By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Staff Writer
In a not-so-quiet corner of the University of Hawai‘i Laboratory School, eighth-grade students conduct science experiments and give class presentations with ease, seemingly unaware of their own status as some of the university’s longest-running research subjects.
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| University Lab School teacher Mary Gray is also one of the anchors of the FAST curriculum program, recognized recently by the U.S. Department of Education. She said it would be a "travesty" if the school closed.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser |
Oriana Faasavalu, 13, shows off a thick, painstakingly organized binder full of homework, lab reports and drawings of plants that can be found on campus. "We take observations," Faasavalu said. "We see how they adapt to their environment and what they do to stay alive."
Little does Faasavalu know that it’s an analogy for her campus. At the Lab School, known to many as UH High, 360 students from kindergarten through 12th grade participate in a grand curriculum experiment that for years has won national and international acclaim. Faculty members spend years developing and testing coursework on students before publishing curriculum and textbooks to distribute to the rest of the world.
But while material developed in the Lab School by the university’s Curriculum Research Development Group can be found in 42 states and six foreign countries, the school itself is in danger of disappearing in Hawai‘i.
Next year, the school will lose the last $300,000 of the $1 million it had been receiving from the University of Hawai‘i — the entire operational budget of the campus.
Loretta Krause, principal of the Lab School, said the money to keep the school open will have to come from donations from parents, alumni or others interested in seeing the school stay open. "As money gets tighter they look over here," Krause sighed.
The university’s budget woes have hit the Lab School particularly hard. Last year the school lost about $700,000 in financing, but parents managed to raise that amount to cover the costs of staying open. Next year the campus will lose the additional $300,000.
The Lab School’s $1 million will go to the College of Education to make up for cuts there under the university’s campuswide budget crunch. Administrators decided they could not cut financing in the college that turns out public school teachers because of the statewide teacher shortage, said Dean Randy Hitz.
The Lab School has applied for charter school status that would align it more with the Department of Education and open up more sources of money. However, that reform movement has become bogged down in uncertainly and applicants across the state are unclear how soon they can expect approval to operate.
Donald Young, professor of education and associate director of the Curriculum Research Development Group, spends most of his time now applying for grants to benefit the school and its research. The group has $6 million in grants and has applications out for $24 million more.
Young is upbeat about the school’s fund-raising efforts, noting that $1 million equals about $2,777 from each of the 360 students. It’s within the range that many parents can afford to donate, he said. And since none of the national experts who contribute to the textbooks gets paid for their involvement in developing the curriculum, the research group benefits from the sale of the textbooks. The group plans to try to earn more from such sales.
"It’s going to become more and more common in universities to have this entrepreneurial model," Young said. "We are very upbeat."
Meanwhile, the Lab School and Curriculum Research Development Group continue to win awards. Recently, a curriculum program called FAST, Foundational Approaches in Science Teaching, was named as one of two exemplary programs in the country by the U.S. Department of Education’s Mathematics and Science Education Expert Panel.
Out of the seven programs nationwide recognized as promising was another Curriculum Research Development Group creation: DASH, Developmental Approaches in Science, Health and Technology.
In recent weeks, a few of the textbooks the group has published include curriculum on China, algebra, a history of Hawai‘i and environmental science, among others.
The Lab School receives 1,200 applications for every 60 slots. Although the idea that it is a school for the children of professors still lingers, the Lab School since 1970 has made a point of finding students who represent an ethnic, socioeconomic and academic cross section of Hawai‘i. Students are not accepted on the basis of good grades, but are chosen so that there will be a mix of students in the same classroom. And their school day is the longest for a public school in Hawai‘i, from 8 a.m to 3:30 p.m. More than 80 percent of the students participate in campus sports, which puts most of them on campus until late in the afternoon.
Lanning Lee attended the Lab School and later taught there from 1982 to 1990. "We were subjects," he said. "When I was a student there it was a training ground for the College of Education. It always stressed the well-rounded students. We were forced to take art and music every year. It’s the greatest idea. You were lucky to go there. All the way through we were guinea pigs. We got to try all of these different things."
The location on the UH-Manoa campus also contributes to the atmosphere, he said. "It was about allowing students to do as much as they wanted to do academically," Lee said. "I swear I don’t think there’s a more peaceful campus where students get along. In other places you see ethnic cliques or money cliques. I think it really prepares students beyond academics for actually getting along with people in the real world."
Arthur King, director of the Curriculum Development Research Group, said the school’s refusal to separate students based on ability contributes to that atmosphere. At the Lab School, there are no honors classes because the researchers want to test their materials on all kinds of students and figure out how to involve them in the classroom discussion. "There’s a lot of bonding between them," King said. "It’s a very warm, pleasant place. We don’t segregate the kids, so they don’t segregate themselves."
This isn’t the first time the Lab School has faced financial difficulties. At one time, the Lab School was approved for a new $13 million campus. Contracts were let, ground was broken and then came the state’s financial crisis. Plans for the new campus were canceled.
Sen. Norman Sakamoto graduated from the Lab School and is dismayed by the recent lack of financial support. "When the issue comes up about closing the school, I and others say we should keep it open and keep it funded," he said. "Why do you close something that’s working. We should close the things that aren’t working instead."
Mary Gray, educational associate at the Lab School and one of the authors of the FAST program, said she likes to get her students outside as much as possible — looking at bugs, plants and the soil — so that they learn science isn’t something that comes from a textbook. "A classroom is your world," she said. "They don’t get the idea that science is in this book."
Gray is teaching two eighth-grade science classes this year, including the one Faasavalu is in, because she is updating the latest edition of the FAST textbooks.
"The students help me reflect on my research," Gray said. "It would be a travesty if we lost the Lab School."
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