Bill Would Let Unlicensed Emergency Teachers Stay Five Years in Hawaiʻi

A legislative package under debate would extend Hawaiʻi’s Emergency Hire Permit from a three-year maximum to five years, a change lawmakers say could keep classrooms staffed in neighbor-island and rural schools that rely heavily on unlicensed teachers. The Department of Education employed roughly 1,000 emergency hires this year, about 8% of the overall teacher workforce, a figure Civil Beat reported while lawmakers weigh the bills.

Under current Hawaiʻi Teacher Standards Board rules, an Emergency Hire Permit lasts one year and may be reissued only twice for a three-year cap; Hoodline and KTVB reporting notes the permit is intended for situations when no licensed teacher is available. Department of Education officials told lawmakers roughly 150 to 200 teachers are in their third year on emergency permits now, a number proponents of the bills say would create staffing gaps if the three-year limit forces departures.

Supporters point to retention and staffing pressures: the state recruited more than 300 international teachers who initially work under emergency permits, and some campuses carry far higher concentrations of emergency hires. Lānaʻi High and Elementary’s principal told Civil Beat nearly a third of the staff is on emergency permits, and other parts of Hawaiʻi now see emergency hires make up more than 15% of teaching staff. Proponents also highlight that emergency hires helped reduce vacancies to 73 unfilled positions statewide as students returned earlier this month, the lowest vacancy count in more than five years compared with more than 1,000 vacancies in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The impact on individual teachers is stark on Maui, where Baldwin High School emergency-hire science teacher Anton Avanozian said he takes pride in growing the science program while working toward licensure. Avanozian said balancing a full-time job with "a few hours of coursework every day" is difficult and that he is "applying a lot of pressure on myself to get it done." He added, "I’m really pushing towards it, but I do have that worry in the back of my mind, what if it doesn’t work out?" Avanozian told KTVB he expects to finish his credential program before the current emergency-permit deadline next summer but exemplifies the tension lawmakers are debating.

Critics including some lawmakers and the teacher licensing board argue extending the permit could normalize long-term teaching without full licensure and lower instructional quality in the very communities the policy aims to help. Civil Beat cited research that emergency hires often have higher retention but may be less effective than licensed teachers with more training. At the same time, HSTA president Osa Tui Jr. attributed the rise in emergency hires to a pay raise two years ago and said, "These numbers reflect exactly what we were hoping to accomplish."

Financial incentives and conversion programs figure into the debate: emergency hires now earn about $50,300 a year versus roughly $38,500 previously, the Grow Our Own initiative at UH Mānoa helps cover tuition for teacher preparation programs and requires three years of service after licensure, and HSTA notes a $10,000 special education shortage differential has reduced unlicensed SPED teachers. The package of bills remains under active debate among lawmakers, the HTSB, the DOE, and unions as Hawaiʻi seeks to balance staffing stability with long-term teacher quality.