Education budget The state Department of Education says it is facing a shortfall of up to $87.2 million next fiscal year, or about 6.5 percent of its budget, according to the latest budget scenarios at the state Legislature.
cuts loom
Kamehameha says charter funding too lowBy Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.comSchools officials said key to avoiding that worst-case scenario is House Bill 2654, House Draft 2, which would use $32.2 million from the Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund to reduce the potential shortfall to about $55 million.
"This hurricane bill for us is really important," said Linda Unten, acting budget director. "If it doesn't pass, the department will be faced with large cuts, and the cuts will impact on personnel."
But Unten told Board of Education members Thursday the bill is a "one-time stopgap measure" that the department could not rely on in the future.
Using the hurricane fund to balance the budget is controversial. Some feel the money should be returned to homeowners who bought into the insurance program when private insurers fled the local market after Hurricane Iniki in 1992; others want to use the money to save essential programs now that the state stopped writing hurricane policies when insurers returned a few years ago.
House Bill 1800, House Draft 1, the House budget bill for the 2002-03 fiscal year that has been forwarded to the Senate, proposes cutting the Education Department's base budget by $49.8 million.
The budget bill maintained funding for increased workload and fixed costs, such as health benefits, associated with special education, charter schools and resources for new facilities, according to a departmental memo.
Spokesman Greg Knudsen said an important part of the hurricane bill would restore $9.4 million to keep the student-teacher ratio in grades kindergarten through second at 20 students to one teacher. He said the Legislature proposed increasing class size to 23-to-1 as a cost-saving measure. The budget bill cuts $9.4 million.
Unten said teachers would be laid off if that money is not restored.
"We've got to figure out how many teachers equal $9.4 million," she said. "That's the amount of teachers we would be losing."
She said those cuts would be in addition to 116 full-time equivalent regular-education teacher positions cut because of declining enrollment.
At Thursday's Board of Education meeting, member Donna Ikeda said she was concerned that the reductions will affect future funding.
"The base has been reduced before you even begin budgeting for the next biennium," Ikeda said. "That's a big hit."
The potential $87.2 million shortfall is based on the House budget bill cutting the department's appropriations for the fiscal year, starting July 1, by $49.8 million, and supplemental budget funding being $37.4 million short of the department's $52.4 million request.
"Passage of the hurricane fund (bill) is crucial to us this year, and it just simply hasn't been addressed how we're going to be covering those expenses for subsequent years," Knudsen said. "We're already starting to prepare for subsequent biennium, and we're starting out with that as a real reduction."
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Kamehameha Schools may have to reconsider its hope to run conversion charter schools if per-pupil funding from the state does not increase, the schools' chief executive officer said yesterday. Kamehameha says charter
funding is too lowBy Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.comChief Executive Officer Hamilton McCubbin said he could not yet say what level of funding would be adequate for Kamehameha to run such schools but added the $2,997 per-pupil funding that charter schools currently receive is insufficient.
He said the Kamehameha Schools' board of trustees would make the decision on what amount would be sufficient.
At the same time, McCubbin said Kamehameha Schools is not asking for what other charter schools and the Department of Education say is necessary: a new method to decide funding for charter schools.
Schools officials at a Board of Education meeting Thursday were worried that a bill in the state Legislature would inordinately increase funding for charter schools at the expense of regular Department of Education schools.
One provision in the bill that aims at maintaining funding for conversion charter schools at levels equal to what they received prior to conversion would not only hurt regular schools, but other charter schools as well, Schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto said.
"One of the most important points here is, this is a work in progress we're working with the (Department of Education) on," McCubbin said. "We have agreed on basic principles to protect their budget and make sure we don't drain off resources form other public schools, but at the same time we agree we need to come up with a formula that's more appropriate to maximize ... the success of charter schools."
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