STAND. COM. REP. NO.678

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2003

RE: S.B. No. 353

S.D. 1

 

 

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2003

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Ways and Means, to which was referred S.B. No. 353, S.D. 1, entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO EDUCATION,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to make school complexes (which include a high school and its geographically contiguous intermediate or middle and elementary schools) the basis of a planning, programming, and budgeting system that directs instructional, administrative, and organizational decisionmaking by and for the public school system.

Specifically, this measure:

(1) Allows each school complex to retain five per cent of its appropriations as carryover funds;

(2) Requires an (as yet) unspecified percentage of the state general fund to be appropriated by the Legislature in any fiscal year for the statewide education budget;

(3) Prohibits the Legislature, Governor, Board of Education, and Superintendent of Education from supplanting general and federal (education) funds with private grants and donations, including donated instructional goods and services, received by schools and school complexes;

(4) Requires the Board of Education to:

(A) Develop and implement an integrated financial management system that links appropriations, allocations, and expenditures to school complex performance goals; and

(B) Develop and implement a statewide biennial education budget reflecting the anticipated financial requirements for each school complex;

(5) Allows the Board of Education to set the salaries of the Deputy Superintendent and assistants to the Superintendent at a level that does not exceed the Superintendent's salary;

(6) Requires the Department of Education to develop a budget preparation and execution process that allocates funds for personnel, procurement of instructional goods and services, other personal services contracts, and school facilities repair and maintenance projects by school complex;

(7) Changes the maximum allowable administrative expenditures for the Department of Education from 6.5 per cent of its operating budget to an (as yet) unspecified percentage of the total education budget;

(8) Allows the parents of a public school student to be absent from employment twice each school year for up to two hours in order to attend a parent teacher conference at the school at which the parents' child is enrolled;

(9) Allows individual public schools and school complexes to participate in partnerships with community-based organizations and private businesses offering donated instructional goods and services;

(10) Establishes a statewide community partnerships coordinating council to serve as a clearinghouse and resource for assisting public schools and school complexes in forming partnerships with community-based and private business organizations;

(11) Makes individual schools and school complexes eligible for annual rewards or assistance based upon achievement of their annual performance goals and student achievement of the Hawaii content and performance standards; and

(12) Establishes a joint education finance task force to discuss issues related to the financing of kindergarten through grade twelve public education, including the need for a source of state revenues earmarked for public education, and models of adequate levels of funding to support student achievement on an equitable basis.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Ways and Means that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 353, S.D. 1, and recommends that it pass Third Reading.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Ways and Means,

____________________________

BRIAN T. TANIGUCHI, Chair