Bill Text: HI SB390 | 2013 | Regular Session | Amended
Bill Title: Non-School Hour Positive Youth Programs; UPLINK; Appropriation ($)
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 4-0)
Status: (Engrossed - Dead) 2013-03-15 - Passed Second Reading as amended in HD 1 and referred to the committee(s) on EDN with none voting aye with reservations; none voting no (0) and Representative(s) Mizuno, Oshiro, Takai excused (3). [SB390 Detail]
Download: Hawaii-2013-SB390-Amended.html
STAND. COM. REP. NO. 231
Honolulu, Hawaii
RE: S.B. No. 390
S.D. 1
Honorable Donna Mercado Kim
President of the Senate
Twenty-Seventh State Legislature
Regular Session of 2013
State of Hawaii
Madam:
Your Committee on Human Services, to which was referred S.B. No. 390 entitled:
"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO SOCIAL SERVICES,"
begs leave to report as follows:
The purpose and intent of this measure is to appropriate funds for the social services programs formerly funded under the temporary assistance for needy families program.
Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Education; the Office of Community Services; the Hawaii Youth Services Network; KEY Project; the Hawaii State Coalition Against Domestic Violence; Hale Opio Kauai, Inc.; HACBED; the Community Alliance for Mental Health; Women Helping Women; and Planned Parenthood of Hawaii. Your Committee received comments on this measure from the Department of Human Services.
Your Committee finds that it is imperative that the State address the conditions that keep our citizens in poverty or push them toward poverty. Teen pregnancy, illiteracy, and lack of family cohesion are three areas that can be targeted through the reinstatement of funding to programs that arm participants with the skills and abilities necessary to change behaviors and develop self-sufficiency.
Your Committee further finds that UPLINK is an after-school program for middle-school students in Hawaii that keeps youth actively involved in their school and community, allows youth to exercise daily, explores academic and career opportunities for youth, teaches youth how to prepare healthy meals, keeps youth engaged in positive activities, and reduces opportunities to engage in negative lifestyle choices. The focus of the program, as mandated by the Department of Human Services, is to provide a safe and nurturing environment to those immediate hours after school, from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m., when students may be tempted to engage in "risky" behaviors. UPLINK accepts all students who want to participate and whose parents have registered them for the program at their individual schools.
Your Committee further finds that UPLINK encourages students to make sound decisions in regards to sexual activity and drugs, learn how to be respectful of others, nurture relationships, develop competencies that can be carried into later experiences, and make contributions to the community. In five years, no middle school pregnancies have occurred among students participating in the program. The program also provides academic and remediation support to students in grades six, seven, and eight, providing optional high interest activities that focus on developing positive character traits in what schools refer to as the 5C's: character, confidence, competence, connection, and contribution. Fourteen of the schools reported that students in the program passed all their classes in the ninety to one hundred percent range.
Your Committee has amended this measure by deleting its contents and inserting language to describe the UPLINK program and its funding needs and appropriate an unspecified amount of funds to the Department of Human Services for non-school hour positive youth programs, an UPLINK administrator in the Department of Education, and other UPLINK staffing needs.
As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Human Services that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 390, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 390, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.
Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Human Services,
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____________________________ SUZANNE CHUN OAKLAND, Chair |
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