HSTA leader campaigns
to gain ground in runoff
Karen Ginoza, facing a strong challenge to her position as president of the teachers union, is taking a week's vacation to campaign at schools around the state now that the teachers' contract is settled.
"I haven't had time to campaign. I've been doing my job as president," Ginoza said in an interview yesterday. "I was in the final hours of negotiations, and I've been lobbying the Legislature."
But after coming in second to challenger Roger Takabayashi in the mail-in election for president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association on Saturday, "it was time to hit the pavement," she said. Because neither candidate received a majority of the vote, a runoff election is under way.
Takabayashi, student services coordinator at Dole Middle School, got 1,591 votes, or 43 percent, of the votes cast, to Ginoza's 1,493, or 41 percent, according to unofficial results released to candidates. Albert Ferreira, a social studies teacher at Hilo High School, received 579, or 16 percent. He has thrown his support to Takabayashi.
Ginoza speculated that intense contract negotiations may have cost her some votes because the state was threatening to take away benefits the union had won in its 2001 strike. The two sides finally reached agreement last Friday to extend the contract a year.
"In the midst of voting, the administration had all those takeaways on the bargaining table," she said.
Ballots in the runoff election were mailed Tuesday. They must be postmarked by midnight next Friday and will be tallied May 17. Although initial turnout was low, the close race appears to be sparking renewed interest among members.
Ginoza has been president of the union since July 1998, when she took leave from her job as a fourth-grade and special-education teacher at Royal School to take on the full-time job. She was re-elected in 2000.
She said she has worked hard to improve communication with members and give them more input into union decisions. She took exception to remarks Takabayashi made to the Star-Bulletin earlier this week that HSTA has not been open enough with its members and has been too adversarial with legislators, the Board of Education and administration.
"You need to be a strong advocate for teachers and students," she said, "but that doesn't mean you are adversarial. We needed to address the takeaways with the Board of Education, and we did."
Ginoza noted that she has the backing of the majority of the union's 12 chapter presidents, teachers who are elected to represent districts across the state, and "that's because I've worked very hard to listen to their concerns."
She ticked off a series of accomplishments during her tenure, including pay raises for new and experienced teachers, a peer assistance program for new teachers, free long-term care insurance, incentives for professional development, and training on classroom management.
This is the first time the HSTA's 13,000 members have elected their president directly, rather than having delegates to the state convention winnow the candidates down to two, before ballots are mailed to members.
"These are some of the changes we have made to have more members involved," she said.
The union also altered its political endorsement process to give members more say. Shortly after Ginoza took office in 1998, the union endorsed then-Gov. Ben Cayetano for re-election. HSTA had traditionally backed Democrats, but the moved sparked criticism from teachers who said a poll of members had favored Republican candidate Linda Lingle.
Members now must affirm the union's political endorsements. Last year, an apparently divided HSTA decided not to make an endorsement in the gubernatorial race between Lingle and Democrat Mazie Hirono.
Hawaii State Teachers' Association