We are on the precipice of realizing a dream. In 2015, we formed a working group of dedicated individuals who are fully committed to establishing a tuition-free public school on the North Shore that will serve grades 7-12.

What We’ve Been Doing

While we’ve been rather quiet about our “Let’s Build a School” initiative, our team has not been idle. We’ve spent the last three years working hard behind the scenes to bring the dream of a North Shore secondary school into existence. However, despite our growing numbers of students and our petitions, letters, and demonstrated community support, our efforts to convince the DOE to build a secondary district school in our community have fallen on deaf ears.

Where does that leave us? The only alternative for a tuition-free school that can serve all of our students regardless of their means is a public charter school. Charter schools in Hawaii are, by definition, public schools (see the video link below for more information). Charter schools are free for all students and are funded by the state on a per capita basis (about $7,200 per student). Charter schools are not part of the Department of Education, they are concept/idea driven and have their own governing boards. They are required to hire union teachers but are free to develop their own curricula and educational methodology. In short, they have a high degree of independence as long as they meet state standards.

We believe we can establish a high performing charter school on the North Shore that has the capacity to be a stellar educational institution. Our approach to creating a North Shore charter school has been linear and measure. We canvassed this community to judge the desire and support for this project which was overwhelmingly positive. We did a deep dive into the type of educational experience we believe will resonate with our students and our community.

We entered the XQ Super School Challenge to re-imagine public high schools and spent 9 months developing a dream school for the North Shore. Out of over 700 entries, we made it to the semi-finals. Our ideas were sound, what we lacked was a place to build this fabulous dream school.

What We Need

We have taken a long hard look at facilities. The state provides approximately $7,200 per student but no money for facilities at this time. In order to remain as measured and practical as possible, we decided to minimize our facilities costs in the startup years.

We are ambitious and plan to open between the fall of 2021 and the fall of 2023. With your help, we can do this and finally bring our North Shore kids the thing they deserve most: a tuition-free, public charter school.

To date, we have been an all-volunteer group but we have gone as far as we can go. It’s time for us to hire the professionals we need to make this happen.

We need engineers, architects, lawyers, and consultants.

Then, we need to build the facilities that will house our school.

This is why we need your help.

We divided our fundraising goals into three phases:

• seed money/startup costs

• capital campaign for facilities

• furnishings and fixtures

What We Have (The Big Reveal)

On May 24th, we held a cocktail party at the lovely Naylor home to announce our plans and our biggest news to date. After hearing about our project, everyone asked, “where are we going to put it?”

We have the answer:

In January of 2018, Bill & Joan Porter generously donated a 99-year renewable lease of 8 acres of land in Kalihiwai mauka of Kuhio Highway for the purpose of building a tuition-free public charter school. Bringing a secondary school to the North Shore that all children can attend regardless of their ability to pay has long been the Porter’s intention.