RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, student co-curricular and extracurricular activities are an important and integral part of a student's overall education; and

WHEREAS, many of these activities require transporting students to and from different schools; and

WHEREAS, current state laws and regulations require that all students, including private school students, must be transported to and from co-curricular and extracurricular activities in school buses; and

WHEREAS, there are more co-curricular and extracurricular groups that must be transported at any given time than there are available school buses; and

WHEREAS, the lack of transportation to and from these activities is a problem, especially for students who board at schools, since their parents are not available to drive them; and

WHEREAS, participants in many of these activities, such as golf or tennis teams, or academic clubs, number fewer than eight students per school; and

WHEREAS, these smaller student groups can be transported safely in vehicles other than a school bus; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Twenty-third Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2006, the House of Representatives concurring, that the Legislative Reference Bureau conduct a study to determine if there are safe and reasonable alternatives for the transportation of small groups of private school students to and from their co-curricular and extracurricular activities; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the study shall also investigate any exemptions that other states have created for transporting these types of student groups that do not compromise student safety; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Legislative Reference Bureau is requested to report its findings to the Legislature no later than twenty days prior to the convening of the Regular Session of 2007; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the Director of Transportation, the Executive Director of the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, and the Acting Director of the Legislative Reference Bureau.

Report Title:

Private School Student Transportation; LRB Study