Lawmakers have downgraded some of this year’s unsuccessful education bills to resolutions encouraging public school officials to instead study or consider certain initiatives rather than make them with new laws.
The resolutions — which do not have the force of law — deal with issues that proved unpopular or controversial, such as requiring sex education at all schools and allowing home-schoolers to play sports in their district.
A House bill that would have made sex education mandatory for all students and require an expanded curriculum beyond the Department of Education’s current abstinence-based policy died in the Senate.
Two Senate resolutions ask the Board of Education to develop a "uniform" sex health education program for all public schools.
Senate Concurrent Resolution 77 and Senate Resolution 44 were sponsored by the Democratic members of the Senate Education Committee, including Chairwoman Jill Tokuda. (Concurrent resolutions need a nod from both chambers of the Legislature.) Both measures passed out of the Senate Education Committee on Friday.
While DOE officials have said its current sex education policy cannot be enforced, resulting in inconsistent lessons at schools, it opposed the measure. The bill would have made the policy enforceable by mandating what is taught.
Another pair of resolutions — SCR 76 and SR 43 — request that the board research how other states have allowed home-schooled students to participate in extracurricular activities, such as athletics, at public schools. Both resolutions were approved Friday by the Senate Education Committee.
Bills seeking to allow the practice here failed to gain enough support earlier in the session. School districts in at least 30 states allow the practice, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association, but it’s prohibited for the estimated 4,000 students who are home-schooled in Hawaii.
The department has opposed the practice because of concerns about increased costs and enforcing eligibility requirements such as grade-point averages. Public school athletic directors have also opposed the idea.
Backup resolutions have been introduced despite concerns that legislation requiring the DOE to develop annual assessments in Hawaiian for immersion students could stall.
Public school students in Hawaiian language immersion programs now are given a straight English-to-Hawaiian translation of the Hawaii State Assessment developed in 2011, which Hawaiian language advocates say contains serious grammar and vocabulary errors and has resulted in poor test results.
The test is required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act to measure how well students are learning. Previously, immersion students took a test developed and scored by the language program’s teachers, but it didn’t meet federal standards.
House Bill 244, which is still alive, would require the department to develop annual assessments in language arts, math and science in Hawaiian for grades 3 through 6.
Meanwhile, SCR 147 asks the board to form a "coalition to address the issue of developing assessments … in the Hawaiian language for Hawaiian language immersion students to more accurately measure their academic achievement."
