The Department of Education says it has serious concerns over its ability to meet student achievement goals and special-education needs under the reduced state budget moving through the Legislature.
The House Finance Committee last week slashed more than $60 million from the DOE’s two-year budget and rejected nearly all of the new positions the department wants.
The House trimmed about $20 million from the $1.4 billion proposed for the DOE in the governor’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year, and an additional $44 million for fiscal 2015.
The largest cuts were made to the public school system’s base budget and its Common Core Digital Curriculum initiative that would eventually provide digital devices to all students. The rollout of that initiative is tied in part to pledges the DOE made to secure its federal Race to the Top grant.
Overall, the House cut about $600 million from Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s request before sending the budget over to the Senate for consideration. The Education Department represents about one-fourth of the state’s entire general fund budget.
DOE Chief Financial Officer Amy Kunz expressed concerns to the Senate Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday during a hearing on the budget bill.
Kunz said the digital curriculum initiative — which is not funded at all in the current version of the two-year budget — "is a critical and necessary component in the DOE’s strategy for achieving … student success in college and careers."
She added that many of the department’s requested positions were for special education and student support services, and that the lack of funds "will create a significant challenge to fulfill quality services" to students.
The DOE had asked for about 140 new permanent full-time positions and 57 temporary full-time positions in the upcoming fiscal year. The House included four permanent positions and one temporary position.
Dozens of vacant funded positions also were deleted from the DOE’s budget, as was done for other department budgets — a move the House has said would increase fiscal transparency because departments have been reallocating the money for other uses.
Kunz said the DOE typically factors in about $46 million worth of internal savings each year due to funded positions that are vacant. The DOE had proposed shifting around internal savings to pay for many of the new positions it wanted.
In a committee report, House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke said lawmakers were "surprised to hear that the Department (of Education) was able to find the necessary funding within its current means to fund these positions. However, due to a lack of justification for many of the new positions requested, only a portion of the request was funded."
Kunz acknowledged that the DOE’s proposed budget may have been confusing to lawmakers because it reallocated funds without drawing clear lines to the trade-offs. Instead, she said, the department proposed shifting around lump sums of about $47 million next year and $55 million the following year to fund parts of its strategic plan.
Luke (D, Punchbowl-Pauoa-Nuuanu) said lawmakers were troubled by "an indication that the department has excess funding" and again noted a lack of justification for the reallocations.
Board of Education Chairman Don Horner said he would be meeting with Luke today.
"I think it’s always helpful to remind everyone that … part of the strategic plan is streamlining and saving money," Horner said Tuesday during a budget discussion at the BOE’s monthly meeting. "I’m hopeful the strategic plan also lends itself to more productivity, which is going to save us money. The problem is it takes investment in order to get to that savings."
Both Horner and BOE member Wes Lo, who chairs the BOE’s Finance and Infrastructure Committee, stressed the need for contingency plans in light of the cuts to the budget.
Horner was especially concerned when Kuntz said it would be much more challenging to make a transition to the Common Core State Standards — a single set of national math and English standards for elementary and secondary schools — without funding for the digital curriculum and device initiative.
The initiative would involve integrating the digital devices, such as laptops or tablets, with the core curriculum. The DOE is reviewing vendor proposals and had planned to roll out the initiative in phases over three or four years beginning with the 2013-14 school year.
Kunz said a vendor will need a guarantee from the DOE for about 150,000 digital devices or incur significantly higher costs. She added that if the department has to stretch the implementation over a longer period of time, it will create "major equity concerns" among students and teachers who will have to wait.
"To me, just personally, I would still move forward with the common core, but that means there’s going to be impacts to other areas," Horner said. "But student achievement is not something that’s negotiable. We’ve got to move forward."
Lo said the House cuts are especially worrisome because of federal sequestration, which could yank about $10 million of the DOE’s federal funds in the upcoming 2013-14 school year.
