EDUCATION

Namahana School

The Dream

North Shore families have long desired a middle and high school close to home. A long round-trip commute to schools in Kapa‘a for North Shore middle and high-schoolers creates challenges for parents to arrange transportation and for students to participate in after-school sports and other extracurricular activities.

Despite decades of community requests and petitions, the Hawaii Department of Education has declined to build a public secondary school on the North Shore.

In 2015, KNSCF circulated a petition that gathered 600 signatures from residents endorsing the idea of a North Shore public charter school. Shortly thereafter, KNSCF formed a small working group to explore the possibility.

Quick Facts

Structure: Tuition-free public charter school

Grades served: 7th through 12th

School size: 360 students

Location: Kalihiwai, Kilauea

Campus size: 8 acres

School Model: Place-based, student-centered focus with an emphasis on personalized learning.

Charter Application: Approved June 23, 2022.

Target opening: August 2025 with Grades 7 & 8.

Namahana School Website: www.namahana.org

More FAQ's

A Place to Build a Dream

The prospect of a school took a giant step forward in 2018, when philanthropist Joan Porter—who founded the Anaina Hou Community Park with her late husband, Bill Porter—granted KNSCF a 99-year license for eight acres of land at the Wai Koa Plantation in Kilauea conditioned on the exclusive use of the site for a tuition-free public charter school.

KNSCF then engaged Community Engagement Specialists Kapua Chandler and Jen Luck who spent many months taking the pulse of the community through dozens of listening sessions and small community gatherings of community members and kupuna. In all, more than 200 individuals took part in the community engagement process.

In August, 2019, those findings were presented at a well-attended community event held at the Porter Pavilion at Anaina Hou Community Park. Hawaiian language scholar and Kumu Hula Devin Kamealoha Forrest told the capacity audience about his original archival research into the history of the school’s location. His research and the community engagement process informed the decision to call the planned school Namahana Public Charter School—named for the mountain that overlooks the future site.

Garden Island Newspaper - Namahana gathering support

Namahana Public Charter School: A Reflection of Community Values

School Community Engagement Report

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Kapua Chandler introduced the school’s values—distilled from the community engagement process—and aligned to core Hawaiian principles of Aloha Kanaka or love and respect for self, family and community; Aloha ‘Āina, love and respect for home, community and the world; and Aloha I Ke Ao, or love and respect local culture and all cultures across the world.

KNSCF also contracted with Big Picture Learning (BPL) an internationally recognized nonprofit organization that specializes in school development to work with Kapua Chandler to create a place-based, student-centered curriculum and school model that is challenging and relevant for our North Shore families. Namahana Public Charter School will feature:

Student-centered learning
Maker Space
High-School Internships
Individual Mentoring
Agricultural and Sustainability Focus

After an extensive interview and RFP process with 5 applicants, Honolulu architects G70 were awarded a contract by KNSCF in the fall of 2020. They have been working on designing a site plan and conceptual drawings for the school with input from the facilities committee, Governing Board, teachers and students. Once approved, the plans will be used to apply for a special use permit application.

Charter Application Submitted

In December, 2021 the Charter Commission re-opened its application process after a 22 month suspenstion. The Namahana Team led by School Leader Dr. Kapua Chandler and Governing Board Chair Melanie Mitsue Parker mobilized resources and submitted a detailed and extensive application to the Charter Commission in February, 2022. In addition to Kapua and Melanie, members of the Namahana Governing Board with expertise in education, consultants from Big Picture Learning, and members of the KNSCF Board of Directors all made significant contributions to the application.

A public hearing took place on May 4th via zoom, during which North Shore students and other community members gave compelling testiomony. Several other in-person or zoom meetings with the commissioners completed the process and the announcement came at the end of June.

Namahana School Receives Approval from the Hawai‘i State Charter Commission

The Hawai‘i State Public Charter School Commission granted its first new charter approval in five years to Namahana School, one of only two applicants granted conditional approval out of an original 12 submissions in 2020.

“This moment has been years in the making, and for everyone who has been working tirelessly to make this school a reality, it feels like the stars are truly aligning in support of our vision,” said Lorri Mull, Education Chair of the Kaua‘i North Shore Community Foundation (KNSCF). Namahana School began in 2015 as an initiative of KNSCF, which served as the project incubator. KNSCF later secured a 99-year land license for eight acres at the Wai Koa plantation from philanthropist Joan Porter and then went on to raise more than $3 million for preliminary costs associated with the development of the charter school. Click here to read the full news release from the Charter Commission.

Next Steps

KNSCF to pass the Baton to the Namahana Education Foundation

With the award of the preliminary charter and KNSCF's initial leadership role successfully concluded, the work of building the school will now be undertaken by the Namahana Education Foundation (NEF), an independent nonprofit organization created solely to support Namahana School.

Namahana School will be organizing public community events to share the ongoing progress of the school plans. The first one will be held on October 23 at Anaina Hou Community Park.

Community participation has been an integral part of our planning process and we invite you to share your ideas, hopes, and dreams for an outstanding tuition-free public charter school that serves our North Shore keiki.

If you want to volunteer, donate, or find out more, please contact NEF