OUR SCHOOLS • WAIALUA ELEMENTARY
Waialua pupils re-create the adult economy
By Will Hoover
Advertiser North Shore Writer
For a quarter century Waialua Elementary School on Waialua Beach Road was pretty much your typical rural school. Located down the road from the sugar mill, it taught the fundamentals — reading, writing and arithmetic — beginning in 1966 with 267 students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
In the early 1990s, with enrollment at around 600, Waialua Elementary underwent the beginnings of a renaissance that would transform the facility into a "micro-community" where students were no longer regarded as mere consumers of knowledge but participants in a real-world decision-making process.
Waialua Elementary sixth-grader Tyler Gongloff checks his camera before shooting footage of Kacy Wilia, fifth grade, and Lawrence Agaran, sixth. The media class can send its broadcast live around the school, as one of about 30 "academies" that give students hands-on experience.
The idea was to prepare children for the 21st century. The changed involved a philosophical shift. The emphasis was not on teaching art, music, or writing, for example, but on developing future artists, musicians or writers.
"We still taught the basics," said Sharon Nakagawa, then principal of the school, who has since become project grant director for the Central School District. "But we did it in a little different way."
• What are you most proud of? "Our plantation heritage," said Vice Principal Tiffany Eason, a third-generation Waialua resident who was filling in for Principal Bonnie Tabor, who was attending a conference earlier this week.
"Even though the plantation shut down in 1996, we still have that cultural background from the variety of people who worked for the plantation — Filipino, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and so forth. That's the roots of this whole community, and it's still very strong. We still refer to certain areas as certain camps — Mill Camp or Ranch Camp, for instance."
Eason said another strong point is the teaching staff, which includes two nationally certified teachers, three Milken Award winners and the State Teacher of the Year, Jill Hirota.
• Best-kept secret: "A lot of people don't know where Waialua is. I think there are a few people that know, but for some it's 'so far away.' We hear that quite a bit — that it's so far away that people don't come out here."
The irony is that Waialua Town is only about a mile west of Hale'iwa Town.
• Our biggest challenge: "Finding something else, now that the mill has closed, that will sustain the community economically."
The future of Waialua and the future of the Waialua Elementary are one in the same, Eason said.
"The state has said that our enrollment should be dropping — and it has dropped a little. But it has not dropped significantly, where we see that people are leaving Waialua. People are actually coming to Waialua. We still have families immigrating from the Philippines and other parts of Asia. How do we address the needs of those people?"
• What we need: "A new administration building, a new cafeteria and more classrooms," said Eason.
"But we have been luckier than some schools, because we have a lot of volunteers who come here and do work that we need done. We have eight Weinberg homeless cottages that were donated to us that have been renovated."
Two shelters that were previously part of a homeless village in Hale'iwa have been converted into a school museum, and another pair were combined and made into an old-fashioned general store where students can spend "micro-dollars" they earn at school.
• Projects: "Every homeroom teacher has an academy. This is a program we started around 1996 to keep our kids motivated. These academies are project-based, so, for example, our media academy has a closed-circuit broadcast every morning that is produced and anchored by the students."
There are around 30 academies that focus on such concepts as art, drama, music and cultural history. Each is designed to give students a hands-on experience.
Each academy gives students ways to generate "micro-dollars." In the hydroponics academy, for example, students grow and sell lettuce, tomatoes and other produce. Within each academy, students decide how to generate revenue and how profits should be spent, saved or invested — thus motivating them to learn.
"They are fully involved in what is going on in each academy," said Eason. "When they do sales, they need to fill out a fund-raising form. So I have students coming to me for approval. It's like submitting a business plan: 'This is what we're going to do, this is what we need the money for, this is what it's going to cost us, and so forth.
"This is direct experience for later on, when they are employed and they have to know to arrive on time and know their responsibilities."
To get your school profiled, contact education editor Dan Woods at 525-5441 or send e-mail to dwoods@honoluluadvertiser.com.
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| At a glance | |
| • | Where: 67-020 Waialua Beach Road |
| • | Phone: 637-8228 |
| • | Web address: www.waialuael.k12.hi.us |
| • | Principal: Bonnie Tabor, since 2001 |
| • | School nickname: Bullpups |
| • | School colors: Blue and yellow |
| • | Enrollment: 570 students. "Yes, we're overcrowded," said Eason. |
| • | SATs: Here's how Waialua Elementary students fared on the most recent Stanford Achievement Test. Listed are the percentages of students scoring average and above average, compared with the national figure, 77 percent. Third-grade reading, 87 percent; math, 96 percent. Fifth-grade reading, 72 percent; math, 80 percent. |
| • | History: Opened in 1966 with 267 students |
| • | Computers: Fully networked, with connected classroom e-mail system. Students must be Internet-certified to use the system. |
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