Anton Avanozian loves teaching at Baldwin High School on Maui, taking pride in his efforts to grow the science department and support activities like the student science fair. But despite his satisfactory job evaluations and the state's teacher shortage, he's worried about losing his position after next year.
Avanozian has an emergency hire permit, which allows people with a bachelor's degree but no teacher's license to work in classrooms for up to three years while they take the courses and tests needed to earn a credential. While he expects to complete his program before the deadline next summer, it's still challenging to balance a full-time job and a few hours of coursework every day, he said.
"I'm applying a lot of pressure on myself to get it done," Avanozian said. "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?"
Hawaiʻi public schools are undergoing a dramatic transformation in who's filling classroom positions and teaching students. This year, the Department of Education employed roughly 1,000 emergency hires -- around 8% of the overall teacher workforce and more than double the number from four years ago. In some parts of the state, emergency hires make up more than 15% of the teaching staff.
As reliance on emergency hires has grown, so too has concern over losing workers who can't earn a license in three years.
A package of bills that would allow emergency hires to work in schools for five years is now sparking debate around the role unlicensed teachers should play in Hawaiʻi classrooms. Emergency hires are becoming too entrenched in the school system, some lawmakers and the teacher licensing board argue, reducing the quality of education and disadvantaging students in rural and neighbor island schools, which have a greater reliance on unlicensed teachers.
The education department's stance is that giving emergency hires more time to earn their licenses is a better option than losing educators after a few years and relying on long-term substitutes, though the department has failed to provide lawmakers with any data on how many teachers need this assistance. Unlike emergency hires, substitute teachers aren't required to have a college degree or work toward licensure.
The proposal also moves Hawaiʻi in the opposite direction of states like Texas that are trying to phase out emergency hires and put more constraints on what subjects unlicensed educators can teach in schools.
"My concern is that we're accepting them as an integral part of the workforce for teachers," said Rep. Andrew Garrett, who introduced one of the bills at DOE's request. "I just want to make sure that we don't get too reliant on this."
Extending emergency hire permits from three to five years could impact hundreds of teachers who are working toward their licenses and may need to leave public schools in the near future if they aren't successful, DOE Deputy Superintendent Tammi Oyadomari-Chun said in the hearing last week. Roughly 150 to 200 teachers are currently in their third year as emergency hires, she said, meaning they need to earn their license by the end of this school year in order to remain with the DOE.
When lawmakers pushed school officials for more details, the department was unable to provide data on how many emergency hires receive their licenses in three years or how long employees would ideally need to finish a licensing program. The teacher standards board also doesn't have easily accessible data on how many licenses are awarded to emergency hires in their third year since licenses are granted on a case-by-case basis, board chair Kristi Miyamae said.
"Moving beyond the three years is important," Oyadomari-Chun said. "But whether it's five or 10 is the magic number, there's no data to back up that choice."
Studies from other states that loosened their teaching requirements during the pandemic show that emergency hires tend to be less effective than licensed educators. In Texas, students who were taught high school math by an unlicensed educator received the equivalent of nearly five months of instruction compared to a full nine months from a licensed teacher, according to a 2024 report from the University of Texas at Austin.
Emergency hires tend to face the greatest challenges in their early years in the classroom and experience greater turnover than licensed teachers, said Michael Marder, who authored the UT Austin report. In turn, he said, schools relying on emergency hires may struggle even more with teacher retention if they're forced to hire long-term subs and more unlicensed teachers to fill positions.
Some lawmakers are concerned that schools in rural or low-income communities are more likely to rely on emergency hires, exacerbating educational inequalities. In the 2023-24 academic year, Lānaʻi employed the greatest number of unlicensed teachers, followed by the Kūlanihākoʻi and Waiʻanae complexes.
But giving emergency hires more time to earn their licenses is a better alternative than losing teachers after their third year in schools, Chun said. To ensure the quality of emergency hires, she said, the department regularly checks that teachers are making progress toward their licenses and pairs them with more experienced teachers to receive mentorship.
While teacher preparation programs typically last from 18 months to two years, it's not a guarantee that emergency hires will complete their coursework in that time frame, said Diane Gibson, an instruction and professional development specialist with the Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association. Not all licensing programs are designed to accommodate teachers with full-time jobs, she said, and emergency hires also have families and other responsibilities taking up their time outside of the school day.
The state standards board has paused work on vetting and approving additional mainland programs that offer teacher licenses to ensure the quality of the 14 programs currently authorized -- most of which are offered through Hawaiʻi universities. But some outside programs currently excluded from Hawaiʻi's approved licensing pathways offer more online or affordable options that could fit the needs of emergency hires, Gibson said.
At Ke'elikōlani Middle School in Honolulu, teacher Nathan Sellner said he saw an improvement in his students' learning last fall when he took over a science position that was previously filled by substitutes. Last year, nearly a third of eighth graders at the school scored proficient in science, up from 21% the previous two years.
"I think it really is important that students have a qualified teacher as soon as possible," said Sellner, who started as an emergency hire and earned his teacher license halfway through last year.
At Lānaʻi High and Elementary School, emergency hires make up nearly a third of teaching staff, Principal Douglas Boyer said. Many of the school's emergency hires are international teachers who have classroom experience and licenses -- just not a Hawaiʻi-specific license.
DOE has increasingly relied on international teachers to fill positions in such hard-to-staff, rural schools. This year, the department employed more than 300 international teachers, who work as emergency hires until they can receive a Hawaiʻi license.
The influx of international teachers has allowed Lānaʻi High and Elementary to offer more classes such as choir and physical education, Boyer said, and has prevented the school from relying on vice principals or long-term substitutes to fill vacant positions.
"It's really allowed us to create that consistency for our students and to give our students a lot of offerings," Boyer said.
Most international teachers are brought here on a visa that is valid for up to five years, though they can't stay for the full term if they don't earn a local teaching license in the first three years.
It can be costly for teachers to pass their licensing exams, said Sen. Troy Hashimoto, and not all international hires want to invest the time and money into these tests if they’re not able to work long-term in schools.
Hashimoto has introduced a bill that would require the teacher standards board to develop a teaching permit to allow international hires to work in Hawaiʻi schools for the full five years of their visa. While the standards board could determine the specific requirements for the permit, Hashimoto said he would like to see alternative ways to evaluate international teachers’ qualifications to work in schools rather than relying on costly licensing programs and exams.
Even still, he said, an extended permit -- for international teachers or local emergency hires -- isn't a permanent solution for the state's teacher shortage. Moving forward, he said, he would like to see the standards board and Hawaiʻi universities find more ways to attract local candidates and retain teachers in public schools.
"It's trying to help us to bridge the gap," Hashimoto said. "I think we cannot believe that this is a permanent fix."