Let’s Build A School

How it all started

In 2015, the Foundation’s Let’s Build a School (LBAS) committee embarked on a mission to get a tuition-free high school on Kauai's North Shore. They garnered more than 500 letters and signatures in support of this effort from members of the community, which were then submitted to the DOE and our state and county officials.

Meanwhile, on September 11, the Emerson Collective, chaired by Laurene Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, YoYoMa, and others dedicated to the concept of revolutionizing public high schools, announced an open challenge to re-think the concept of high school in this country. They dedicated $50 million in support and money to 5 schools that came up with a new concept for education that could redesign the relevance of education. More than 10,000 people in 50 states formed teams to take on the XQ Super School Challenge.

 What started as a small group of school winners has since grown into a thriving collection of innovative public high schools across the country. Together, these schools are realizing a collective vision for the future of high school. The LBAS team decided to enter the competition and reached out to the community for collaboration. They received input from students, parents, teachers, administrators, and others with big ideas for what a great 21st-century public high school should look like in our community.

Over a period of months, this group of people met and fine-tuned the XQ challenge submission which included a brand-new social media, open source, web-based platform that was three years in the making. The brainchild of Rosemary Vali, a resident of Haena, who works in the tech industry, collaborated with MIT and a host of other universities to bring this program to life.

During the course of the competition, we explored all facets of developing a new formula for a 21st-century high school, from community data gathering, faculty and administration, new data development resources, social campus software to the nuts and bolts of budget parameters. A big hand goes out to Lorri Mull, Nance Overton, Rosemary Vali, Mary Paterson, Jonathan McRoberts, Sheldon Kimber, and Ric Cox for their tireless work, good humor, and dedication that lead up to the final submission. Finally, a heartfelt mahalo to Stacy Sproat and the WaipaFoundation for the wonderful hospitality to our team and the documentary crew during the finalization of the submission. The magic of Waipa was nothing short of inspirational.

Despite the extraordinary competition, we advanced to the semi-finals - the only Hawaii submission to do so. On two occasions, XQ sent out documentary crews to follow our progress. The only entries to win were actual schools (two of which were Big Picture Learning schools), and the benefits of the experience and insight we gained from the Challenge were invaluable.

For more information, go to xqsuperschool.org.  

Below are a few pictures taken during the process.