‘Everyone Will feel the Pain’

After struggling at multiple meetings over how to reduce the Department of Education’s operating budget by $25 million, the state school board Tuesday approved wide-ranging spending restrictions that will touch everything from special-education positions and athletics programs to per-pupil spending and bus transportation.

The reductions are needed because the Abercrombie administration, in response to lower state revenue projections, has restricted by 10 percent the so-called discretionary portion of the department’s $1.4 billion general fund budget.

Debates by the Board of Education over where to trim spanned three separate meetings over the past month before Tuesday’s 5-2 vote in favor of restrictions totaling $18.6 million. An additional $6 million in carry-over funds from last fiscal year will be used to offset the rest of the imposed 10 percent cut.

The biggest trims will come from utilities and student transportation; special-education services; and per-pupil funding at the school level.

Department of Education officials initially recommended the single largest reduction come from special-education services by slicing by $9.15 million funding set aside for salaries for hard-to-fill special-education positions.

But after special-education advocates decried the proposal, the board ultimately agreed to cut the recommended amount almost in half to $4.9 million in salary savings and redistribute the difference among other programs.

"I don’t view it as salary savings. I view it as money not spent for student needs," said BOE member Brian De Lima, chairman of the Finance Committee and a strong proponent of special education. "The reason we have these so-called savings is because we’re not spending money that we should be spending."

De Lima could not get the needed votes in his committee to shift most of the difference to the Weighted Student Formula pot — discretionary per-pupil funding that schools receive and mainly use for payroll.

He contended that the money would be coming out of $15 million in additional per-pupil funding that the Legislature approved to pay for 1.5 teaching positions for each of the 252 public schools that receive per-pupil dollars. It was intended to help schools carry out education reforms.

"My feeling is that the schools budgeted for it, and instead of impacting a smaller area, you’re going to impact, find a way to impact, everyone or have everyone feel the pain," BOE member Amy Asselbaye said. "I think in terms of the trade-offs, there’s no good options here."

Member Nancy Budd agreed, and suggested more restrictions could be made to the athletics program’s $11 million budget — on top of approximately $338,000 in proposed cuts from salary savings for unfilled trainer positions, supplies and equipment.

"I don’t want to reduce the athletic budget at all, but when I look at the overall situation we’re in, it’s so tight," Budd said. "In the big picture it just seems like (athletics) would be the place where it would hurt the least in terms of operations."

Board member Keith Ame­miya, former head of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association, countered that school athletics programs are already underfunded.

The Finance Committee’s four members agreed to approve De Lima’s recommendation to drop the special-education salary savings to $4.9 million and to also restore approximately $183,000 in proposed cuts to Hawaiian-language immersion and Hawaiian-studies programs. But members could not agree where to make up the approximately $683,000 in restrictions, and instead punted that decision to the full board.

"I think the time we spent today just demonstrates how difficult it is to make decisions regarding how it could impact students. I think we all are committed to impacting students in the least possible way without dismantling or affecting various programs that are important to a lot of different constituents," De Lima said.

At the full board meeting, the majority eventually agreed to make up the restorations to special education and Hawaiian programs by further restricting budgets for per-pupil funding at schools, athletics, grants in aid that pass through the DOE to nonprofits for various educational services, and system-level administrative support services that include payroll and the superintendent’s office.

De Lima emphasized that the restrictions are not direct cuts.

"We’re restricting moneys, which means that if the governor releases the moneys that are restricted, all of that will be restored," he said. "We did not cut the budget. We only authorized restrictions."