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. 784 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to propose an amendment to the Hawaii State Constitution to reconstitute the state Board of Education as a seventeen member nonpartisan elected board.

Testimony in support of the concept of this measure was submitted by the Hawaii State Teachers Association and the Hawaii Government Employees Association Local 152. Testimony in opposition to this measure was submitted by a concerned individual. The Board of Education submitted comments on this measure.

Your Committee finds that a reconstituted non-partisan elected state Board of Education will continue to provide an opportunity for our citizens to participate in the selection of those governing our public school system at the highest level. Your Committee further finds that an expansion of the Board of Education to a seventeen member body based upon duly apportioned representative districts will be a more transparent configuration that will also be more understandable to the resident voters within their respective electoral districts. Your Committee further believes that the seventeen-member configuration would more accurately reflect the school-complex based management reforms currently being implemented within our public school system, and which your Committee is supporting through other measures being considered during this legislative session.

Your Committee has amended this measure by inserting a provision requiring the Chief Election Officer, upon ratification of this amendment, to delineate the new board districts for the purposes of regular and special elections until the 2010 reapportionment plan is approved.

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. 784, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 784, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs.