Posted on: Friday, April 18, 2003

School boards bill fails to advance

Advertiser Staff

House and Senate conferees officially declared the issue of local school boards dead for the session yesterday because they could not agree on the language of a constitutional amendment question to send to voters on school governance.

Yesterday was the deadline for constitutional amendment questions to come out of conference committees.

"At this point, we don't have a question that the House and the Senate are even close to agreeing on so we'll forego the question," said Senate Education Chairman Norman Sakamoto, D-15th (Waimalu, Airport, Salt Lake).

The local school board bills introduced by Lingle, who has made the issue her top education priority, failed to make it out of either house.

But Sakamoto amended House Bill 714 to include a constitutional amendment question asking voters to allow lawmakers "to establish regional boards of education that shall formulate regional educational policy." The amendment left open if such regional boards would be elected or appointed.

House Education Chairman Roy Takumi, D-36th (Pearl City, Palisades), who had said repeatedly that he did not see the need to approve a ballot question this year when it would not need to appear until the 2004 election year, reiterated that position yesterday.

"We're certainly open to working ... with all interested parties to come up with something to put on the ballot next year that would restructure the governance of our schools," Takumi said. "We have that commitment on the part of the House and by working with the Senate, we'll have something on the ballot."

Takumi said the conference committee should continue to look at other issues in the bill related to a transition to local school boards, including the establishment of a restructuring and transition advisory committee.