Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2004

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Education and Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 3148 entitled:

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to establish a noncontiguous host culture charter school district under the Board of Education to be monitored by a host culture district council as a 5-year pilot demonstration project.

Your Committees received testimony in support of the measure from the Hawaii Charter Schools Network and Hawaii State Teachers Association. Your Committees received testimony in opposition to the measure from the Hawaii Government Employees Association.

Your Committees find that a noncontiguous host culture charter school district could be an important means of propagating the values of the host culture, improving student achievement among the host culture students, and further enhancing the autonomy of charter schools in a manner that also enables them to facilitate sharing of administrative and other costs and resources. However, it would be unfair to enable host culture charter schools to form an entity recognized as a local education agency by the federal government without offering a similar opportunity to the other charter schools.

Your Committees further find that there remain some significant legal and organizational questions regarding the establishment of such districts as local education agencies that remain unresolved to the satisfaction of the Committees. For instance, it is unclear how the recognition of a district as a local education agency will affect the legal status and access to funding of the remaining charter schools which are unable or unwilling to join such a district. Until such concerns are addressed conclusively, your Committees are hesitant to prescriptively require the establishment of such noncontiguous districts for host culture and any other charter school. The option to do so may provide valuable administrative and fiscal advantages to charter schools, however, and should be kept open.

Your Committees have amended the measure by:

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Education and Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 3148, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 3148, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.