Crowded schools desperate to expand

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

Mililani Mauka Elementary School principal Carol Pedersen doesn't know how her school could possibly handle another lunch period.

Already, 400 students at a time eat in one of three lunch shifts: 10:45, 11:15 and 11:45.

Her 1,200-student campus, built in 1993 to hold 900, is bursting with children and already has 13 portables. Two more portable buildings are on the way.

At Kapolei High School, principal Al Nagasako wonders what will happen as his campus expands from its ninth and tenth grade population to include juniors next fall and seniors in the 2003-04 school year. Kapolei High needs $27 million to complete a building for the seniors and add a gymnasium, lockers, showers, a woodshop building and a track, all of which it has been doing without.

So far this year, there is no money in the regular state budget to build either a new school in the Mililani Mauka area or to complete Kapolei High School, two of the biggest projects that concern Department of Education officials as legislators continue to hash out a state budget.

If legislators approve a measure that would take $100 million from the state’s Hurricane Relief Fund, though, $7 million would help complete the second Mililani Mauka campus and $13.5 million would help do about half of the work needed to finish Kapolei High School.

The DOE has long planned to open up a second school in Mililani Mauka, and has secured money for a portion of the campus. It is slated to accept students in the 2003-04 school year for kindergarten, first and second grades, which should slowly pull some students away from Pedersen's campus. But there is no money to build space for the third through fifth grades.

Pedersen expects to have about 1,300 students by the end of the next school year.

"We're growing at about 100 students a year," she said. "If the new school opens, it would get me down to about 1,100 students immediately, which is what I had at the end of last year. Without the funding, though, I'm not sure what's going to happen."

Nagasako said a building for the junior class should be completed soon, but he is getting worried about where he will put his school's first-ever graduating class in 2003.

Also, Kapolei High student-athletes have no gym or locker rooms and must practice outside in whatever open space they can find.

"I give my teachers and coaches a lot of credit," Nagasako said. Because P.E. is a graduation requirement, the school can't delay a P.E. program waiting for a gym, he said.

"There's no place to shower," Nagasako said. "I've had a lot of complaints from parents, but there's nothing that we can do."

Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.