Twice as many public high school students in Hawaii are studying Mandarin as there were five years ago, but their numbers are still small given China’s growing importance to Hawaii’s economy.

"It’s one of the critical languages that have been identified," said Jill Taka­saki Canfield, executive director of the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council, an educational nonprofit that promotes international understanding. "It makes sense for us in terms of our place in the Pacific."

Altogether, 525 students in Hawaii’s public high schools took Chinese this year, up from 212 five years ago, according to Gina Naka­hara, educational specialist in world languages at the Department of Education. They were far outnumbered by those learning Japa­nese, at 6,124, or Spanish, the top choice, with 9,119 students.

The council, commonly known as PAAC, has been trying to jump-start more Chinese language study locally. It launched an after-school Mandarin class at Farrington High School two years ago, which succeeded so well that the school will fund it next year, Canfield said.

The council hopes to replicate that model elsewhere.

"It caught my interest — I really liked the culture and the language," said Alice Sato, who will be a senior at Farrington this fall and took the Chinese class both years along with Japa­nese during the regular school day. She won a scholarship through PAAC to spend four weeks in China this summer, immersed in the language and culture.

Sato, interviewed before the trip, said she felt she had a leg up learning Chinese characters, which are incorporated into the Japa­nese writing system.

"My mom thought I was crazy because I was learning more than one language, but it’s OK," said Sato, who lives in Kalihi. "My stepdad told me it was a good opportunity."

Nine of Hawaii’s 45 public high schools offer Mandarin as a foreign language, including E-School, which teaches the language online to students at any public high school. Just two high schools offered it a decade ago.

While Mandarin courses remain rare, many native Chinese speakers attend public school, building Hawaii’s bilingual population.

Growth of Chinese courses is slowed in part by the challenge of finding certified teachers in Hawaii who meet federal requirements as "highly qualified." Unless there are jobs available, teachers aren’t likely to pursue certification in Chinese.

But without certified teachers, public schools have trouble launching programs.

Also, demand is a factor. Classes need at least 15 students, and if just a couple of classes are filled, a teacher might have to teach another subject as well.

Kealakehe High School in Kailua-Kona offered Chinese a few years ago but dropped it for lack of interest, according to registrar Aaron Peck.

"It is an especially tricky little situation that we are navigating through," Naka­hara said. "Our hope is really to grow more Chinese and Korean programs."

The launch in September of the Hawaii Language Roadmap Initiative, backed by the National Security Education Program, is also raising awareness of language skills needed in Hawaii. The initiative brings employers and educators together to help shape a multilingual workforce.

Speakers of Chinese language, for example, are needed here in business, law, medicine and the visitor industry, and at all job levels including managerial, noted Dina Yoshimi, director of the road map, which is coordinated by the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

"If you have the language skills, they immediately grab you," Yoshimi said. "As you move up the ladder, your language is part of what defines you. It’s important to get people started on the track to learning a language early so they have that lifelong learning curve well in place when they get to the job market."

"Everybody knows there is increased interaction with China for trade, for the visitor industry, in the long run for military concerns," she said. "There are going to be a lot of opportunities."

The tonal language is tough for English speakers to master, but that attracts some students, including Campbell High School’s Kameron Carino, who studied Mandarin at the Ewa Beach campus before heading to Beijing on the same trip as Alice Sato.

"He was looking for a challenge, and he heard it was a hard language to learn," explained his father, Aaron Carino, adding with a chuckle, "And also the Chinese own pretty much half of the United States, so he might have to learn Chinese."

Five students from Wai­pahu, Campbell and Farrington are on full scholarships to a four-week language program in Beijing. PAAC also sent 12 students to Japan, 18 to Korea and four to Vietnam this year.

"I couldn’t afford to send him to China," Carino said. "I’m just glad that he’s got the opportunity."

The council, which sponsors high school clubs that promote knowledge of foreign affairs, has sent 300 students on study tours abroad over the past decade, many of whom had never before left the state. Most go on full rides courtesy of the Freeman Foundation.

"It’s all part of developing a global perspective in students, giving them skills so that they can really be engaged global citizens," Canfield said.

Recognizing that need, two private schools account for almost as many Chinese-language scholars as all Hawaii’s public schools. Punahou has 283 high school students enrolled in Mandarin in the coming school year, and ‘Iolani has 110, for a total of 393, not too far from the statewide total of 525 in public schools.

Recognizing that it’s easier to pick up a language the younger you are, both schools also offer Mandarin for elementary students. That is rare in public schools, though with the adoption of the International Baccalaureate program at Kaiser High, all four of its feeder elementary schools and its middle school teach Chinese language.

The prospects for Mandarin mastery at the college level are looking up with the award of a federal Language Flagship program to UH-Manoa that begins in August. The flagship is a national initiative to help undergraduates reach professional-level proficiency in Chinese alongside whatever academic major they choose.

"The flagship program was originally set up to train people who are going to the top-level diplomatic corps, the military," Yoshimi said. "They have since recognized that just getting a lot of people who have high-level proficiency into the workforce is of value."

"It’s not just about spies and diplomats," she added. "The whole world needs to be able to talk to each other."