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Samuel M. Kamakau School:
“The school began in 2000,” says Meahilahila. “It was first opened mid-school year in January 2000, and out of a need from families who were attending another Department of Education immersion school, wanting to do education a little bit differently, outside of the umbrella of Department of Education. And so they developed Ke Kula Kamakau with the permission of Kamakau's ohana to use their kūpuna’s name. “We started as a laboratory school under Ka Haka ‘Ula o Ke‘elikōlani out of the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. It wasn’t until 2001 when the school was approved for start-up charter school status. We’ve continued to be a charter school. 
“We started in Kailua and then moved to a second site in Kokokahi YWCA in Kāne‘ohe, and this is hopefully our final destination. We have a 55-year lease with Department of Hawaiian Homelands, so it'll be our kids and our grandkids who will be perpetuating, hopefully, the school and its goals. “We were blessed to have found this location up here. It was one of our former board members who made the connection with Department of Hawaiian Homelands and this was available. It was a lot of hard work to get up here, because other than these concrete buildings which were really torn down, graffiti, and we had things, illegal things happening here when there was no presence prior to this school getting here. “It was a lot of hard work, though well paid off. Now we have a solid location. But again, growing pains. We have some classes that are now bursting at the seams, there are high school classrooms which are smaller in size and now we have to fit 25, up to 30 kids in 400-something square feet of classroom space. We’re still looking to expand and we see some empty buildings that we have to complete and finish up. But just the history of this place, of being connected to this ahupua‘a with all of the amazing partners. “The students are from a variety of areas. 66%, I believe, are from Ko‘olaupoko area but we also have a range from Mililani, from town, and as far as Ka‘a‘awa on the Ko‘olauloa side. We’re experiencing growth pains. We went from tiny—twenty-seven at the beginning—now we’re at 158 students, preschool through 12. 
“For us, what makes this school different is the teaching from a Hawaiian worldview. Kumu Honua Mauli Ola is the educational philosophy that the school has developed upon, where you’re looking at the importance of the Hawaiian language. And for us, our goal is Hawaiian medium education, where all of our members are speaking and conversing in Hawaiian, whether in school or out of school. “We’re slowly trying to build that up and offering the courses to our families and to our non-speaking staff, may be some office staff and custodians who are on a range or continuum of learning Hawaiian. And it’s not just the language that is being taught, but it’s through a Hawaiian perspective and a cultural lens, looking at different traditional practices. “Aloha ‘āina project-based learning is what we’re trying to focus on here at Kamakau and instilling that: a sense of place, knowing where they’re from. For us, we don’t just focus on where they’re from, where they live, but also of the school, where the stories, and the ka‘au of this place, and how it connects back to them; why they should care about the ‘āina. I think if any place you have a working ahupua‘a, it would be here in He‘eia. ‘Āina is not just 'land ‘āina.' We can talk about the kai—the ocean, the lani [the sky] and how they are connected. Everything is interconnected and dualistic, instead of counterparts. We like to see it as dualism, where they’re existing all in the same place. And then going back to kuleana: what is their role on protecting and becoming stewards of all of that. They have big kuleana on their shoulders when they leave, and a lot of them comment on feeling it even more heavily during their senior year and after they go. That is our purpose. I think we want to instill that sense. 
“So we want to get back to visiting our community partners. We see the importance of Papahana Kuaola, Paepae o He‘eia, Kānehūnāmoku, as well as Kako‘o ‘Ōiwi. Papahana Kuaola is right down the road from us. We have a rotating Wednesday schedule where they walk down, do their work, have lunch and end the day here. “Kānehūnāmoku is the voyaging canoe society. They are out of Ka‘alaea, with Bonnie Kahape‘a Tanner, she was a former parent here in our preschool. They do a lot of work with the Hawaiian focus charter schools here on O‘ahu. I think we are very fortunate. We are in this ahupua‘a of amazing partners. “We’re trying to overcome the challenges of transportation and getting our bigger classes down. Before, we could just pack up our kids—classes of eleven—in our school vans, and drive here and there. Now it’s a little more challenge to get them out, but parents have been fabulous in transporting classes of 20-something, 30-something to these various sites. Our goal is to get back to having once-a-week outdoor learning centers. 
“And so, we’re trying to get around all of the barriers. We’ve just gotten additional support funding from Kamehameha Schools to provide a minibus that would help to resolve some of that transportation issues, as well as some funding to help pay for these outdoor visits. We still want to support the outdoor organizations, they have to pay their staff who is working with our students. “I think the intended outcomes are similar across the Hawaiian immersion schools, Hawaiian medium schools, and the Hawaiian focus charter schools. Now the buzzword is ‘community-readiness,’ but that’s our whole intent from the beginning: preparing students to be ready to take their roles in the community, contribute to their families, and look at the bigger picture outside of the self. We’ve had a couple of consultancy projects done here, research projects, by EDD students at the university in the education program. One of the projects was to identify student success. “What does student success here look like at Kamakau? For us, it’s not necessarily the numbers on their test scores. It’s not how much they can score at SAT or ACT, it’s developing that whole child where they understand their responsibilities, it’s instilled within them. Once they graduate, it’s past looking for a job that would make them the most money; it’s looking for the job where they can contribute best to their community. “Where we see similarities of doing just that is within the immersion schools and within the Hawaiian focus charter schools. The bottom-line, I think, is that instilling of self-identity and knowing who they are, where they come from, so that they can make those kind of decisions on what they want to do with their skills and strengths once they leave high school and beyond. 
“It’s not easy. We have a guiding principal, ‘O nā ‘ohana, ke kula a me ke kaiaulu nā kō‘oko‘okolu e kako‘o ai ka hale.’ It’s really shared responsibility between the school, families, and community. We rely a lot on our families to contribute to the program, a lot of family engagements. So when the families are involved, I think the children get a deeper sense of importance of education, of the seamlessness of what’s happening here at school and what’s happening at home, plus full buy-in from our staff on why we’re here. “It’s not educating ABCs necessarily as much as it is to develop that whole child with the understanding of where they come from, Hawaiian or non-Hawaiian. We do have non-Hawaiians here in campus, also. For the staff here, it’s not a job; it’s a lifestyle. They walk the talk and not just leave it at the end of the day at 3:00 or 4:00 and go to home to something different; it’s in their life. We try to transition that into the families as well.” |
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