Kamehameha Schools to enroll Hawaiians only
By Timothy Hurley
Advertiser Maui County Bureau
Averting a repeat of last year's admissions controversy, Kamehameha Schools said it is not offering enrollment to any non-Hawaiians for the next school year.
The just-concluded admissions season featured a recruitment campaign designed to attract more Native Hawaiian applicants for Kamehameha's Neighbor Island campuses as they expand their enrollment.
The campaign was launched in response to the furor that erupted when a non-Hawaiian eighth-grader was admitted to the Maui campus last fall. Critics accused Kamehameha of not doing enough to encourage Native Hawaiian applicants.
The application deadline for the 2003-04 school year was Oct. 15, and final admission decisions were made this month.
School officials said they were successful in meeting — and surpassing — a goal of taking in at least two applicants for each space at the Maui and Big Island campuses.
More than 963 applications were received to fill 232 vacancies at the Maui campus in Pukalani. Last year there were 493 applicants for 272 openings. At the Big Island campus in Kea'au, roughly 815 applications were received to fill 184 openings. Last year there were 641 applicants for 340 spaces.
Kamehameha Schools spokesman Kekoa Paulsen said all of the applicants invited to enroll at the campuses for the 2003-04 school year were admitted under the institution's policy of giving preference to children of Hawaiian ancestry, to the extent permitted by law.
Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee Boyd Mossman, a Kamehameha alumnus and retired Maui judge, said he was happy to hear that Hawaiians were given more opportunities for admission this year. He said Kamehameha should continue to press for more applications at least until the upper grades are filled.
During the recruiting campaign, Kamehameha Schools ran newspaper and radio ads and held community meetings in an effort to draw more applicants.
Kamehameha also adopted interim changes to Maui and Big Island admissions procedures. The $25 application fee was waived, and a requirement to meet minimum test scores was suspended. Also, no applicants were eliminated through screening until after the preliminary evaluation.
The non-Hawaiian eighth-grader was enrolled at the Maui campus only after the list of qualified Native Hawaiian students was exhausted, officials had said.
Whether the interim measures will continue is uncertain. Paulsen said the Kamehameha staff is evaluating the admissions policy and the trustees are expected to look at the issue in the coming months.
Kamehameha Schools, a multibillion-dollar charitable trust formerly known as Bishop Estate, was founded in 1887 by the will of Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the great-granddaughter and last direct royal descendant of Kamehameha the Great.
Annual tuition at Kamehameha Schools is $1,093 for grades kindergarten to six and $1,518 for grades seven through 12 — well below the fees at other private schools.
