Olomana School inspires students with TLC and integrated academics

The first thing most people notice about Principal Stacey Oshio is her hair color. Sometimes her pixie cut is bright blue; sometimes it’s fuchsia or lime green.

She likes to shake things up. And that’s what she’s been doing in a much deeper way at Olomana School — shaking off its reputation as the “school for kids in trouble” and instead helping it win awards for its dynamic, unconventional style of education.

“She is such an awesome principal — such an awesome principal,” said Rene Iwamoto, who has worked at Olomana for 27 years. “She has turned this school around big time.”

Also known as Olomana Youth Center, the campus in the Pali foothills in Kailua is the alternative learning center for students in Windward district schools with academic or behavioral problems.

These days, its faculty and staff are being held up as role models, racking up four separate awards last year.

Oshio was chosen by fellow administrators to represent the state as Hawaii’s 2017 National Distinguished Principal of the Year. As Olomana’s principal, she also oversees the education of students at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility and at Hale Ho‘omalu Juvenile Detention Facility in Kapolei.

Del Onaga, Olomana’s career and technical education teacher, was named Windward District Teacher of the Year. Iwamoto, who doubles as health aide and parent-community networking coordinator, was chosen as “employee of the year” from among 22,000 full-time Department of Education workers.

And Olomana’s Transformation Team received a Team Excellence Award of Merit from the department for its efforts to move the school forward.

“We are evolving to a place, I hope, of creativity and innovation,” said Oshio, who has led the school since 2011. “Our teachers were always and will always be compassionate and caring, but we also want to take education to the next level.”

It’s a far cry from the rap the school has faced over the years. When Angela Rutledge was told three years ago that her son was so far behind academically that he had to switch to Olomana School or repeat eighth grade, she was flooded with one emotion: fear.

“Back in the day, you heard so much about Olomana, bad stuff,” she said. “My son, he’s not a bad kid. He just doesn’t like school, basically. So I was super afraid. But when we came — oh, my gosh — they were like open arms. It’s almost like family, it’s so small.”

Her son soon hit his stride in the new environment, winning a district award for his freshman science project that used a spectrometer to try to detect water pollution. Now a junior, he’s had plenty of chances to return to his regular public school, but he wants to stay at Olomana.

“If it wasn’t for this school, I don’t know where my son would be, honestly,” Rutledge said. “He hated going to school.”

Enrollment has grown to 86 students this year, up from 59 four years ago, as more students are referred who could benefit from a different approach to learning. Windward students can transfer to Olomana voluntarily if they are failing classes or chronically absent. Some are transferred to Olomana as a disciplinary consequence. And a few have chosen to come.

The average tenure of students at Olomana Youth Center is just a year and a half. That is not much time to make big scholastic leaps, but it is enough to make a connection.

“To be honest, I’m not sure if we’re seeing the academics go up as quickly as I’d like,” Oshio said. “But to get them re-engaged is the first step. We’re getting them re-engaged; we’re getting them to like themselves and school again. If I can do that, academics will come eventually.”

Students seem to relish its hands-on style, where different academic subjects are integrated into real projects.

“I feel like I’m learning things that will help me in life,” said Chaz Rios-­Billaber, a junior. “It’s not like other schools where they just put a book in front of your face and tell you read it and get this done.”

Olomana School started an engineering academy in 2016 and a culinary arts program last fall. It has wood shop, auto mechanics and graphic design, as well as 3-D printers and a virtual reality system. It also offers dual-credit college courses.

“Our thing is to give the kids opportunities for different types of experiences,” said Onaga, the award-winning teacher. “They may fail at some; they may excel at some. That’s the only way you’re going to know what you’re good at, what you like, what you don’t like.”

Students in the engineering academy recently built wooden gliders that they launched with a catapult, learning about angles and flight. For the English component, they wrote persuasive essays on how airplane travel had helped or hurt mankind.

“We figure out how to integrate all these different subject matters into one big theme,” Onaga said. “It’s not segmented like regular school, where you go to math one period and it’s totally different from the science in the next period. We try to make it so that everything kind of flows.”

Now the engineering students are strapping together empty half-gallon milk cartons with tape. The goal: to make boats strong enough to hold a teenager and maneuverable enough to race across a swimming pool.

As important as the curriculum, the kids say, is the strength of the bonds among students and faculty. Sixteen-year-old K-lyn Rickard grew up in rough circumstances, including five years homeless. She was expelled from her old school, she said, because “I fought three girls in a day — and then I ran.”

At Olomana she has found a new ohana and new ways to handle anger. Asked what she does when someone irritates her now, she said she’d tell someone else, talk to a teacher or “we just handle it ourselves, outside.” Asked how, she said, “Just, like, talking.”

“I love all my teachers. I do,” she said. “I treat them like they are my aunties and uncles.”

Senior Kaihilani Tavares, 17, said she appreciates the patience shown by her teachers and their creativity.

“The teacher is there constantly with us,” she said. “If we don’t understand it, she’ll go through it again and again and again. Teachers sit down with you, get to know you, how you learn, how your brain is, how slow you are, how fast you are.”

Her message to other kids who are tripping up: “Don’t fail just to be cool or because your friends are failing. Actually try to succeed, because you’ll be amazed at what you can actually do.”

Iwamoto, the health aide, said her heart breaks when she hears some of the kids’ stories. Some have parents in jail or on drugs.

One boy had stopped by the health room that morning because he was feeling sick. But he had to go to work after school to help his mom make ends meet.

“He works two jobs, he’s 17 years old and he’s coming to school,” Iwamoto said. “It’s just so sad — such a heavy burden for a young boy.”

“These are good kids,” she said. “They really are good kids, it’s just that they don’t have the guidance. I feel like every one of them has some kind of rare, precious stone in them that we have to pull out so they know how precious they are.”