School facilities: hardship assistance.

The Leroy F. Greene School Facilities Act of 1998 establishes a program in which the State Allocation Board is required to provide state per-pupil funding for new construction and modernization of school facilities. The act permits a school district to apply for hardship assistance in cases of extraordinary circumstances and requires the school district, in certain cases, to demonstrate that due to extreme financial, disaster-related, or other hardship the school district has unmet need for pupil housing and that the school district is not financially capable of providing the matching funds otherwise required for state participation, that the school district has made all reasonable efforts to impose all levels of local debt capacity and development fees, and that the school district is, therefore, unable to participate in the program. This bill would provide that the requirement that the school district has made all reasonable efforts to impose all levels of local debt capacity and development fees is to be determined by the governing board of the school district.