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Even as public school enrollment declined over the past decade, the ranks of the Department of Education’s top officials have grown, with leaders receiving continued raises in recent years. 

DOE’s 26 leaders – including Superintendent Keith Hayashi and his deputy, assistant and complex area superintendents tasked with overseeing Hawaii schools – saw salary increases ranging from 67% to 80% over the past 12 years, according to Civil Beat’s Public Employee Salary Database. In the same timeframe, DOE leadership grew from 20 to 26 superintendents. 

The most recent additions to DOE leadership were Curt Otaguro and Tammi Oyadomari-Chun as deputy superintendents last year. Their appointments raised public criticism about an excess of top officials in the DOE and a lack of transparency as the Board of Education created two new positions and appointed Otaguro and Oyadomari-Chun in a single motion.

“They didn’t even ask the two deputies any questions,” said Corey Rosenlee, the former Hawaii State Teachers Association president and a teacher at James Campbell High School who is running for a seat in the Legislature. “I was just amazed.”

Otaguro was named deputy superintendent of operations, with Hayashi expressing confidence in his ability to modernize the DOE’s systems and operations.

Oyadomari-Chun is deputy superintendent of strategy.

Heidi Armstrong serves as the department’s third deputy superintendent, overseeing academics in Hawaii schools.

Their salaries began at $190,000 last summer, near the top of their salary range, which was $165,000 to $195,000 for fiscal year 2024 that began in July.

Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said salaries for Hawaii superintendents roughly match the pay of leaders at similarly sized districts. For example, the superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District earns a base salary of $338,000 and oversees approximately 143,400 students. In Hawaii, Superintendent Keith Hayashi earns $240,000, with the public school system enrolling just over 155,000 students, excluding those in charter schools.

In 2021, Hawaii DOE spent less than 1% of its expenditures on general administration expenses, which includes costs associated with the Board of Education and the Office of the Superintendent. The national average is approximately 5%, although Hawaii has one of the smallest student populations in the country.

In March, the BOE unanimously voted to raise the salaries of the state’s 15 complex area superintendents to between $165,000 and $205,000. In the same meeting, Hayashi also proposed raises for deputy and assistant superintendents but faced pushback from the public and the board, which deferred its decision.

In written testimony, many criticized the proposed raises as unnecessary additions to an already top-heavy department. Others pointed to the DOE's ongoing shortage of teachers, educational assistants and other classroom positions, calling for the department to better compensate school workers before raising top administrators' salaries.

"We are all feeling the financial stressors. I think that if there are funds available, that employees at the school level should receive pay raises first," said Stevenson Middle School principal Laurie Luczak in written testimony.

Unlike principals and teachers, superintendents are not covered by collective bargaining and rely on the BOE to increase their salaries, Hayashi said. He said his March proposal to the board aimed to recruit and retain people in DOE's top positions as some complex area superintendents previously made more in their former roles as school principals.

The BOE also approved pay raises ranging from 4.6% to 6% for 21 superintendents last month. These raises will cost the DOE approximately $232,000 and were based on superintendents’ annual performance reviews, according to a BOE memo.

Across the nation, school districts have maintained or expanded their staffing numbers, despite declining student enrollment, Roza said. Using federal Covid-relief funds, some districts hired additional staff members, including administrators, to address ongoing student needs related to online instruction and other pandemic-related challenges, she added. 

But as relief funds expire next year and students continue to leave public schools, it's unclear if districts can maintain their current staffing levels, she said. 

“As you get fewer students, you get fewer dollars,” Roza said. 

Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University, said there are several reasons behind students' “historically unprecedented exodus” from public schools since the pandemic. For example, some families entered their children into private schools or homeschooling programs at the start of distance learning and haven’t returned to public education since. 

In Hawaii, enrollment in DOE public schools has steadily declined since 2020, falling from approximately 167,000 to 155,000 students. By 2028, enrollment could further decline to roughly 148,000 students, according to DOE estimates from last year. 

"We're talking about really big changes," said Mark Murphy, an assistant professor in the University of Hawaii's College of Education.

State funding for DOE's administrative positions is not directly related to enrollment, and the Legislature has not cut general funds from the department's budget as student populations declined, said DOE spokeswoman Nanea Kalani. But as fewer students attend public schools, it may be harder for DOE to request additional funding from the Legislature, Murphy said.

The department continues to monitor its administrative and school spending as enrollment declines, Hayashi said. He added that DOE didn't spend its Covid-relief funds on state-level administrative positions, with the money instead going toward complex area and school-level needs.

"We want to be sure that we're able to create systems that are able to deliver support to us, to our schools and to our students," Hayashi said.

While Rosenlee believes Hawaii needs to improve its funding for public schools and teacher salaries, he doesn’t think the solution comes from cutting top administrators’ positions or pay. With over 12,000 teachers employed across the state, reallocating administrators’ pay to teachers would result in negligible raises for educators, he added. 

Fair compensation for teachers is necessary, he added, but it can be difficult and expensive to raise salaries for so many employees at once. 

From 2012 to 2024, a 10-month elementary teacher’s salary rose by 22%, although some educators may have seen greater pay raises as they gained experience and training. Earlier this year, the teachers union ratified a contract that will raise teacher pay by approximately 14.5% over the next four years. 

The average teacher salary is currently $73,319, according to HSTA. 

“We need better funding across the board,” Rosenlee said. "This conversation about DOE being top-heavy, or about the pay for a few superintendents, is often just a dog whistle to the overall problem of how underfunded our schools are.” 

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.