The state needs a facility on the Wai'anae Coast to train future teachers who live in the community, know the people and, most importantly, understand its Hawaiian culture.

That, a group of education and community leaders says, is the solution to one of Hawai'i's thorniest educational problems — how to attract teachers to an area that has a teacher turnover rate between 10 percent and 25 percent each year, one of the highest rates in the state.

The teacher retention problem on the Wai'anae Coast has become so critical that each year, the state Department of Education sends three of the area's school principals to the Mainland to recruit. While that effort has helped ease the demand, the overall problem persists: Outside teachers aren't motivated to remain for long on the coast. Reasons range from better teaching opportunities in Honolulu and elsewhere to the relative isolation of the coast.

Myron Brumaghim, Hawai'i's Distinguished Principal of the Year in 2006, believes the way to change that is to recruit teachers whose homes are just down the road — not in Honolulu, and not thousands of miles away on the Mainland.

"Sometimes when you are searching for answers to difficult problems, you find the solution right under your nose," he said.

And since the pool of qualified teachers on the Wai'anae Coast is nearly nonexistent, he said, the thing to do is to bring the training to the community and turn things around.

Backers of putting a teacher-training facility on the coast maintain that they are in it for the long haul. Last week, a Senate bill providing $750,000 to pay for the educational center died in committee. Undaunted, proponents hope legislators will include funding in the state budget. One way or the other, they vow not to quit.

"We're confident this will happen," said Margie Maaka, associate professor of education at the University of Hawai'i and a driving force behind the plan.

UH INITIATIVE TOUTED

The answer, Maaka and others believe, is tied to a little-known curriculum initiative known as Ho'okulaiwi: Aha Ho'ona'auao 'Oiwi, for which Maaka is a core faculty member. The name of the project — part of the University of Hawai'i College of Education — translates to Center for Native Hawaiian and Indigenous Education.

The goal of the curriculum is to prepare teachers for state DOE schools that have a large number of Native Hawaiian students. During the past decade, the program has turned out more than 100 certified teachers on the UH-Manoa campus. While some graduates have come from the Wai'anae Coast, most have not.

That, Maaka said, underscores the need for an educational center in the Wai'anae area.

The Wai'anae Coast is home to the largest population anywhere of Native Hawaiians with more than 50 percent Hawaiian blood. But Native Hawaiians have been vastly underrepresented in the teaching force.

Coupled with the Wai'anae Coast's economic struggles, low teacher retention rates and the state's worst homeless problem, Maaka and others say it's no wonder its Native Hawaiian children score at the bottom on standardized achievement tests.

Brumaghim, principal of Nana-ikapono Elementary School, is one of the educators who visits Mainland colleges and job fairs to scout for teachers. He said each year he recruits between 25 and 40 teachers for three schools in his area — Nanaikapono Elementary, Nanakuli High and Intermediate and Nanakuli Elementary.

That's never enough, he said. And of those who are hired, most will leave.

"We know that eventually most of the teachers we recruit will go back to where their families live," Brumaghim said.

Shaun McGinty, 28, is among the recruits bucking the odds. McGinty arrived from Pennsylvania in 2002 and has been at Nanaikapono ever since. The reasons are simple: He loves the school, the kids and the coast. Yet even McGinty concedes he's not sure if he'll stay for good or go back home.

For the past 10 years Nanaikapono has partnered with Ho'okulaiwi to provide Wai'anae Coast teachers with lessons in Hawaiian history, language, arts, chant, hula, linguistics, health, law and politics.

That program has turned out 102 certified teachers. Maaka and others contend that two educational cohorts could certify and train 25 area teachers every two years at the proposed educational center. Four educational cohorts could certify twice that number.

PLAN HAS SUPPORT

The idea of creating an educational center to expand the momentum has won the support of such influential leaders as University of Hawai'i President David McClain, Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee Oswald Stender and state schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto.

One person who provides a convincing teacher role model is Jerri Keiki, a Native Hawaiian who lives on Hawaiian Homestead land in Nanakuli and who has taught at Nanaikapono Elementary School for the past decade.

"Even if these really great teachers are coming over from the Mainland, they're not thinking about it in the long term," said Keiki, a UH teaching graduate who is working with Maaka in the Ho'okulaiwi master's program.

"I am. I don't plan to move anywhere out of this school. And if we can get more teachers from this side of the island into these schools, then that stability will help our kids."

When Leeward Community College put a campus in Wai'anae, it motivated area students to return to school to get their degrees, Keiki said. Opening a local center to educate Department of Education teachers from the coast would continue that positive trend.

"The education center is really important because it's going to open avenues on all the levels of education that these kids really need. But what it's also going to do for us is that it's going to ensure a stable staff, consistency for our kids."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.