Thousands return to school
| • | Teachers to consider new state proposal |
By James Gonser
Advertiser Leeward Bureau
KALAELOA — As school opened at Barbers Point Elementary yesterday, about 100 students transferred from Mauka Lani Elementary in Makakilo attended classes on the isolated campus for the first time.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Many parents drove their children to school and walked them to their classrooms to help ease the transition from a familiar neighborhood school to Barbers Point, about six miles away.
Maryanne Ocampo talks with the bus driver to make sure her fourth-grade son, Christian, gets on the correct bus. Christian is among students redistricted from Makakilo to Barbers Point. His cousin Stacy Anne Adora is at right.
Jerrick Felix, entering the fourth grade, said he likes going to school so he doesn't mind moving to Barbers Point.
But, "I'll miss my friends," said Jerrick, who was accompanied by his father, Joepatrick Felix.
It was the first day of class for thousands of students at some 18 schools on O'ahu that operate on a modified year-round schedule. Classes began under a cloud as a dispute between the teachers union and the state found teachers working without a contract — and likely without the raises they had expected to receive under the terms of a contract negotiated during the recent teachers strike.
But yesterday was also the first day of a Department of Education-mandated redistricting of some students from Mauka Lani Elementary to Barbers Point Elementary, and despite the state-union discord and the typical back-to-school glow, the transfer dominated the morning's events at the campus on the former naval air station.
Arriving at Barbers Point Elementary at about 7:30 a.m., parents looked up their child's teacher and room number on a bulletin board in front of the administration building before school started 15 minutes later.
"I'm very upset about the redistricting," said Beajay Sacamos, who escorted her son Steven to his second-grade classroom. "But there is nothing we can do, so we have to make the best of it."
Sacamos said she lives so close to Mauka Lani that her father used to walk her son and her nephew to and from school, but now the family must work out a transportation schedule.
With crowding at both Mauka Lani and Makakilo elementary schools, the state Department of Education implemented the redistricting plan that will take students from those schools and bus them to Barbers Point. The state is providing free bus service to redistricted students from Makakilo for one year.
Crowded schools are a persistent problem in the growing Central and Leeward districts, where portable classrooms are used to handle the overflow of students. A few new schools are planned, but not in time to help Makakilo residents keep their children closer to home.
Barbers Point Elementary, home of the "Jets," has a spacious campus and a highly regarded reputation, but enrollment has dropped significantly since the base closed in 1999 and many Navy families moved away. The school, which has a capacity of 790 students, last year had an enrollment of only 219.
In January, Leeward District Superintendent Hazel Sumile announced the redistricting plan, saying that students who already ride buses to Mauka Lani from the Westhills area of Makakilo would change schools this year, and students from Honokai Hale who attend Makakilo Elementary will move to Barbers Point Elementary next year. About 220 students will be affected.
Many parents have opposed the plan, saying other alternatives should have been more closely looked into before busing students far from home. Appeals to the Board of Education and the DOE and even an attempt to stall the plan in the Legislature all failed.
Makakilo resident Bill Parrish dropped his two daughters off at Barbers Point yesterday. He was upset but resigned to the situation.
"There was no proper planning, but there is not much I can do except to deal with the issue," Parrish said. "A lot of parents said they were not going to go along with the move, but many now say it is inevitable."
Under a "grandfathering" provision that allows fifth-grade students and their younger siblings another year at Mauka Lani, Parrish could have put off the move to Barbers Point, but he said he didn't want his younger daughter to have to change schools on her own next year.
"I'm wondering what they are going to do in a couple years," Parrish said. "Mauka Lani is still going to get bigger. They still need another school or should go to multi-track at Mauka Lani, but they are not going to do it."
Barbers Point principal Claudia Nakachi held a series of orientation sessions for parents and redistricted students this summer, but Xan Arreola, who brought her fourth-grade son, Dakota, to school yesterday never heard about the sessions and had to find her way around campus.
Leeward District Deputy Superintendent Karen Moriyama said Barbers Point is a good school and it is fortunate there is room for more students.
"Once they get to know the school and their children get comfortable, I think they will like it," Moriyama said.
More than 270,000 students attending O'ahu's public and private schools, as well as the University of Hawai'i and its community college system, will return to classes during the next month and a half.
Public schools still on the regular calendar return on Aug. 23 and run through June 7.
