State lawmakers are advancing a controversial bill that would cap the number of public school complex area superintendents in Hawaiʻi.
A heavily amended Senate Bill 3334 passed out of the Senate Ways and Means Committee on Monday.
Earlier versions of the bill would have restructured school districts and changed how complex area superintendents are evaluated. It would have replaced them with “district superintendents” that cover a certain number of districts.
The measure would have also worked in community-involved evaluations for area superintendents.
But after significant opposition from school principals, lawmakers changed the language of the bill so it just focuses on limiting the number of CAS positions.
The goal of the current version of the measure is to require the state Department of Education to come to the state Legislature if it wants more of those positions.
“The superintendent can always come in to ask for more with legislative approval. The point is it just has to be legislatively approved — it’s not a cap forever,” said Committee Chair Donovan Dela Cruz, referring to the head of the DOE.
The bill was initially filed to improve the performance of the DOE after growing community concern that the department isn’t doing enough for students.
Before the committee meeting, the bill limited the number of CAS to 27, the current number of positions.
Testifier Susan Pcola-Davis said the cap would still lead to “chaos” within the DOE.
“There was evidence that the structural change would cause chaos, but so does applying an absolute number to a field of expertise that has grown as much as the school system has grown,” she said. “It is impossible to retain employees if their duties and responsibilities are increased with the same accountability and no additional resources.”
The committee blanked out the CAS cap before advancing SB 3334.
The new version of the bill was appreciated by some detractors of the former language, though not entirely.
