Kamehameha extending reach
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
Kamehameha Schools yesterday awarded a $153,603 grant to a public school that has 8 percent non-Hawaiian students.
The grant, to Kanu o Ka'Aina New Century Public Charter School of Waimea, Hawaii, is part of Kamehameha's effort to reach and teach students of Hawaiian ancestry other than at its own campuses, even if that means spending some money on non-Hawaiian students.
It is also a landmark move across the cultural, ancestral and blood boundary inside which Kamehameha's campus programs have operated.
While many non-Hawaiians benefit from summer-school, preschool, extension and adult-education programs Kamehameha has supported, the only full school-year programs it has supported in the past have been those on its own campuses, which apply an all-but-exclusive preference for children of Hawaiian ancestry.
"It is very important that we reach out to the (estimated 47,000) Hawaiian children who are students in the public schools," said Schools Trustee Diane Plotts, non-Hawaiian herself and one of the champions of the effort.
Under Kamehameha's new Ho'olako Like (enrich together) program, new money will flow to selected charter schools where the population is at least 70 percent Hawaiian. And if that means some non-Hawaiians will benefit, Plotts said, then "we are glad to help all children."
Several of the Waimea charter school's 157 students appeared at the Kamehameha Schools press conference here yesterday to see the check presented.
"Being Hawaiian is not necessarily just the blood," said senior Joshua Recaido, who traces part of his ancestry to Kekuhaupio, tactician to King Kamehameha I.
"It's in the heart, like that," Recaido said.
"If there are students who want to attend a Hawaiian charter school, they have some kind of interest in Hawaiian culture," said Recaido, who is one-quarter Hawaiian, as well as Filipino, Chinese and some haole. "If they want to participate and be part of the Hawaiian culture, and they really care, that's good enough for me."
One of the non-Hawaiian students, Leigh Frizell, a 17-year-old junior at the school, said he enrolled because the charter school looked interesting.
"I knew it was culturally based, and there was more hands-on work in addition to book work," said Frizell, who is half Chinese and a mix of Irish, Scotch, American Indian and German.
"The school I went to before, they taught Hawaiian language in a tiny, insignificant class, but at this school almost everything is based in Hawaiian culture," he said.
At the same time, he said, "I am still doing everything I did at the other school, and more."
Eligible charter schools will receive at least $1 from Kamehameha for every $4 received from the state.
Charter schools are independent public schools designed and operated by educators, parents, community leaders, educational entrepreneurs and others, and sponsored by local or state educational organizations that monitor their quality and operations.
To qualify for support from Kamehameha Schools, a start-up charter school also must be committed to perpetuating Hawaiian culture, language, values and traditions, and have clear support from the Hawaiian community where it is located, said Hamilton McCubbin, Kamehameha Schools' chief executive officer.
Kamehameha Schools' $200 million annual education budget is financed with revenues from the lands of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, whose will called for the establishment of a school for boys and one for girls. The will also asked trustees to devote "a portion of each year's income to the support and education of orphans, and others in indigent circumstances, giving the preference to Hawaiians of pure or part aboriginal blood."
Whether or not Pauahi's will supports education for non-Hawaiian as well as Hawaiian children, both critics and the trustees have said Kamehameha has reached far too few even of those of Hawaiian ancestry.
After Kamehameha's Kapalama campus on O'ahu topped out at about 3,200 in the 1990s, trustees established new campuses on Maui and the Big Island, which added about 1,200 to the student body in recent years.
Currently, almost 12,000 additional students of all backgrounds and ages benefit from outside programs supported by Kamehameha.
The current board of trustees has said it will no longer build new campuses, but will seek other means of reaching Hawaiian children.
Kamehameha Schools touched off a storm of protest among parents and alumni last year when it offered a non-Hawaiian student the opportunity to attend its Maui campus, because it said the supply of available, qualified Hawaiian students seeking admission to the Maui campus was exhausted.
The schools have since redoubled their efforts to recruit students of Hawaiian ancestry for the Maui campus.
Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.
