Boarders keep traditions alive at Lahainaluna
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
Lahainaluna High School freshman Jayson Alejo, 14, has to do his own laundry as a boarder on the Maui campus. Boys and girls live in separate dorms and the atmosphere is similar to that of a college campus.
By Christie Wilson
Advertiser Neighbor Island Editor
LAHAINA, Maui — Lahainaluna Principal Michael Nakano likes to say that his high school is keeping the traditions of West Maui alive.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
After all, Lahaina is no longer home to Hawaiian royalty or the once-thriving whaling trade of the 19th century. Even sugar is gone. What's left of its proud and colorful past, besides a few old buildings and relics that have become the domain of tourists, is the large "L" on the mountain high above the town and the 172-year-old school it represents.
The Maui school's signature "L" on the mountaintop above the town marks the nearby gravesite of Native Hawaiian scholar David Malo of the inaugural 1831 class.
Twice a year, students in Lahainaluna's boarding program — the only one in existence at a public school in Hawai'i — lug 50-pound sacks of lime up to the site to outline the "L," and each graduation night, they help illuminate it with soda-can torches in a long-cherished ceremony observed from as far away as Lana'i.
The "L" also marks the nearby gravesite of noted Native Hawaiian educator and scholar David Malo, a member of Lahainaluna's inaugural class in 1831, whose achievements are celebrated every April when the boarders and the Hawaiiana Club put on a lu'au for the community, using food grown on the campus farm.
"Without the boarders, the traditions would go away," Nakano said.
Generations of families have sent their children to Lahainaluna, and former boarders span the island chain and reach into the highest levels of business and public service.
They include retired federal judge Alfred Laureta, 79, a four-year boarder who graduated in 1943.
"What I treasured the most is getting mixed up with new faces," said Laureta, who grew up on Maui but now lives on Kaua'i. "You had to learn how to get along with other kids, and we built lasting friendships out of that association."
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Henry Ariyoshi, now retired, worked at Lahainaluna from 1961 to 1995, except for one year when he was assigned to another school. He was principal from 1978 to 1995, winning the Milken Family Foundation National Education Award and Hawai'i Principal of the Year honors.
Lahainaluna boarding student Josh Arata, 16, a senior from Ha'iku, tends to the 5-month old pigs that were born during his junior year. He began working with pigs during his freshman year and is now the foreman whose responsibility is to care for the animals. All boarders work on the farm raising pigs among other duties.
"The school has a way of really growing on you. I have great aloha for the school," he said. "It provides a good setting for a lot of kids who don't have much of a home life. ... The communal living helps them mature and learn to be responsible for themselves."
Lahainaluna — often referred to as the oldest school west of the Mississippi — was founded by missionaries Sept. 5, 1831, as a seminary to train Native Hawaiian men as teachers. The boarding program was started five years later.
It became part of the public school system in 1923.
The boarding program is free to students. Last year it cost the Department of Education $465,000 to operate.
Students are eligible for the program if they otherwise would find it difficult to obtain a high school education or if they would benefit from a change in environment. It is also open to students from Pacific Island nations, and the Boarding Department Advisory Board has the discretion to select other applicants based on their leadership potential.
At the start of the August school year, Lahainaluna had enrolled 103 boarders. Forty-three of the boarders are from Maui, 25 from the Big Island, mostly Ka'u and Kona, 12 from Moloka'i, nine each from O'ahu and Lana'i, four from Kaua'i and one from Majuro in the Marshall Islands.
"We guarantee them a safe place to stay and eat," said Nakano, who lives on a cottage on campus. "Some of the students come to the school with no parents; they're living with relatives or they're having a hard time. At least we can promise them they don't have to worry about those kinds of things."
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Boys and girls live in separate dorms with TV lounges, computer rooms, laundry facilities and live-in staff. The students live two to a room and share meals in the school cafeteria. The setting and atmosphere are similar to what one would find on a college campus, except for a rigorous weekday schedule that starts with a 5:45 a.m. wake-up call for an hour of chores before breakfast and regular classes with Lahainaluna's 900-plus day students.
Jesse Balanay, 17, a senior from Captain Cook and a four-year boarder, says she learned the hard way there are no excuses for bad grades. She must budget her studying time.
The boarders help maintain the grounds, pick up rubbish, assist in the cafeteria and office, and work on the farm raising pigs and cultivating dryland taro, corn, butter lettuce, beans, ti and other crops.
The boarders also are required to work for nearly two hours after school and have a two-hour study period in the evening before lights out at 10 p.m. There are daily room checks for tidiness, and on Monday nights the boarders have mandatory chorus practice — another longtime tradition.
On Saturdays, the students rise at 7 a.m. and perform campus duties for three hours and work off any overtime assessed for rule violations.
They are on their own the rest of the weekend, and many students walk or pool their money to hire taxis to go shopping or to the beach. However, they are prohibited from leaving the West Maui area, and must remain in dress code while in Lahaina town.
It may not surprise anyone with a teenager at home to hear that the boarders who were interviewed for this story almost uniformly said they like being independent from their parents. What is surprising is the lack of grousing about the strict work-study regimen.
"You learn to depend on yourself, to be respectful and make friends," said junior Norman Kanoeau, 16, of Oceanview on the Big Island. "It's fun because when you come here you have a lot of friends to back you up. You're never lonely."
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Jesse Balanay, 17, a senior from Captain Cook whose family has a six-acre coffee and macadamia nut farm, said she chose Lahainaluna because "I always wanted to come to Maui and meet people from all over."
Lahainaluna High School boarding students and regular students cross paths: Boarders head for their dorm rooms where they get dressed in their work clothes for mandatory chores while regular students head home after school, some driving, some via school bus.
She also likes not having to see her parents every day and taking long showers. At home in South Kona, her family relies on a water catchment tank and shower time is limited, said Balanay, who hopes to study zoology at a Mainland college.
Budgeting time, particularly for studying, is one important skill Balanay and other boarders said they've acquired from the boarding program.
"There are no excuses for bad grades," she said. "I learned that the hard way."
Junior Charmaine Dilla, 17, of Moloka'i, is one of 35 new boarders this year. "I wanted to experience something different," she said. "Moloka'i is a small place. I'm ready for something new."
Her parents, Rene and Nilda Dilla, caught the ferry from Kaunakakai to Lahaina to escort their daughter to Lahainaluna and got her a cellular phone so she could keep in close contact.
"We are sad, but it's for her educational experience. It matters more than what we feel," Rene Dilla said. "She's preparing for her future."
It speaks well for Lahainaluna that a fifth of the school's employees are alumni, and many of them were boarders.
Assistant farm foreman Alan Yamamoto was a four-year boarder from Moloka'i who graduated in 1976 and later joined the Air Force. He said he was "kolohe," a naughty kid who needed the stern boundaries the boarding program provided. "Otherwise my life would have been on the messy side," he said.
Yamamoto said he didn't realize the effect the program had on his life until two weeks into basic training when his drill instructor noticed his self-discipline and work ethic and asked him if he'd had prior military experience.
Family tradition is a powerful force at Lahainaluna. Many of the current students have former boarders in their family trees.
"With some families, I'm on my fourth kid," said 13-year dorm counselor Katy Greer.
Kahului Airport firefighter and former boarder Kappy Kalama, Class of '80, was determined to see 14-year-old son Kapena enter the program this year, although his wife, Pauline, a St. Anthony High School graduate, was pushing for her alma mater in Wailuku.
"I always hoped he'd want to come here," Kalama said. "There are a lot of traditions at this school and you learn a lot of respect."
Joyce Monsky of Ka'u said Lahainaluna can offer son Max Behrens, 13, better educational and extracurricular opportunities than he can get back home. She also said she was worried about the epidemic of crystal methamphetamine, or ice, on the Big Island.
"Having this program just picked him out of the whole thing," she said. "Otherwise I never would have let him go."
Sage Spikerman, 14, of Waimea on the Big Island, said Lahainaluna will give him a boarding experience that is too costly at Hawai'i Preparatory Academy and other private boarding schools in the state. He's planning to join the school's golf and paddling teams.
His mother, Elizabeth Spikerman, found the program's philosophy most appealing.
"I want my son to be a gentleman, and there's a code of ethics here to instill that," she said.
Reach Christie Wilson at cwilson@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 244-4880.
