Roughly 600 teachers, students, parents and community members flanked Fort Weaver Road near Campbell High School on Thursday to send Gov. Neil Abercrombie a message: "Negotiate, not mandate."

Protesters waved signs bearing those words and other phrases such as "Fair Deal for Students and Teachers" and "Governor Where’s Our Contract?" outside the state’s largest public school for more than an hour to inform the community that Hawaii State Teachers Association members and supporters still strongly oppose the "last, best and final" contract imposed on them in July 2011.

"I’m very pleased," HSTA President Wil Okabe said of the turnout, "but I’m more pleased with the students that are here supporting their teachers. It sends a very strong message that the students are looking at this as a constitutional rights issue."

He added, "The students are going to be voting in another couple years, so they’re going to be very instrumental in regards to the next election process. I think that for them to take a position of supporting their teachers, putting education as a priority sends a very strong message."

The "work to rule" protest called on the teachers to stick to the precise rules of the contract, which mandates an 8 a.m.-to-3 p.m. workday.

But teachers typically work long past 3 p.m., either on classroom projects or as advisers to clubs.

The protest began promptly at that hour to underscore that extra work, Campbell social studies teacher and rally organizer Corey Rosenlee said.

"A lot of teachers … start working these tremendously long hours, and then they look at their paycheck and say, ‘You know, I could be going to another job and earning minimum wage for the kind of hours I’m putting in — and getting compensated,’" Rosenlee said. "And that’s the whole idea, is that all the stuff, proms, graduations, clubs, all that stuff is not paid at all.

"Other jobs when they work overtime, they get overtime; they get paid. People see our job often times as volunteerism, and it’s not."

The protest came one day after a state negotiating team presented HSTA with a 103-page contract for 2013 to 2015.

Okabe said the union is still looking over the contract, but "teachers will be very disappointed in whatever we’ve seen so far."

"It is a regressive package," he said. "It has limited resources, in a sense, and it doesn’t put students’ learning first, and also student achievement. The last contract that the teachers were able to ratify in May addressed all of those issues."

Indeed, 66 percent of HSTA members approved a contract in May that the union had previously rejected in January.

Because of the initial rejection, the state has not accepted the May vote as valid and aims to continue moving forward with negotiations.

HSTA claims the state violated its union members’ collective bargaining rights when it imposed a contract without having it ratified. The contract also includes wage reductions and higher health insurance premiums.

The union took its claim to the Hawaii Labor Relations Board, but the board has yet to rule. The union has also unsuccessfully requested the Supreme Court to force the board to make a decision.

Okabe said the union cannot hold a strike vote until the board decides whether the state’s imposed contract is constitutional.

"This has major implications for all public unions because if the state can implement a last, best and final offer on us, they can implement a last and best and final offer to any public union in the state of Hawaii," he said.

If HSTA wins its case, the state will have to compensate teachers for the lost wages and increased health care costs incurred during the contract, Okabe said. But he cautioned that the state would likely pursue an appeal.

Alyssa Bali, a student-teacher studying elementary education at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said she came out for the protest because she attended Campbell, and many of her old teachers were out protesting.

Bali, 21, said she looks forward to teaching in Hawaii despite the current labor dispute.

"I don’t like the situation, but I like that everyone’s coming together and I made a good career choice seeing that I am going into a union that is standing up for what they want," she said. "All these people are here because they love what they do; that’s just even more motivation to do what I’m going to do."

Campbell senior Joselle Villaro said she decided to sign-wave because she thinks her teachers, such as her math teacher whom she sees for help regularly after school, aren’t compensated well enough.

"I feel like all teachers, when they have like groups or kids that they want to help after school, they do it on their own time," the 17-year-old said. "It’s like they kind of get no recognition for that except us graduating … and I think that they should get more than that."

Teachers at Campbell plan to hold an even bigger protest Nov. 29, and others after that. Rosenlee said schools from around the state are joining in on the "work to rule" protest as well.

"I think the good thing is that what it shows you is this is not just something that teachers want," he said of Thursday’s event. "We have parents, we have hundreds of students out here, you know, and you can hear all the honking (showing) that this community is supportive of us."