As they walk through the door Paul Onishi hands each of his students a sharp, long-bladed knife.

"This is a deadly weapon," he tells them.

"Or you can use it to make $35,000 a year."

It's the first day of Onishi's off-campus alternative cooking class for Farrington High students at risk of dropping out.

By the end of the day he has taught each of the kids how to wield a chef's knife and how to make chicken katsu. It's a path to the future for many of these young people, and the first day of what may become a success story.

"This program changed me a lot," says Ese Emosi, a 17-year-old sophomore who was majoring in cutting class before being arrested for truancy in a recent police sweep of beaches.

"It made me like to wake up and come to school."

As Hawai'i's public high schools see their latest crop of graduates proudly pick up diplomas this week, the state Department of Education is increasingly focusing on how to stem the tide of dropouts.

Nearly 15 percent of students statewide have been lost from every four-year high school class beginning with the Class of 2002. That's as many as 8,700 kids lost from the past five graduating classes if the rate holds this year.

In looking for answers, educators are paying particular attention to ninth grade. This is considered the most difficult transition year in the public education system, where problems emerge for many kids as they move to large, impersonal campuses.

In Hawai'i the number of ninth-graders failing their first year continues to climb, with more than three of every 10 freshmen failing at some schools. And that puts them at high risk of ever graduating, research shows.

From redesigning high schools to offering alternative classes and adult education programs, to working with community colleges to enroll at-risk students in job training programs, educators are struggling to find ways to keep students in school or bring them back.

Additionally, social service agencies such as Adult Friends for Youth, Parents and Children Together and the Samoan Service Providers Association are scooping up those who may have been out of school for several years, and giving them a renewed sense of hope that they can earn diplomas.

TAPPING KIDS' PASSIONS

"The conventional schooling system isn't for everyone," says Leusogafofoma'aitulagi "Bill" Emmsley, executive director of the Samoan Service Providers Association, which is also running competency-based diploma classes for dropouts. The program offers certificates based partially on life experience along with book learning.

"Those that have come to us have shared their sentiments that they'll never go back because they can't fit," Emmsley says. "We've got to make it creative and find that nerve that schools can't seem to touch. Otherwise we can write these kids off and someday they'll pop up at OCCC."

Princess Noa Palafu, 19, isn't going to let herself be written off. In training at the Samoan Service Providers Association office as a clerk/receptionist, she's also part of the way through the association's competency-based high school diploma classes. She expects to receive her diploma by the end of the year, and has taken it upon herself to pay off her parents' $5,000 debt to the private school she used to attend before she was suspended for nonpayment of the tuition.

"It was just so much pressure," she says of the money issue that contributed to her dropping out. "I felt that was my bill and I wanted to help pay. My parents can't work because of disabilities and limited English."

After the suspension, she transferred to Farrington High and fell back in with friends who were disenchanted with school. Skipping class became a habit. By spring of her senior year she left school for good to look for a job.

As Palafu works to pay off the debt a little at a time each month from her wages of $6.75 an hour, she's also proving she can handle a job. When she graduates, Emmsley hopes to offer her a full-time position.

"The diploma will give me pride and joy," she says. "It proves to other people if you're down and out there's a way to get back on your feet."

The urgency to find ways to stem the dropout problem is coming from the state's high school principals, who are attempting wholesale makeovers of their schools to make them especially relevant to ninth-graders. Already a dozen Hawai'i high schools have federal grants to create Small Learning Communities within their schools, defined as more intimate groupings of students with their own teams of teachers to counteract the anonymity of large high schools.

"I know of no place that has all the answers," says national consultant Jim Parsley, who is assisting the schools. "It's the sum of the opportunities. The more opportunities, the more chance the kid has. And we're there to ignite the opportunities and unlock the passion in every kid."

What small learning communities are already seeing is success in reducing failure rates in ninth grade, along with an increase in assessment scores. But several more years will be needed to determine whether these changes will make a long-lasting difference.

"The first year of the grant we only focused on ninth-graders because that's such a critical year," says DOE grant coordinator Aileen Ah Yat. "In the first year there was improvement in the retention (failure) rate, and we even saw improvement in student grades."

BUILDING 'OHANA

At one of those schools, Kalaheo High in Kailua, principal James Schlosser is seeing dropout rates fall. Kalaheo's rates have gone from 25.4 percent in 2001 to 15.2 percent last year and Schlosser attributes some of that to closer tracking of at-risk students, more outreach to families and more options to make up credits.

This coming year his ninth-graders will be in a freshman "house" and teachers are getting ready for intensive summer training to make that happen. Schlosser hopes it will create an even more personalized learning community for his kids, and a better sense of identity.

"We do our best to create options so they can stay in school," he says. "Through the counselors we're working with families to help kids stay on track if they're wavering. Those efforts pay off."

At Campbell High in 'Ewa Beach, principal Gale Awakuni is seeing huge successes as a result of the more nurturing ninth-grade "house." From a ninth-grade failure rate five years ago of almost 50 percent, the school has seen it drop to less than 10 percent. As well, the school's dropout rates have declined significantly, from 14.7 percent for the Class of 2002 to 10.6 percent for the Class of 2005.

"I was shocked," Awakuni says. "I congratulated all our teachers. They've been working so hard."

SHOWING SOME CARE

At Farrington, the state's largest high school and one that logs some of the largest numbers of dropouts, that same personal intervention is the reason outreach counselor Jill Yoshimoto is knocking on the doors of Kalihi homes many times a month. She doesn't wait for students to disappear; she tracks them down.

Yoshimoto's job involves following about 110 kids on the cusp. They've failed a few classes and are increasingly on the verge of leaving for good.

"For some students we've been to the house two or three times a month," Yoshimoto says. "We talk to the parent, the student, talk about alternatives. We bring their current credits and sit down and say, 'This is what it's looking like as far as graduating.' "

With half a dozen alternative programs available through the school, kids can get a second chance. Paul Onishi's program, the "Spirit of Aloha Culinary Academy," partially financed by New Hope Christian Fellowship, is one of the newest alternatives but already has a waiting list.

A certified teacher and a chef, Onishi says schools must teach in a way that feels relevant to students addicted to a cell phone, iPod and Internet culture, who are posting fights online, cocking their baseball caps to the side with attitude and maybe flirting with gang membership.

"Usually these kids are looking for something to connect to," says Onishi, who builds self-esteem into the stir-fry. "And the interesting thing is the class bonds and becomes a family.

"There are different races, different age groups, different backgrounds, boys and girls, and they function as a group of people who enjoy each other's company. After awhile they kind of monitor each other. If one starts cutting and not coming, they say 'You better come because you'll get cut.' "

Onishi's class was the kind of welcoming space 17-year-old Taua "T.J." Olomua Jr. needed after his mother died this year and he lost interest in school, skipping so many classes he was about to be kicked out.

His mother had been the one waiting for him to walk through the door to hear about his day. If he didn't go to school, she told him, she'd send him to the Mainland. No one else could control him, he says.

But when Farrington suggested Onishi's cooking program, it caught his interest. "I'll graduate 2007," Olomua says. "I'm gonna come back."

Oriana Faasavalu, 18, is another of Onishi's success stories. Pregnant at 15, she gave up her child for adoption and moved to the Mainland, then returned to Hawai'i and tried to pick up her life again. Saying she's "not the school type," she nonetheless was a good student through eighth grade at UH Lab school.

In moving to Farrington for ninth grade, she figured she was so far ahead because of the private school that she could easily skip class and go to the mall.

"I thought it was a breeze. So when I went to class I was lost."

She was soon so far behind it was easier just to hit the mall and forget school altogether.

"People said I wouldn't make it because I got pregnant, but I wanted to show my mom and dad I could," she says. "They never gave up on me and always encouraged me that it was never too late."

HELPING KIDS CHANGE

Students want to change, says Deborah Spencer, who teaches competency-based diploma classes for the social service agency Adult Friends For Youth.

They also want more from life, she says.

"They just don't know how to go about getting it, so we provide that opportunity."

The agency works with groups of friends who are having problems, and finds that bringing them to class together is a powerful tool for change. "Because we work with everybody, they're all helping each other," Spencer says.

More than one student has found the strength to begin again because of the agency.

Seventeen-year-old Kathleen Dela Cruz, who got pregnant at 15 and dropped out of school, now has a good secretarial job and a stable family life because of the agency and their diploma classes.

"We struggled together," she says of the classes she and her boyfriend took to earn their diplomas. "I thought what will happen if my son grows up and I don't have the education to help him."

Student Lenelle Dungo, 19, said it was the help of counselor Terry Fisher at Adult Friends that made the difference.

"She just made me feel like she cared. Before, nobody cared for me, so I didn't care," Dungo says. "Terry kept telling me once I get my diploma that I'm capable of so much more."

DOSE OF NEW HOPE

Alternative programs have been the glue holding together many struggling teens' lives.

Renowned sociologist Emmy Werner, who has written books on at-risk students based on work done on Kaua'i, says alternatives are critical, and suggests American high schools might want to look at the European model.

"I just have this sense it must be a vacuum for so many, just sitting there, unless you're very self-motivated and have a good teacher," Werner says. "In that respect, the European system makes a lot of sense. They invest a lot in preschool, then they have these two tracks. If you want to go into the trades you can legitimately leave school at 14 and go into a trade school. Not everyone has to go through high school.

"That's the problem here. We don't have an alternative way of educating them if they drop out in the ninth grade, unless they go back later on and get a GED. So high schools need much more flexibility."

Werner also said there's hope for children from troubled homes.

"What we found (from research) on Kaua'i from kids who dropped out was once they got away from their dysfunctional family, they would eventually go back and it was usually to a community college or into the Army," she says. "You still get skills that are marketable but they won't have to sit through boring stuff they can't understand because they didn't learn to read."

Farrington High School principal Catherine Payne agrees that schools must offer alternatives. In addition to the programs her counselors offer, she's trying to work out a way to stagger the school day so students can choose to take classes until 6 p.m. to better accommodate their interests, or maybe even part-time jobs.

"How do you deal with 16- and 17-year-olds who have lost hope of graduating if you don't give them something that makes sense to them?" Payne says. "That's what we're trying to come up with.

"Society can't ignore these young people and say, 'If you can't fit in you're going to flunk out, and too bad for you.' "