Thousands of Hawai'i teachers may be carrying invalid teaching licenses because the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board has been granting illegal extensions since 2003, state Auditor Marion Higa said in an audit released yesterday.

The Hawaii Teacher Standards Board, the licensing agency for Hawai'i's teachers, has been illegally extending expired licenses because the agency lacked the appropriate mechanisms for teachers to renew them, Higa said.

She was not able to determine exactly how many licenses are currently invalid, but estimated the number at roughly 3,800. The true number is probably higher, Higa said.

That means thousands of active teachers are instructing without valid licenses, putting the public school system's federal funding in jeopardy, she said.

"All of these extensions, no matter how many times they were extended, are pretty much invalid," Higa said. "They would not be considered highly qualified under No Child Left Behind because they don't have a valid license."

Roger Takabayashi, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, which represents some 13,500 public school teachers, said teachers cannot be punished for the standards board's inability to renew licenses according to the law.

"We have no control over the standards board and their effectiveness to renew our members licenses," Takabayashi said. "And I don't believe our membership should be penalized because of it."

Officials with the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board vigorously dispute Higa's findings and say they have been assured by the state attorney general's office that their actions were legal and proper.

"We want to assure our teachers that we're 100 percent sure that if their licenses were extended that they are still valid," said Chairman Jonathan Gillentine, who teaches at Benjamin Parker Elementary School. "The opinion of the attorney general's office is that we acted appropriately."

RECOMMENDATIONS

Higa said the standards board is in a "state of confusion" and is "unable to develop, administer and deliver an effective teacher licensing program."

She is recommending that lawmakers strip the standards board of its licensing power and transfer the power back to the Board of Education. She also said the problem will have to be retroactively fixed.

"The only thing we can suggest at this point is that the (BOE) be granted retroactive authority for those licenses that have been expired," Higa said. "The board would have to promulgate rules and then take action."

The Hawaii Teacher Standards Board took over licensing authority from the Department of Education in 2001. At that time, the Legislature had granted the board the authority to extend licenses for two years while the board attempted to put license renewal procedures into place.

NO LEGAL AUTHORITY

Problems regarding extended licenses began back in 2003 after the board's authorization from the Legislature to grant extensions expired. The board continued to grant extensions even without legal authority to do so, Higa said.

Instead, the board should have been renewing licenses, which requires teachers to demonstrate that they've attained a higher level of professionalism, she said. Extensions don't require teachers to demonstrate anything.

"The original plan was, you'd go in for a five-year initial license but within those five years you have a chance to prove that you should have your license renewed and that you meet higher standards," Higa said.

However, the standards board didn't have a way to allow teachers to prove they meet requirements to renew their license, so the board chose to grant extensions.

Gillentine said the standards board continues to extend licenses and expects to implement a renewal process in April.

Implementing a new renewal process has been delayed for several years because the board has been in a dispute with two contractors that were hired to develop an online resource for teachers to use to submit documentation for renewal, he said.

Higa criticized the board for wasting more than $1 million on a license renewal online application that has still not been put in place.

Gillentine said the money was not wasted because the board expects to unveil the process soon.

"It's an over-generalization to say that all this money was used and there's no renewal program," Gillentine said. "It doesn't show the work that was done."

SOLUTIONS NEEDED

State Sen. Norman Sakamoto, D-15th (Waimalu, Airport, Salt Lake), chairman of the Senate Education and Housing Committee, did not want to speculate about whether there are indeed thousands of teachers with invalid licenses.

But lawmakers need to start looking at various ways to fix the problems with the board and with the state's current licensing policies, he said.

"Fixing this would be productive," Sakamoto said. "Statutorily we'll have to make it clearer, or the Board of Education will have to pass a policy regarding relicensing. ... I don't think it's productive to have our teachers who are trying to do the best job they can to get into an uproar over whether their licenses are valid or not."

Two bills in the Legislature could retroactively fix the problem of invalid licenses, including one that would move licensing authority back to the state Board of Education.

But there are questions about whether that's the right thing to do, Sakamoto said.

The state Department of Education not only hired teachers but also granted them licenses, which was determined to be a conflict of interest in 2001.

Garrett Toguchi, chairman of the state Board of Education, said the BOE would be willing to take on the responsibility of licensing. However, he said, potential conflicts of interests will have to be sorted out beforehand.

Some board members are concerned about being both the employer of teachers and also the licensing body, Toguchi said.