Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2003

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Education, to which was referred S.B. No. 1072 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to appropriate funds to establish 313 ISPED clerk typist positions to support the Department of Education's integrated special education (ISPED) information management system.

Testimony in support of this measure was submitted by the Department of Education, the Hawaii Government Employees Association Local 152, the Hawaii State Teachers Association, and the Hawaii State Teachers Association Special Education Caucus.

Your Committee finds that the ISPED system is the result of the Felix Response Plan that the Department of Education adopted as part of the State's compliance with the Felix Consent Decree. Your Committee further finds that while the system's infrastructure and software have been installed and become operational, special education teachers now find that in addition to teaching and preparing lessons for their students, they are required to spend many hours inputting information into ISPED. Your Committee agrees that para-professional support positions, within an appropriate employment classification, are necessary to ensure that ISPED remains functional while removing the burden of data input functions from the special education teachers.

Your Committee has amended this measure by deleting the specifications of "three hundred thirteen ISPED clerk typists" and provided instead for "para-professional positions to support the ISPED system" to permit funding of the types of positions that are most appropriate to support the ISPED system.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Education that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1072, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1072, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.