WAILUKU - State Sens. Roz Baker and Shan Tsutsui commended the state's lead public school educator Wednesday for going public with proposals for cutting her department's $2.4 billion budget, The Maui News reported today.

But they cautioned that in the end, the state's anticipated reduction in revenues will force unpopular budget decisions across the board.

"We will prevail," Superintendent Pat Hamamoto said during a live broadcast Wednesday afternoon on a state Department of Education cable television channel. "We will come through this," she said in response to questions about budget cutting.

Hamamoto and her staff posted on the DOE Web site a draft of budget cut scenarios that comply with a Sept. 11 request from the state budget director for all state agencies to plan for 10 percent, 15 percent and 20 percent cuts in their 2010-11 biennium budgets.

The state's two-year budget plan will go to the 2009 Legislature when it convenes in January.

Under the deepest, 20 percent reduction in spending, the budget for 250-plus public schools could see as much as $69 million cut out.

Hamamoto's proposal outlines approximately $31 million in budget reductions and calls for public input on where the cuts would be made by 5 p.m. Monday. She will need to devise a proposal that the Board of Education can eventually approve and submit to Gov. Linda Lingle for the 2010-11 budget.

The Board of Education already has had to cut the 2009 budget by more than $9 million to comply with an earlier state budget directive to trim 4 percent from current spending.

Baker, chairwoman of the Senate's Ways and Means Committee, and her co-chairman, Tsutsui, were at the state Capitol on Wednesday and did not view Hamamoto's live televised appearance. Both Maui senators said they were able to make only cursory reviews of the DOE's budget cut proposal and declined to discuss specifics.

They said they believed Hamamoto's appeal for public input was a good decision.

"Anytime you can get public input on big decisions, I think that's important," Baker said.

"The last thing we want is to have the cuts be a surprise or shock to people," Tsutsui added.

Hamamoto's proposal on Wednesday showed the elimination of approximately 165 positions in state and district office levels. These would include resource teachers as well as support staff.

Two programs in the Maui District - the Molokai Alternative Program and the Maui Alternative Program - would be directly affected. Hamamoto's proposal would delete funds for employees and supplies.

The purpose of the alternative programs, according to the DOE, is to provide support services to at-risk or severely alienated students, many of them juvenile delinquents, and to develop the capability of high schools to "minimize the problem of school alienation and the student dropout rate."

DOE's mitigation plan for the cuts to the alternative program states that schools that send students to the alternative learning program would be charged a program fee for each pupil. The fee payments would fund hourly employees and supplies.

Baker said she could not discuss specifics of the superintendent's proposals, but she said the process of mandated budget reductions could help educators to assess how they can be more efficient in educating the state's public school students.

She said the Ways and Means Committee would question educators, as it did other state department officials in the past, about whether there are alternatives in delivering a certain service or program.

"Maybe it's time to consolidate a program or streamline procurement," Baker said. Educators and other state department officials might also be asked to see if longtime programs really need to continue or perhaps can be replaced by less costly services.

Tsutsui said for the Legislature's part, he hopes to look at ways to "reduce the reductions" through tax credits or other incentives.

Baker said it will take a balancing act of sorts when scrutiny over what gets cut and what doesn't is done. She said programs that bring new jobs into Hawaii or new tax revenue might have to be weighed against costly programs that must be eliminated in order to afford a department's most basic needs.

Hamamoto said her department's budget priorities will be to fund direct classroom instruction, health and safety issues, and compliance with federal and state mandates.

Some of the steps her office has already taken to reduce costs include reducing the number of educational workshops on Neighbor Islands, requiring that out-of-state travel be approved by the superintendent's office, and putting a freeze on filling any vacant positions.

* Claudine San Nicolas can be reached at claudine@mauinews.com.