting in the sun as forgettable floats slowly inched by, the smells of sunscreen and sweat wafting in the air, surrounded by fidgety crowds, which inevitably led to at least some unwanted social interactions. All the while I could have been watching TV or reading a book or going to the beach — or potentially all three of those in the same time it takes for a parade to finish. And that’s to say nothing of traffic disruptions and litter left behind.

But lately I’ve been seeing videos and pictures on social media of the parades happening around the island, and it’s made me soften my position…

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