Checks are on the horizon for an estimated 10,000 Hawaii substitute teachers who are owed a share of a $14 million settlement for back-pay claims from more than a decade ago.

A state judge Tuesday agreed to amend the settlement terms to put the Hono­lulu law firm that brought the class-action lawsuit against the state 12 years ago in charge of disbursing the funds.

Once the judge’s order is finalized, likely on Wednesday, the state will hand over the money to Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing, according to attorney Paul Alston. He said his law firm has hired an independent payroll company to cut the checks.

"They can do that in a week, so checks should be going out shortly after the end of the month," Alston said Tuesday.

Frankie Stapleton, who was a substitute teacher for about a year on Hawaii island, said, "I have been waiting patiently for the money. I could really use it. … That’s great news. … It’s just in time for tax season."

The settlement resolves part of a lengthy court battle brought by a group of substitute teachers who sued the state Department of Education in 2002, arguing that the state failed to calculate substitute teachers’ wages correctly and didn’t come through on pay raises for years.

Former Maui substitute teacher David Garner, the lead plaintiff, said in his 2002 complaint that the Department of Education violated a 1996 law pegging pay for substitutes to rates for Class II teachers — full-time instructors who have a bachelor’s degree but no advanced training. From 1996 to 2005, for example, pay for substitutes, who are not members of a collective bargaining unit, increased 11 percent, compared with 40 percent for Class II teachers, who are unionized.

A state judge in 2005 issued a series of rulings mostly siding with the teachers. The Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s rulings in 2009.

The state appealed to the Hawaii Supreme Court, which in 2010 sent the case back to Circuit Court for the state and teachers to determine how much was owed.

Substitutes claimed they were illegally underpaid from 1996, but the courts ruled they could receive back pay only for the period from November 2000 to June 2005 because of the statute of limitations. Calculating what was owed was a challenge and prolonged the case since payroll records go back years.

A circuit judge in November approved the $14 million settlement, and at the time, the state attorney general’s office said payments would likely go out with the state’s March 5 paycheck at the earliest.

Alston said his firm is fronting the approximately $200,000 for the payroll service, which he said the state has agreed to reimburse.

"Frankly, if the DOE had been competent, it wouldn’t have taken this long," he said. "Because the DOE said it couldn’t possibly get it done before the end of March, and they’ve had since December to do it, we had to find a firm."

The settlement covers claims for daily wages. Still pending are unresolved claims seeking hourly back pay as well as interest payments on both daily and hourly amounts due, which attorneys for the plaintiffs have estimated to be in the "tens of millions of dollars." The state is appealing those claims.

The money for the $14 million settlement has already been appropriated by the Legislature.

The attorney general’s office last year soughtjust over $15 million from lawmakers to settle Garner’s class-action suit, which was tentative at the time. Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed Act 90 into law last summer, approving funding for various claims against the state, including to settle Garner’s case.

The original plaintiffs in the case could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The DOE, the ninth-largest public school district in the nation, employs about 1,000 substitute teachers daily from a pool of 4,180 substitute teachers this school year.