Gov. Linda Lingle's aides are expected to meet with education officials this morning to discuss ending teacher furloughs, but the teachers union will not be at the table.

Lingle on Monday shot down an agreement the union had signed off on, which would have ended most furlough days this school year with the use of $35 million from the state's rainy-day fund. She called it "not a credible plan," and "not sustainable."

State Board of Education Chairman Garrett Toguchi will meet with Linda Smith, the governor's senior policy adviser, and Marie Laderta, the director of human resources development, at 10 a.m. in the governor's office.

Smith said yesterday that she was also arranging for either Superintendent Pat Hamamoto or Deputy Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi to attend the meeting.

"We want to sit down and discuss where we go from here, and why the governor believes that this current plan is not a sustainable solution," Smith said.

But Toguchi said he hoped to gain the governor's support for the plan and to explain to her aides why the state Board of Education and the state Department of Education support the agreement. Toguchi said he plans to continue asking to meet directly with the governor.

While the governor does not need to sign off on the new plan, she would need to approve the Legislature's use of the $35 million from the state's rainy-day fund. Legislative leadership said their ability to push the plan through in the upcoming session would depend on the governor's support.

Under the agreement, $35 million from the rainy-day fund would eliminate five furlough days. Teachers would then give up two planning days — Jan. 4, the beginning of the second semester, and May 27, the last teacher workday of the school year. The school year for students would end three days early, on May 21, meaning the week of May 24 would be a furlough week for teachers.

For next school year, the state Board of Education has also agreed to rearrange the 17 furloughs in the school calendar to minimize disruptions to instruction days.

Toguchi said he expected the governor to express disapproval for the plan.

"I expected her to be critical of it, but at the same time, hopefully she can be convinced that while this is not her original proposal, it is as good a deal as we're going to get given the amount of time and money that we have," Toguchi said.

The governor has not wavered from her original plan, which she proposed on Nov. 15. Lingle proposed using $50 million from the rainy-day fund to restore teacher salaries for 12 days, and then require teachers to swap their planning days for instructional days to eliminate 15 additional furlough days. Lingle's negotiating team had been adamant that all remaining 27 furlough days in the teachers' two-year contract be eliminated.

Toguchi said the tentative agreement with the Hawaii State Teachers Association is a compromise. He said it took a significant amount of negotiating to get education officials and HSTA to see eye-to-eye.

"The problem was that they made a position and they won't change from it. I think that our students deserve better than a my-way-or-the-highway proposal," Toguchi said.

Lingle's representatives walked away from talks with the HSTA, DOE and BOE on Dec. 17 when the teachers union said $50 million was not enough to eliminate all furlough days.

Union and Department of Education officials said they were concerned that Lingle's plan, by their tally, was $19.3 million short.

Officials feared that eliminating furlough days, and the $19.3 million shortage, would result in layoffs of 2,500 full-time employees, an increase in class sizes and loss of programs. The teachers union had also expressed concern about giving up the roughly 10 yearly planning days.