The state Department of Education (DOE) is proposing a bold move to handle the population boom in the Ewa Beach-Kapolei area: Build a “mega high school” in East Kapolei that would serve 3,200 students.

While the idea might be unconventional, it’s worth exploring as long as the super-sized campus comfortably accommodates the larger student body, and the DOE maintains optimal student-teacher ratios and class sizes.

The purpose of a new campus — mega or otherwise — is to relieve overcrowding at Campbell and Kapolei high schools, and the Board of Education must keep an open mind as the DOE offers outside-the-box solutions.

At least a few BOE members picked apart the mega high school concept, suggesting students would get lost in the crowd and wouldn’t get the full high school experience.

One member said a mega high school would negatively affect participation in sports, for instance, because too few students would be able to join.

Those are understandable concerns, but they also are fixable. With athletics, for example, the extra- large school could possibly field two teams in some sports that participate in different divisions.

Ultimately, a school’s core mission is to educate. And when students are crammed into facilities that are too small, that as well takes away from their high school experience.

Campbell High, for instance, has morphed into a mega high school by default, serving 3,049 pupils on a campus built for 1,700 — and by 2020, that population is expected to grow to 3,545. Far from optimal.

Kapolei High is expected to grow by 300-plus students to 2,373 in the next five years.

To address the unrelenting growth, DOE has outlined short-, mid- and long- term steps toward handling the student populations.

It is moving forward on a plan to build a 30-classroom, multistory building at Campbell. It had requested $35 million at the state Legislature, but lawmakers unfortunately cut that to $12 million in the state budget, pushing back the project another year.

Lawmakers will have to put aside pet projects and make the expansion of overcrowded Leeward District schools a priority next session. DOE plans to request the rest of the money for the Campbell High building, plus funding for a similar project that would add 15-25 classrooms at Kapolei High — and it should receive that money.

In the meantime, the DOE is searching for a site to build the East Kapolei mega high school, identifying four possible parcels. However, two are non-starters and should be ditched: a privately owned parcel on Fort Weaver Road, which the owner is not interested in selling, and a federally owned parcel in Kalaeloa needing soil remediation.

The viable sites are a parcel surrounding the University of Hawaii-West Oahu campus and land owned by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources overlooking the H-1 freeway that has a ravine cutting through the site.

The UH-West Oahu site appears the most promising, but it might be difficult to convince the university to give up land that could be monetized. The university, however, stands to benefit from having a 3,200-student campus nearby that would become a natural feeder school.

As an interim step to mitigate student increases, the DOE has proposed using a future East Kapolei middle school campus planned near the Kroc Center as a temporary high school campus. It’s unclear why that part of the plan came under so much fire, with BOE Vice Chairman Brian De Lima calling it a “horrible idea.”

But it’s a temporary measure with merit — especially since acquiring land for the mega campus is several years out. The middle school might lack certain amenities associated with high schools such as football or baseball fields, but affected students could be accommodated at other facilities in the area. Creative thinking is needed.

The DOE must focus now on expanding its high schools in Ewa Beach and Kapolei — and preparing for even more students to populate a mega East Kapolei campus. The valid critiques by board members so far can be overcome with innovative solutions — and many of those will indeed be needed as the school system tackles the area’s explosive population.