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OH wow, volcano will be a long drive from nanewale. You might as well try and get him into Hilo if you are doing that. JMO. HE's going to want to get the know the kids in the area also. MIght keep trying for HAAS, but enroll him in the meantime in Pahoa. As from what I can see with my own kids, a lot of what they learn is from their parents anyhow. The kids in Pahoa will prob. be into real practical stuff, like building, working on cars, raising chickens,fishing and hunting. IF your son likes stuff like that, then he'll have no problems. I think he may be able to use the school choice voucher to go to Hilo, but that is a terrifically horrible drive and it would only work if you were working in Hilo and already going back and forth. LEt us know how this all ends up working out. BTW if the kids wear "uniform tshirts" try and get those ahead of time. I got these ordered for my son, and so, on the first day of school noone knew he was a transplant.
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Because Hawaii got a waiver for NCLB the whole option of transferring from a school that didn't make AYP to one that is making AYP is now off the table. Existing school choice transfers will be honored for students through the highest grade offered at their current school but no new ones are being awarded. No one knows exactly what the other impacts of the waiver are going to be, but all the schools with extended school days and afternoon tutoring to pull HSA scores up will no longer offer those services. AYP was based on only one measurement, HSA test scores, so it isn't a very good way to measure the quality of education offered at a given school.
I teach in the middle school at Connections in Hilo, and we have students from as far as Lapahoehoe, Waimea, Ka'u and Kalapana. There are students at other Charter schools who travel as far, most Charters have buses the run from centralized pick up points, Connections has one in Kea'au, and I see the Kua O Ka La bus in HPP, HAAS draws mostly from lower Puna. Some parents who live in Puna and work in Hilo find it easier to have their kids go to a DOE or Charter school in Hilo, than in Puna. Connections is still in session for two more weeks although we are winding down, we always end up with a few kids whose parents go ahead and transfer them in the last few weeks to ensure their place for next year. They join us for the fun part of the end of the year, but do get to know their future classmates before summer.
Each Public Charter school is different and has a different feel, we are all drastically underfunded compared to DOE schools (-$6000 per pupil next year compared to +$14,000 for DOE) but also don't have a bloated administrative machine to feed either. Next year we don't have a bloated anything, but I am really proud of the teaching and learning that goes on in our school. The Charter movement in Hawaii is in large part a reaction to the large scale of the DOE schools. Some kids just do better in a middle school with 88 students compared to 2000, so if small class size and personal attention is important to you, then check out the Charters.
Like all rural schools, sports is a big deal at both Pahoa and Keaau, if your child is good at sports and will thrive in a large school with lots of different activities and options, then Keaau would probably be a good choice. Pahoa gets a bad rap often, but I have a friend whose blond haired/blue eyed daughter went all through Pahoa schools and graduated top of her class and got a free ride academic scholarship to the University of Oregon where she graduated with honors and a 4.0 GPA, so motivated students can get a good education at Pahoa too. What kind of experience students from the mainland have in Hawaii schools seems to be highly individual, and has more to do with the background and personality of each child than the school they go to. Some kids fit in right away and make an easy transition, and others have a tougher time in the same school. You know your child best, now you just have to figure out the lay of the land so to speak and figure out which school is the best fit for your child.
Best of luck to you.
Carol
Carol
Every time you feel yourself getting pulled into other people's nonsense, repeat these words: Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Polish Proverb
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Oh wow, thanks for clarifying about the vouchers. I knew the longer school day was being pulled, but I didnt know the vouchers were also.
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quote:
Originally posted by csgray
Hawaii is unique because the entire state is one district, run out of Honolulu. Neighbor Islands are sometimes treated like an afterthought and there is very little of the kind of local control seen on the mainland.
Pahoa is the neighborhood school for Nanawale so that is the one school that "has" to take your son, you can apply for a geographic exemption for a school that is not your "home school" but I don't know how they allocate those exemptions. Not everyone who applies gets the exemption, for HS there is something about programs not offered at your neighborhood school (like ROTC) but you should call the complex office in Keaau or Hilo and ask how it works.
Carol
The short answer is, they don't give an exemption. We tried to get our daughter an exemption because Keaau HS doesn't offer any of the programs she needed. In order to get an exemption you need a "yes" from the losing and gaining principal and the one in Keaau said NO. One is left to wonder if a school that is on probation for low test scores would EVER let a 4.0 student out of their clutches...
If you want your child in a specific school you will need to have documentation showing that you are domiciled within that school's zone.
In our case the refusal had a good ending. As a sophomore she took all the AP, honors, and other "senior" classes the school offered so they have no choice but to graduate her a year early.
A quote from my daughter regarding her High School: "Our school caters to the stupid and the angry. There aren't any resources left over for the smart kids."
It's not all bad, however. Except for a couple of incidents she says there is less bullying here. And she has more friends at her Hawaiian school than she did before. Unfortunately because of the classes she was taking all of her friends have graduated so she has to "start over" in that respect next year.
You are wise to plan ahead. In our case we planned a "worst case scenerio" where she couldn't attend public or private High School (a friend of mine on the Kona side had to send his son back to the mainland to finish high school). She took her SATs after her freshman year and fortunately scored high enough to get into the university, our backup plan was that if she couldn't go to high school in Hawaii she would get her GED and go directly to the university.
