Former principal made reform work at McKinley

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

At McKinley High School, as principal in the mid-to-late 1990s, Pat Hamamoto tackled the gang fights on campus and turned warring factions into friends.

At Pearl City Highlands Elementary, again as principal in the late 1980s, she threw herself into fitness programs for the little ones, even turning up to keep score at campus sports events.

At Pearl City High in the early 1980s, as a guidance counselor, she once appeared with orange hair — an experiment by her hairdresser daughter — and laughingly endured the good-natured teasing.

Yesterday, Hamamoto, superintendent of schools for a system under fire, again took center stage, this time before a joint session of the Legislature to give an authoritative review of the school system and what needs to change to improve student achievement.

Teacher, counselor, vice principal, principal. Elementary, intermediate, high school. Hamamoto has served in the trenches of Hawai'i's education system and risen to its peak from her early days teaching social studies. Along the way she has earned respect and admiration for her persistence and relentless advocacy for students. And her ability to make change happen.

As principal of McKinley High, she set out to curb student violence.

"One of her directions to me was 'We're going to get this school to the point where there are no disturbances on our campus,' " remembers McKinley vice principal John Hammond, whom she plucked from the teacher ranks in 1995.

"At the time we were having problems. One of our students assaulted an old man downtown and he later died. And there was a certain amount of gang unrest, fights, most of it taking place outside of school but carrying over inside."

Under Hamamoto's direction, the school identified gang leaders, brought them in individually, met with their parents, and then sent the students off — together — to an intensive "ropes course" at Mokule'ia in which students learn to trust each other with their lives as they swing across long distances. The course, which includes other personal challenges, has been used by private schools as a bonding experience.

"When we started out, these kids wouldn't even get on the same bus together," Hammond said. "But the end result, after a couple of months of hard work, was a lot of these kids got to be friends and the problems went away.

"They all knew that she (Hamamoto) cared about them and worried about them, but they all knew she meant business."

Hamamoto has always meant business. As the principal of Pearl City Highlands Elementary more than 15 years ago, she plunged the school into state-mandated fitness programs, and more recently she is credited with shepherding the DOE through the demands of the Felix consent decree and bringing stability to a department in turmoil following the scandal-ridden resignation of former superintendent Paul LeMahieu.

She also brought stability — and reform — to McKinley, where she spent eight years before becoming deputy superintendent in 2000. After shaking the McKinley staff out of complacency, Hammond said, she went on to make the student course schedule more efficient; alter the school year to make it year-round; and judiciously borrow money across the board to add a technology coordinator, one of the first schools to do so.

She did it with buy-in from the staff, and the school saw student test scores rise.

"What most people don't realize is the principal doesn't have the power to just do this," Hammond said. "You have to get an 80 percent vote by the teachers to move. You know how hard that is? She just had to talk them into it by persuasion and telling them 'Trust me,' and they did."

As the state stands at the brink of what may be the biggest education changes since lawmakers created a centralized system 40 years ago, Hamamoto has now asked legislators for the same.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.