State education officials will be defending their budget requests before lawmakers beginning this week as the state House and Senate money committees hold budget briefings with departments ahead of the Legislature reconvening Jan. 15.

Lawmakers will take up the fiscal 2015 budget next month, using Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s proposed $12.2 billion operating budget as a starting point. The governor highlighted a record $844 million surplus at the close of last fiscal year in proposing higher spending in the coming year.

The Executive Office on Early Learning — which is spearheading Abercrombie’s plans to establish state-funded preschool — will explain its budget this afternoon before a joint briefing called by the House Finance and Senate Ways and Means committees.

The office’s budget includes a $4.5 million request that would be used to set up 32 pre-kindergarten classes on public school campuses.

The move is intended to help a set of children who will be too young to enter kindergarten next school year. The state is making a transition to a higher age requirement for kindergarten while also eliminating junior kindergarten at public schools, beginning with the 2014-15 school year.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Human Services, which goes before the committees Jan. 13, will be seeking an extra $2.5 million so it can help more needy families afford another year of preschool next year. The money would be used to reconfigure the state’s subsidy co-payment system.

The Department of Education — which this school year saw enrollment increase 1.1 percent, or by about 2,000 students, over last school year — will brief lawmakers on its $1.7 billion budget Jan. 14.

The biggest budget item is an added $14 million Abercrombie has proposed for the so-called weighted student formula, or per-pupil funding, at public schools.

The Board of Education had come in with a higher request for approximately $20 million to pay for 1.5 teaching positions for each of the 252 schools that receive per-pupil dollars. The board had increased the DOE’s original request for $13.6 million in added per-pupil funds but still came in lower than the $34 million the Committee on Weights, which meets every other year to review the weighted student formula, had recommended.

The governor’s budget also trimmed $1 million from the DOE’s $3 million request for its new Strive HI school accountability system, which largely replaces academic mandates under the federal No Child Left Behind law. The money would fund support positions and awards for high-achieving schools.

The Public Charter School Commission is set to appear before the budget committees Wednesday.

Abercrombie has budgeted an extra $3.1 million for charter schools due to enrollment projections.

Charter schools, which receive per-pupil funding based on a formula, educate about 10,000 students, or roughly 5 percent of the public school population.