A national survey ranks Hawai'i's average teacher salary at 15th in the country, but local officials say the high cost of living drags that down and isn't enough to prevent a huge turnover.

The American Federation of Teachers, a national teachers union, said the average Hawai'i public school teacher salary for the 2004-05 school year was $47,833, an increase of 5.2 percent from the previous year.

That's slightly above the national average teacher pay of $47,602. That is a 2.2 increase from the previous year, the union said, but not enough to cover the cost of inflation.

The Hawai'i State Teachers Association, which represents some 13,000 public school teachers, said Hawai'i needs to find ways to get and keep teachers and reverse a problem with turnover.

"Our new employees are leaving at the end of three years at an alarming rate — 60 percent of our new employees are leaving after the first three years," said HSTA executive director Joan Husted.

"No company can stay in business with that kind of turnover. We have to find a way to keep teachers in teaching," she said.

The Hawai'i ranking was better for beginning teachers — the state ranked eighth in the nation for starting teacher salary, with an average of $35,816, a 5.5 percent increase over the previous year.

And officials say that increase in beginning teacher salary is important. "We worked at it," Husted said. "You've got to attract people in."

State Senate Education Chairman Norman Sakamoto said the national report shows progress but that more needs to be done to enhance pay, especially to lure beginning teachers.

"I believe it's worth paying our teachers more," Sakamoto said. "I think we'd have more professionals staying in the profession longer."

Sakamoto said state lawmakers are looking at other ways to attract and keep teachers. One proposal that has won support this year would be to give a monetary bonus in hard-to-serve areas. That could mean a $5,000 bonus to teach at a school struggling with its yearly progress, or in Nanakuli, where a longer drive would eat into one's salary.

Lawmakers also are looking into allowing teachers to get a boost in pay for educational credits that fall short of a degree. For example, a teacher with 20 college credits from another state could be paid more. And that would go up more if the teacher proceeded to get additional credits here.

State Department of Education spokesman Greg Knudsen said he's encouraged to see the national ranking but knows that factoring in Hawai'i's high cost of living usually brings the salaries' buying power down toward the bottom of the list.

He said salary is a key issue when hiring teachers who move to Hawai'i and lack the support that a longer-term resident might have.

"We do feel that it's important to have a high salary for teachers in order to attract the best and the brightest," Knudsen said. "In terms of real spending power, it's still important for us to improve teacher salaries."

Early this month, HSTA president Roger Takabayashi said teachers were given the preliminary schedule of what is being negotiated for 2007-09. He said they were discussing increases that would push to $45,000 the starting pay for teachers, $60,000 as the average salary and $100,000 for most senior teachers.

Husted said the cost of living, especially housing and gasoline, is daunting to beginning teachers.

"It's really an issue of what does your money get you," she said.

"You'll find that we rank in the top 10 in the amount of income we have to put to one side for things like rent or homeowners' cost."

And she said that complaint shows up often in polls taken among departing teachers: "I'm not going to stay here because I can't buy a house; I can't even rent a home."

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.