OUR SCHOOLS • WAI'ANAE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Rural campus has 19th-century roots

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Leeward O'ahu Writer

Since its beginning more than a century ago, Wai'anae Elementary School has faced one recurring problem. A study of the school's beginnings that was done 15 years ago summed it up like this:

Wai'anae Elementary kindergartners rehearse for the May Day program, an annual event that pays tribute to the Hawaiians of the community. Until the early 1960s, the school was the state's largest. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

The reasons cited were the fact that the area was so remote that teachers who started at the school took a job closer to Honolulu the first chance they got. At one point, the school even had teacher's cottages so they could live right on campus.

Today the cottages are gone, along with the rest of the original structures from when the school opened in the 1880s. The oldest buildings on campus are from the 1930s.

Principal Nancy Hirahara says teacher turnover continues to be a problem.

"It's not because this isn't a good place to work," she said. "It's because it's so remote that teachers look for a location that's closer to their home."

The 13-acre school stands a short distance mauka of Poka'i Bay, by a bend in Old Government Plantation Road, where once a large coconut grove stretched all the way to the sea. For many years the area seemed unaffected by changing times.

"When I was growing up, Farrington Highway was pretty much clear from this school to the ocean," recalled Hirahara, who spent her first seven years of schooling at Wai'anae Elementary.

Even then, she said, "Farrington Highway was a little two-lane road that used to wind through the canefields."

Today, just about everyone associated with the school is proud to be associated with the rural learning center, which endures against all odds.

• What are you the most proud of? "Our teachers," said Hirahara. "Wai'anae has always been a place where teachers are supportive of students. Our teachers have always worked really hard to do everything possible they could do to help with the education of the children.

"I know our test scores don't really show it. But it's not because the teachers are sitting on their hands. It's because we do have a lot of turnover once we train our teachers."

• Best-kept secret: As a Title I school, Wai'anae Elementary is not strapped for money.

"We have the funding to support the educational needs of our teachers and our students," Hirahara said. "We do have the money to manage the curriculum and to supply the classrooms.

"Yearly, we send our teachers to conferences on the Mainland and try to make sure that they understand what best practices look like. So, for instance, this year they attended an America's Choice conference in Savannah, Ga."

This way, Hirahara said, Wai'anae Elementary teachers are able to see how they are doing compared with other America's Choice schools.

• Everybody here knows: Moses "Uncle Moke" Kamealoha, the school's head custodian.

"Because he is all over the creation helping teachers and students. He's everywhere. He's pretty much our security person, our official greeter and the person who looks for a kid who's lost or decided he's going home," Hirahara said.

"In addition to setting everything up, such as for our big May Day celebration, he plays his guitar and sings at it, too."

• Biggest challenge: To overcome the problem of kids who come to school with no readiness skills.

Hirabara said there is a dual problem: The school is continually breaking in new teachers, and few area students attend preschool — mainly because the Wai'anae Coast has an extreme shortage of preschools.

"As the students come to us, they are already delayed," she said. "I would say in each classroom, we're lucky if we have five out 20 kids that have had any preschool at all. Our kids tend not to have that exposure with early education."

• What we need: "Books, books and more books," said Hirahara. "Not textbooks, but story books. Because our emphasis has been on literacy and learning to read and write, we continually add to our classroom libraries."

• Projects: "The May Day program, which involves all classroom kids and teachers, (is) a huge annual event," Hirahara said. That's when all the Hawaiian studies program's songs, dances and crafts are showcased. "And because a majority of our community is Hawaiian or part Hawaiian, we feel this is an important part of letting everyone here know we support the culture."

• Special events: Ho'omai'kai, a highlighting of individual work, is a special event designed to show off the academic side of the school. The event takes place just before May Day.