001good afternoon thank you for joining us welcome to the senate committee on education today is monday january 31st 3 p.m and we are in hearing room 229. this meeting including the audio and video of remote participants is being streamed live on youtube you will find links to viewing options for all senate meetings on the live and on demand video page of the legislature's website this zoom meeting and youtube live stream event will include the three o'clock pm agenda for the comedian education in the unlikely event that we have to abruptly end this meeting due to major technical difficulties the committee will reconvene to discuss any outstanding business on friday february 4 2021 at 3 pm and a public notice will be posted on the legislature's website i'd like to take this time to remind our
002testifiers that due to time restrictions on our hearings we will be limiting testimonies to one minute per testifier per bill for people participating remotely please remain muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify when i call your name unmute yourself and your time will begin after your minute is completed staff will mute you so that we can move this hearing along in an orderly and efficient manner should you experience any technical difficulties when it is your turn to testify we may have to move on to the next person due to time constraints your understanding is appreciated and we would like to remind you that the committee has your written testimony we apologize if the closed captioning does not accurately transcribe the audio broadcast if you wish to review the written
003testimony submitted please go to the legislature's website you will find a link on the status page for the measure thank you first item on our agenda is senate bill 2181 relating to schools requires unlicensed but accredited private schools to annually submit health and safety documentation to the hawaii council of private schools to meet the definition of private schools under the compulsor compulsory attendance law first to testify we have dr nuellen young superintendent testifying for hawaii catholic schools thank you so much uh senators of the committee on education for this opportunity to testify i'm dr luellen young the superintendent for hawaii catholic schools boy catholic schools of course is the largest private school network in the state of hawaii serving 7 000 students with 27 campuses and is a subsidiary of the roman catholic church in
004the state of hawaii and we support this bill with the appropriate modification to include hawaii catholic schools offices the compliance agency to oversee the non-licensed but accredited catholic schools who are not full members of the hawaii association of independent schools in agreement with both the hawaii association of independent schools and the hawaii council for private schools fortunately the hawaii catholic schools office already functions in the same capacity as hcps for all parochial catholic schools which are not members of hgis but are fully accredited by at least two nationally accredited organizations uh wasc and wcea in agreement with hais and hcps we will continue uh to provide an oversight for all state compliance measures regarding the health and safety of our hawaiian association of independent schools will work with us but hawaii catholic schools will be
005monitoring all of the safety checklists with cps and includes all of the state agencies and their uh appropriate uh appropriate reports uh the uh modification that we are asking is to include and submit health and safety documentation to the hawaii council of private schools or the whole office on an annual basis we support this bill again in collaboration with hais and hcbs with the state of verification thank you very much apologize for the barking dog thank you dr young [Music] next to testify bill bossert executive director for hawaii association of independent schools phil please thank you senator kadani and members of the committee we stand on our testimony and we do support the amendment that dr young has suggested and happy to answer any questions if you have thank you like to introduce my committee
006members with me to my right is our vice chair senator donna mercado kim and to my left senator kanuha and i believe online we have senators favela and donovan de la cruz members are there any questions if not we'll move on to item number two senate bill 2188 relating to schools establishes a workforce readiness diploma program within the department of education's community school for adults program also appropriates funds to testify interim superintendent kikayashi please good afternoon chuckydoni chairman kim and members of the committee keith ayashi interim superintendent of the department of education the department supports senate bill 2188 the department appreciates the appropriation and positions to advance our efforts in workforce development mckinley and waipahu community school for adults are an integral part of the department's consolidated statewide effort to prepare students for the career
007pipeline the department is committed to providing students with educational opportunities that will allow them to obtain the skills attributes and certifications they need to contribute to hawaii's workforce thank you for the opportunity to testify thank you superintendent next to testify helen senpai principal testifying from mckinley community school for adults helen not president chair hello i'm helen sante is here i'm here with um teri ushijima thank you chair hidani and committee members i stand on the written testimony that i have submitted online but would like to add that the community school for adults is a versatile organization and able to deliver the workforce diploma program as well as career foundation certificate on site for our business partners as well as other doe schools our correction correctional facilities hotels labor unions american job centers and all other
008partners thank you for this opportunity to testify thank you helen next to testify trevor thank you chair kadani and vice chair kim and members of the committee trevor abrasion with the chamber of commerce hawaii the chamber of commerce supports senate bill 2188 we're a big believer in work based learning at the chamber and advancing our economy through work based learning we've seen a number of different industries be able to grow their workforce without students having to go to community college or college and uh encourage student debt so we're big believers of this program and we stand in support of the bill and the written testimony i'm happy to answer any questions thank you trevor that concludes the testifiers we do have other we have 17 19 total testimonies received on this bill members are there
009any questions of the testifiers if not moving on item number three senate bill two three three four relating to the board of education requires the board of education to hold no less than six community forums annually with at least one forum in each county requires the board to include an open forum for public comment on non-agenda items requires a report to the legislature on implementing open and opening open forums to testify cheryl cacazu park office of information practices cheryl are you there and the only other testifier we have is douglas miller in support of the bill no other testifiers members questions moving on senate bill 2180 relating to education requires a governor to nominate members for reappointment at least 150 days before the expiration of the members term requires the senate to consider the reconfirmation
010of the member at least 60 days before the member's term expires clarifies that hold over members shall not serve as members of the board of education beyond the end of the first regular session of the legislature following the expiration of the member's term unless duly appointed by the governor and confirmed by the senate immediately disqualifies from service any hold over members whose nomination is withdrawn by the governor prior to holdover members confirmation by the senate requires a governor to submit to the senate no later than 20 days prior to the convening of each regular session of the legislature a list of the names of any vacancies filled by interim appointments and the number of any vacancies on the board um i'd like to make a few remarks on this bill and we have no testimony
011submitted at all for this bill but this bill is being introduced because of the lack of consistency with which the governor treats the advising consent process for board chairs across the state the senate has seen multiple instances where the governor has withdrawn the nomination of a sitting board chair only to have them remain as board chair at his pleasure while bypassing the constitutionally mandated advise and consent process the most heinous example of this is allowing the hawaii tourism authority chair to remain the chair for almost three years after withdrawing their name from the advising consent process [Music] during the time [Music] the hta chair was able to oversee the search process for the new president and ceo of hca stepping down shortly thereafter i introduced this bill to reform the holdover process for the boe
012chair but also to bring awareness to the other members of the governor's actions in this regard members questions comment um certainly i agree with your measure and can attest to what you said about the hta board we do it did introduce a measure on boards and commissions to bring in line with some of the issues that you've raised for all boards and commissions i don't believe that talked about uh if if a member withdraws then they should not be eligible so i certainly like that part of your bill and would make that recommendation to the committee on government ops or committees that are going to be seen hearing hopefully the boards and commissions that we can make that amendment to that so thank you thank you senator i appreciate that no further questions and no
013testimony we will be moving on senate bill 2189 relating to the board of education removes the governor's authority to select the chairperson of the board of education authorizes a majority of the members of the board to elect the chairperson from among the members of the board removes requirement that the chairperson be an at-large member there is no [Music] oral testimony there was one written testimony in support by anne freed thank you ann can i make a comment on that one yes please i believe there's most of the boards have the members select the chair i think it's seldom that i see it just a dlnr where that the governor actually appoints the chair but normally it's the board so that's kind of unusual in this case so that would make that consistent with the majority
014of the boards thank you thank you for that and this would be for you know should this bill pass and for all future boards by self-paced no further questions or comments moving on to senate bill 2824 relating to the board of education amends the minimum qualifications for board of education members and they have a few testimonies but one on only one oral and that is from david miyashiro executive director testifying for hawaii kids can david please aloha can you folks don't hear me yes thank you very much aloha chair kidani vice chair kim and members of the committee hawaii kids can strongly support sp 2824. the hawaii board of education is an incredibly important policy-making body and is the only board of education in the state i want to commend the great folk survey on
015the board this is often a thankless job and the last few years have had especially long hours with emotionally fraught testimonial issues however i believe there is a tremendous opportunity for the board to be better equipped to guide our education system into 2022 and well beyond hawaii is facing an existential crisis as we continue to lose population and many of our bright young people to the mainland school and learning cannot look the way it has been for the past hundred years and our students need an education system that reflects this complex reality more than ever the traditional silos of k-12 higher education and the workforce must come down the margin of error continues to get smaller for our kids to graduate with the skills needed to survive it thank you david members questions comments if
016not thank you david and we had three other testifiers two in support one with comments next senate bill 2817 relating to education annual report requirements repeals search and department of education annual reporting requirements to testify kitayashi interim superintendent vice chair mercado kim and members of the committee sean bacon interim assistant superintendent of the office of talent management testifying on behalf of superintendent hayashi and the department of education the department stands on its written testimony in support of senate bill 2817 and is available to answer any questions we thank you for the opportunity to testify thank you sean no further testimonies members questions now thank you sean moving on senate bill 3095 making an emergency appropriation to the department of education for a maintenance bay shark provides an emergency appropriation for the department of education to
017build a new maintenance space yard to testify kitayashi interim superintendent superintendent hayashi hello kidani vice chair mercado kim and members of oh um i do have assistant superintendent randy tanaka go ahead yesterday thank you good afternoon tirakidani vice chairman of kim members of the committee thank you very much for your time we stand by our testimony in an effort to as you know uh maintenance is a big issue for us and modernization of our facility is important and our ability to execute the work that we need to but thank you very much for your time alone thank you randy can you tell us where this maintenance base shard is being built it's we're looking at two options senator uh one is an option to acquire existing facility and the other is looking at ground zero
018build up honestly our preference is to buy a facility we did look at the love's bakery a former loves bakery facility but found our expense to restore that facility was of a very large magnitude financially so we continue to search for a location there are several places we've looked but they are a lease situation and that is not our preference we continue to search thank you randy members questions about further questions thank you randy moving on thank you hello to senate bill 3209 relating to teacher professional development appropriate funds for teacher professional development to testify superintendent hayashi please good afternoon cherokee dhani vice chairman of kim members members of the committee keef ayashi interim superintendent for the department of education the department supports senate bill 3209 and appreciates the appropriation for teacher professional development this
019will restore the 21 professional development hours that were previously not granted due to the reduction in funds that resulted from the pandemic restoration of the 21 pdrs acknowledges and fulfills the department's previously started intent to reinstate this development tool for teachers when the requisite funding became available responsive capacity building is a critical statewide strategy in the in the department's plans to recover from the pandemic and professional development is an essential component of this strategy thank you for your support and for the opportunity to testify thank you superintendent next to testify director uh reicherwata please uh aloha chair kidani vice chairman okay and members of the committee on rayquada i'm actually uh appearing today um on using my second hat as the chief negotiator for the office of collective bargaining uh office of collective bargaining respectfully
020opposes this measure um not so much we completely support again in my first step as department of human resources completely support professional development however this particular topic we believe is a subject of collective bargaining is not appropriate for this type of measure if you have any questions i'd be happy to answer thank you so riker my question is how is this bill that we're hearing now compared to senate bill that was sent down in the governor's package sorry i i apologize uh chair i'm not familiar with 3097. i'll look it up right after this um okay we'll come back to you then yeah and we'll i'll submit a response as well thank you next to testify yvonne lao public charter schools thank you chair kidani vice chair mercado kim and members of the committee thank
021you very much for the opportunity to testify in support of sv 3209 we simply ask that should this measure move forward that we please include our public charter school teachers as well thank you for this opportunity and we look forward to working with you on this thank you yvonne next to testify nathan morata dean of university of hawaii college of education not present chair in support next junior president hsta osa hello laverne moore speaking on behalf of osatui we support this bill and we would like to see it return with our negotiated 21 hours of professional development teachers this is a way to retain teachers teachers in the neighbor islands cannot afford to to pay for courses even to travel they they have great difficulties this is a means if you asking us to do
022professional development you need to pay us for it it is extra time on our part bring back the 21 hours for professional development that was not included in this last hsc contract we can negotiate it it's in the best interest of teachers we need this in our contract thank you thank you laverne no further testifiers members any questions i'm not sure if riker is still there if you can answer the question i can answer the question hst um i know over the years that um there have been some give and take in leo of higher pay and so forth where the government agreed to give all of the sick leave and vacation time up front whereas everybody else has to earn it as they go along so as hsca recall what was it that they
023they gave in and got for that for that measure to be included in the collective bargaining agreement i i'm not familiar with that collective bargaining agreement but i i do understand i was there from 1970 that we are 10 months employees and what happens is 20 of our paycheck is withheld for our june and july pay so that we become 12 month employees so that is what i know on how as 10 months employees when we retire we get credit for the 12 months but in retiring if you retire in december you would own earn 12 months if you retire in june you have 11 months of service for that year so i believe it has to do with retirement okay can you can you maybe look into that and maybe write a commitment to
024that too because i know that that was given and you're the only only um entity that has a friend and the problem we have with that is that when um members do run out of sick leave or run out of vacation because we're on the automatic payment system that the checks are being written and as a result doe has one of the highest ever payments than any other entity and it's because they get paid overpaid and then they don't pay back on a reasonable time and then people leave the system people um and we can never collect that again and those are overpayments so i'm not sure how to get to that with the payments but again it's because um teachers are the only ones that get it up front and you probably negotiated that
025in year of something else so i would be interesting to know what was that something else so okay i will bring it back to our president and i would think the doe and their accounting system should know about this there needs to be records of how that is happening yeah there is now what happens is the employee the schools themselves do not then do a manual manual leave like other departments will do a manual leave when they know that they're out of vacation time and sick leave time and so as a result that information does not get to the computer on time so that they can pull it out so they automatically will get their full pay thinking that there was vacation or thinking that there was sick leave and then when it's not when
026the state tries to get the employee to pay it back um you know they get like 25 a paycheck and sometimes it's thousands of dollars and then when that employee leaves for whatever reason they have a balance and there's no way to collect it so i mean that's you know hopefully we can work that out between and hopefully the state would buy a better software program that would deal with that issue yes obviously we're trying to update it but in the meantime again you know because because you you folks are the only ones that that do it that way so okay thank you i'm going to appreciate it i'll go follow up thank you uh uh senator mercado kim we'll i'll check with ourselves to see if we have any history on that as well
027um uh cherokee nani uh to answer your question um sorry the fantastic question and we are frantically scrambling around trying to figure out what happened here um we are communicating with budget and finance and we're going to follow up with the governor's office um what we so far have figured out is that the admin bill specifically refers to lost mou contract hours and collective bargaining and uh the current bill senate bill 3209 does not um that being said i do think just as i was looking at 32 30 97 it does look substantially similar and so we may be um withdrawing our testimony i i will follow up with this um after the hearing of with your committee thank you i appreciate that members further questions if not moving on to the final bill on
028our agenda senate bill 3098 making an emergency appropriation to the department of education for lead abatement provides funds for lead abatement measures at the department of education elementary schools to testify superintendent keith hayashi oh thank you um yes on behalf of myself hello senator chair kidani vice chair marcotte kim members we stand on our testimony presented it's it's a critical item for us so we stand by your testimony thank you very much for your time thank you randy next to testify dr debichar director of department of health aloha chair kadani and vice chair mercado kim and members of the committee i'm dr diana felton standing in for dr char in the department of health i'm a toxicologist and one of the co-leads on the 2021 wind project that tested for lead in the drinking water
029at the schools and child care facilities and the department of health stands in our written testimony in support of this measure an effort to reduce childhood lead exposure across hawaii happy to answer any questions and thank you for considering this measure thank you dr felton next to testify also to a junior president hsta aloha laverne moore speaking on behalf of osa tui junior president of hsta we stand on our written testimony and i have a comment first of all this was a national issue back in the early 90s dealing with children living in public housing in our schools it is unconscionable that our public schools in hawaii have old plumbing fixtures that are resulting in trace amounts of lead being found in drinking water sources hsd years ago were asking for support with our facilities
030and we believe it is time with the federal funds that this situation be remedied right the right way thank you thank you laverne members any questions any questions senator kanuma has a question for randy yes senator um hey randy i know this appropriation for i'm sorry assistant superintendent uh um for elementary schools were were elementary schools the only schools tested or these were the ones that only had lead in them now that was the first round of testing and lead impact is more affected the the lower grades so that was the first round of testing what we have what we need this funding for is we think it's possibly the fixtures and i may ask dr felton to to comment on this uh and so we need the funds to replace these fixtures and then
031go back and retest but that's what we think it is okay dr fountain pitcher sure i'd be happy to add a little bit of background so the project to test the drinking water was funded by the epa in a 2016 water infrastructure improvements for the nation act they required prioritization of use of the funds for kids most affected by childhood lead poisoning and that means younger kids so the project targeted child care facilities in elementary schools for that reason and um assistant super intended tanaka is correct the majority of the problems were found uh with the fixtures as opposed to the deeper plumbing or for instance lead service lines so repairing the fixtures will make a significant impact in reducing the lead in the drinking water thank you dr felton further questions members thank you
032we're going into recess [Music] reconvening the committee on education the recommendation of the chair will be to pass out senate bill 2181 with amendments the amendment is to incorporate the suggested amendment from hawaii catholic schools during their testimony [Music] any comments any questions share both sides [Music] de la cruz are you okay we're on two one eight one with amendments senator de la cruz you're muted with amendments hi i thank you five members all voting an affirmative recommendation of doctors thank you for senate bill 2188 recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments we'll blank out the appropriation amount but insert the amount into the committee report for the consideration when it comes to ways and means committee chair votes eye hr is recommending to amend sb 218a the five members present do i
033hear any reservations or any opposition hearing none five members present no recommendations adopted for senate bill two three three four the recommendation of the chair uh this is to require the board of ed to hold no less than six community forms annually recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments but we're going to defect the date to july first 2050. okay recommendation of the chair is to pass senate bill two three three four with amendments uh the chair votes i members anybody voting with reservations any uh an opposition hearing none five members i was holding your provider recommendations thank you for senate bill 2 180 leading to education dealing with the appointment and reappointments of board of education recommendation is to pass as is chair vote side recommendation for 2180 pass as is any
034member voting with reservations any member voting no hearing none five members are voting by recommendations thank you senate bill 2189 relating to the board of education and selection of the board chairperson recommendation of the chair is to pass as is chair bonsai recommendation senate bill 2189 passed as is any members voting in the opposition any members with reservations hearing none recommendations of doctor with five members present thank you senate bill 2824 also relating to the board of education minimum qualifications for the members recommendation is to pass with amendments defecting the date to july 1 2015 cheerful time senate bill 2824 pass with amendments any member voting no any members voting with reservations hearing none five members voting on recommendations adopted thank you for senate bill 2817 [Music] to education and new report requirements recommendation of
035the chair is to pass as is chair mozart senate bill 2817 passed as as is any members voting no any members voting with reservations hearing 95 members voting on recommendations thank you senate bill 3095 making an emergency appropriation to the department of ed for a maintenance recommendation of the chairs who pass as is chair votes eye recommendation senate bill 3095 pass as is any members voting no any members voted with reservations hearing none five members voting eye recommendations thank you senate bill 3209 relating to the teacher professional development recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments to insert the contents from governor's bill 3097 into this bill chair votes eye recommendation senate bill 3098 to pass with amendments any members voting in opposition any members voting with reservations here or not share them i'm
036sorry by sure that was three two zero nine oh sorry with amendments again voting on senate bill 3209 pass with amendments any members voting in opposition any members with reservations hearing none all members voting on recommendations thank you in the final bill senate bill 3098 making an emergency appropriation to the department of education for lead abatement recommendation of the chair is to pass as is chairman's eye recommendation senate bill 3098 pass as is any members voting no any members voting with reservation hearing none recognition thank you members that concludes the business for the committee on education meeting is adjourned you