In one of the largest private efforts in recent history to ease Hawaii’s chronic shortage of schoolteachers, full-tuition scholarships for 150 people to become teachers through an online bachelor’s degree program were announced Wednesday under a partnership between Kamehameha Schools and Chaminade University.

The Mu‘o Scholarships are being offered in alignment with the state’s Ready Keiki initiative to create preschool access for all of Hawaii’s 3- and 4-year-old children by 2032.

Currently, only about half of the state’s 35,300 children in those age groups attend preschool, with the vast majority in expensive private preschools. As the state plans to build or renovate more than 450 public classrooms over the next 10 years so that all children can have access, “that means we’re going to need 450 preschool teachers. That also means we’re going to need 450 teacher assistants,” Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, who is leading the state’s push for preschool access, said during a news conference announcing the scholarships.

Hawaii’s public schools typically have been short more than 1,000 qualified teachers each year, and Luke said the state is trying to avoid worsening the shortage as each new preschool classroom will need a qualified teacher with at least a bachelor’s degree, and a teaching assistant with an associate degree.

The Mu‘o Scholarships are “a way to fill that void and fill the pathway. So we can fill these classrooms with qualified teachers, qualified teacher assistants, so that these classrooms won’t go empty when we start building them out,” Luke said.

This year, 50 scholarship recipients will be chosen to receive full scholarships to Chaminade’s online bachelor program, with each scholarship worth $100,580 over four years. Fifty more students will be chosen each of the following two years.

Kamehameha will provide the approximately $1 million to cover the first year, then higher amounts yet to be determined in the following two years.

Hawaii residents are eligible, with extra consideration given to those of Hawaiian ancestry. Recruitment and admittance priority also will be given to early childhood education applicants. The priority deadline to apply is June 1; go to chaminade.edu/go/teachkeiki/.

The program’s classes are “100% online. It’s designed to appeal to working adults to earn their degree to become teachers,” Chaminade University President Lynn Babington said at the news conference. “The estimated time to completion is 36 to 48 months, or possibly sooner, as some of our students we expect to bring credits already from a community college or other university education.”

Students nearing completion also will be placed in schools for student teaching, Babington said.

Degree options include a bachelor’s in early childhood education, early childhood education with Montessori credential, elementary education (grades K-6) or secondary education (grades 6-12).

“This isn’t going to resolve the teacher shortage immediately here in Hawaii, but we hope that it will provide some traction and interest for students and young people all over to begin looking at teaching as a career,” she said.

To a question about how the state will also address historically poor retention of preschool teachers due to low pay, Luke said that as the state gains preschool teachers, they will be added to the existing collectively bargained salary schedule for public school teachers. The hope is that an increase in state Preschool Open Doors subsidies approved in this year’s Legislature also will spur private preschools to raise their salaries, Luke said.

The annual mean wage for Hawaii preschool teachers with an associate degree ranges from $38,140 to $55,960, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hawaii child care workers with a high school diploma or equivalent earn $25,720 to $29,710 on average.

Meanwhile, the Hawaii State Teachers Association and the state last month reached what the union has called their strongest contract ever for K-12 teachers, with pay raises totaling approximately 14.5% over four years, increasing the average salary for Hawaii public school teachers from approximately $70,000 to $80,000 over the life of the contract.

Wai‘ale‘ale Sarsona, vice president of Hi‘ialo at Kamehameha Schools, said the Mu‘o Scholarships — named with a Hawaiian word for “growth” — will have far-reaching effects: Those who will lead Hawaii in 25 years need the best possible start in preschool now, she said. More public preschool also means a reduced burden on local families paying preschool tuition, which is often as expensive as their rent or mortgage, she said.

“And what we hope we see is that our rural communities now have access to education online,” Sarsona said. “If many of our families living as far as Kau or Honaunau, or in Hana or Lanai or Kauai, might have the opportunity to become educators right in their own backyard, how special that is.”

MU‘O SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM

Online teacher-prep program through a partnership between Kamehameha Schools and Chaminade University:

>> Full-tuition scholarship value: $100,580, for four years

>> Priority deadline to apply for 2023: June 1

>> Hawaii residents eligible; additional consideration given to applicants of Native Hawaiian ancestry

>> Term for first 50 students begins Sept. 1. Fifty more scholarships will be awarded each of the following two years.

>> For more information: chaminade.edu/go/teachkeiki