Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Education and Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations, to which was referred S.B. No. 818 entitled:

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to require the Hawaii teacher standards board to develop alternative certification standards to enable military and Coast Guard personnel, veterans, reserve component personnel, and Department of Defense and Department of Energy civilian employees the board deems qualified to become teachers.

Your Committees heard testimony in support of the measure from the United States Pacific Command, and in opposition to the measure from the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board.

Your Committees find that recruitment and retention of qualified public school teachers is an ongoing concern and that skills learned in the military can be quite applicable to classroom teaching. The Hawaii Teacher Standards Board has been working to identify alternative routes to licensing that can be used to document whether military and related personnel have achieved existing certification standards.

The intent of this measure to prepare qualified public school teachers is also highly compatible with the initiatives proposed in S.B. No. 1213, Making an Appropriation for the Establishment and Continuation of Professional Development Schools, and S.B. No. 1215, Relating to Rehiring Retired Teachers in the Department of Education.

Your Committees have amended the measure to require the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board to develop alternative means of testing the attainment of existing certification standards to enable military and related personnel to become teachers, instead of developing alternative standards for them.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Education and Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 818, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 818, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.