Private Wahiawa high school is moving
By Catherine E. Toth
Advertiser Central O'ahu Writer
It took 17 years and thousands of cookies for Ho'ala School in Wahiawa to finally have its own campus.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
The small private school will move its high school to 311 Lehua Ave. — its first permanent home — this fall, with the lower grades remaining at the Wahiawa Hongwanji Mission just blocks away.
Ho'ala School's new high school campus will open this fall. The lower grades will remain at the Buddhist mission nearby in Wahiawa.
The move — like the school's cookies — is sweet because it comes after two years of delays.
About 40 of Ho'ala's 130 students will move to the new 2.2-acre site.
"It's very exciting for us," said principal Nancy Barry.
Since its inception in 1986, Ho'ala has been on the move.
Through consistent fund raising, the school was able to raise the $650,000 needed for the new school. Much of that money came from cookie sales.
For 15 years every November, parents and teachers get together at a neighborhood school cafeteria to bake thousands of shortbread cookies that are sold at $5 a dozen. Minus all expenses, the school raised about $20,000 last year, selling more than 50,000 cookies. The proceeds go toward the new campus.
"They're really, really good," said Kathy Masunaga, the school's business manager, who helps with the baking. "We do everything from scratch and package them ourselves. They sell like hotcakes."
The shortbread cookies come in three varieties — macadamia nut, chocolate chip and cinnamon sugar.
Cookie sales have been so successful that the school even started baking and selling pies for Mother's Day two years ago. More than 400 peach-pear and peach-apple pies were sold this year at $8 each.
"We call it 'sweat equity,' " Masunaga said.
The new campus, on the banks of Lake Wilson, has a four-classroom building, named Madden Hall after founder Sister Joan Madden; a portable classroom; and two cottages. Instead of a cafeteria, there is a new building with a large, covered patio and four picnic tables, donated by a student's grandfather.
The campus was supposed to have opened in 2001.
But the opening was delayed for two years because the campus had no access to a fire hydrant. The city refused to issue the school a permit required to complete and occupy Madden Hall because the campus did not meet the city fire code.
Already strapped for cash, the school had to raise $300,000 to attach a water main to the nearest hydrant on Lehua Avenue, while paying rent at the Wahiawa Hongwanji Mission and the Wahiawa YMCA.
It received the money through grants from the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation, the Atherton Foundation, the Robert E. Black Fund of the Hawai'i Community Foundation and the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Now the school has its permit and awaits its first students.
Long-range planning also includes the prospect of building a pier into Lake Wilson and moving the lower grades to the new site from the mission, where the school has been since 1997.
"Over time we hope to move the entire campus over," said Kim Hines, who coordinates marketing for the school and runs its after-school program. "We'll have to do that through more fund raising."
In designing the new campus, school officials wanted to retain a plantation-style look while keeping the view of Mount Ka'ala. And the school had to be in Wahiawa.
Having their own campus is important to students, Masunaga said, as it creates continuity in their learning environment.
"It has a permanency to it," she said. "And we made a commitment to Wahiawa, so we're growing some roots."
Reach Catherine E. Toth at 535-8103 or ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com.
