STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2198

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 2903

       S.D. 1

Honorable Colleen Hanabusa

President of the Senate

Twenty-Fifth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2010

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committees on Water, Land, Agriculture, and Hawaiian Affairs and Higher Education and Education and Housing, to which was referred S.B. No. 2903 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE COLLEGE,"

beg leave to report as follows:

     The purpose of this measure is to require the Department of Education, the Charter School Administrative Office, and the Hawaiian Language College at the University of Hawaii at Hilo to enter into an agreement regarding the Hawaiian Language College's functions related to Nawahiokalani‘opu‘u School and other laboratory schools. 

     Testimony in support of this measure was submitted by two organizations and one individual.  One state agency submitted comments.  Written testimony presented to the Committees may be reviewed on the Legislature's website.

     Nawahiokalanai‘opu‘u School was one of eight schools out of fifty-five on Hawaii island to achieve the highest rating for No Child Left Behind testing.  The high school has a one hundred per cent graduation rate and an eighty per cent college attendance rate.  Your Committees find that this measure will strengthen Hawaiian medium education by using Hawaiian in administrative communication, modifying administrative services to meet unique Hawaiian medium education in-service needs, and modifying other standard English medium education practices as appropriate to meet the unique needs of education within the context of revitalizing the endangered Hawaiian language. 

     Your Committees have amended this measure by changing the effective date to July 1, 2050 for the purposes of further discussion. 

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Water, Land, Agriculture, and Hawaiian Affairs and Higher Education and Education and Housing that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2903, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2903, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Water, Land, Agriculture, and Hawaiian Affairs and Higher Education and Education and Housing,

____________________________ RUSSELL S. KOKUBUN, Chair	____________________________ CLAYTON HEE, Chair
	____________________________ NORMAN SAKAMOTO, Chair