As a group, Native Hawaiians are struggling with academic achievement.

Within six years of graduating from high school, about 14 percent of Native Hawaiians go on to earn a 2- or 4-year college degree, or a trade certificate. Even in the subset of Kamehameha Schools grads — a vast majority of whom secure a diploma from the private education system’s K-12 campuses on time and are prepped for higher education — only about half make it to that post-secondary finish line.

In an effort to spur upward the overall count of post-secondary degrees and other credentials needed to launch promising careers and leadership endeavors, Kamehameha Schools is pursuing a strategic plan, Vision 2040.

Its design — post-secondary success for every Native Hawaiian child within one generation — is taking shape as the educational trust for Hawaiian children contends with high-profile scandals, such as an $80 million settlement, announced in February, with 32 former students who claimed a psychiatrist sexually abused them or family members while at the Kapalama campus decades ago.

The numbers tied to Vision 2040 are ambitious as they mark a switch from a past in which some Native Hawaiian learners received education-related benefits while others did not. By 2040, the Native Hawaiian population in the under age 25 bracket is projected to hit 247,000.

Given its aim, trustees and others say despite Kamehameha Schools’ status as the eighth-wealthiest charitable foundation by endowment worldwide, the vision is unreachable without a team of public- and private-sector partners in Hawaii and elsewhere.

“There is no way we can hit every single child,” said Jack Wong, Kamehameha Schools’ CEO. “We can’t do this work alone. We need others, partners … to help us raise the bar.” To that end, partnerships are forming with the state Department of Education, the University of Hawaii, Chaminade University, Arizona State University and other community entities.

Billions in assets will fall short

Right now, Kamehameha Schools serves about 7,000 Native Hawaiian kids in its facilities, with 5,400 enrolled in three campuses — on Oahu, Maui and Hawaii island. It also runs the state’s largest preschool system, with 1,600 children enrolled statewide.

Off Kamehameha Schools grounds, scholarships go to 1,800 children who attend other preschools, and 600 students at other private K-12 schools. In addition, Kamehameha Schools hands out about 2,000 post-secondary scholarships.

To expand its reach, Wong said, Kamehameha Schools could opt for more brick-and-mortar — and he gets requests for more campuses from some Kauai and Molokai residents. However, he quickly added, a vision focused on facilities could drain endowment funds. “It’s not a great (fiduciary) strategy to go build more campuses,” he said.

The flush financial picture for the private charitable educational trust — endowed by the will of Hawaiian Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop (1831-1884), the great-granddaughter and last direct descendant of King Kamehameha I — includes $3.5 billion in real estate and $8 billion in a diversified financial assets portfolio.

For fiscal year 2017, which ended on June 30, Kamehameha Schools had a total educational spend of $363 million — equal to a 3.6 percent slice of endowment revenues. It included $197 million for campus-based programs; $97 million for scholarships and community-focused programs; and $69 million for other education-related costs and support services.

However, as the Native Hawaiian population grows, the annual educational spend’s per-learner funding gets tighter, Wong said.

“The population growth is faster than the growth of our endowment. So the rate of return on our endowment can’t keep pace. … Meaning every day that goes by, we have less to spend on every Native Hawaiian than we had the day before.” And that is touching off a sense of urgency — worry that time is running out to firmly establish post-secondary success as routine among Native Hawaiians.

If “we wait a generation, we are never going to see how to get out of this,” Wong said.

“If we look at our state … 65 percent of all the jobs in our state require some form of post-secondary education training, yet only 14 percent of Native Hawaiians are in that category,” he said. “This is the challenge: How do we raise this number up? It’s not just going to college. It’s all the steps along the way.”

Vision 2040’s targeted steps start with readiness for kindergarten. About 98 percent of children enrolling in Kamehameha Schools’ kindergartens are set to take on school work — thanks, in part, to the Schools’ network of some 30 preschools. But, overall, just slightly more than half of Native Hawaiian kindergartners are prepared.

The disparity is due, in part, not to short supply of preschool opportunities, but to lukewarm demand. Some families, Wong said, “do not value preschool as a path.” Regarding the push to change that outlook, he said, “It does start on the ground. You have to be in our communities, with the families — having conversations about the value of education.”

Community engagemnent hubs

Framed as a “25-year vision for a thriving lahui,” Vision 2040 recently marked the halfway point of the first in a series of five-year strategic plans. Its Strategic Plan 2020 includes development of a Community Engagement and Resources Group, with regional team offices in nine districts — Honolulu, Ko‘olau, Waialua, Waianae and Ewa on Oahu; on Hawaii island, east (Kea‘au) and west (Kailua-Kona); Maui (Wailuku); and Kauai (Lihue) — mapped to roughly match state DOE districts. The teams are tasked with tracking Native Hawaiian learners and building relationships with families and community leaders to help address obstacles — from financial to culture-related factors — to post-secondary success.

According to recent U.S. Census figures, poverty rates in Hawaii varied widely by racial group in a period spanning 2011-2015. However, among the largest race groups, Japanese residents had the lowest (6 percent) and Native Hawaiians the highest (16 percent). Tethered to that, a large portion of Hawaii’s homeless population is Native Hawaiian.

Among other troubles: Although Native Hawaiians make up less than 20 percent of the state’s general population, they represent nearly 40 percent of all incarcerated adults statewide — nearly double that of the next most concentrated ethnic group in incarceration.

Pointing out that a large portion of Native Hawaiian students making their way through college are the first to do so in their families, Wong said, “It’s harder when you’re first-generation. It’s harder when you’re in poverty. And it’s harder when you don’t have the academic lift.”

Regarding Native Hawaiian culture, “A lot of times in our community, you think you have to chose between your culture and academic success,” Wong said. “I challenge that. … You can have both. You can be strong in your culture, your language, your identity, your genealogy, understanding who you are. And you can be academically successful.”

Moreover, a vibrant sense of culture is indispensable to the Kamehameha Schools vision. “Being Native Hawaiian isn’t being homeless; it isn’t being in prison. It’s really about knowing your genealogy and your history,” he said. Wong added: “If you don’t have pride in who you are, in your identity, how are you going to succeed?”

Balancing of cultures

On its campuses, Kamehameha Schools strives to balance and blend the study and practice of Native Hawaiian culture with western curricula. Off campus grounds, it financially supports a network of 17 Hawaiian-focused public charter schools. Allotted more freedom in staffing, curricula and operations than standard DOE schools, charter schools get state-allocated per-pupil funding. However, many have difficulty making financial ends meet because they’re largely on their own for funding of facilities.

At the post-secondary level, a Vision 2040 partnership with the UH called Hui Ho‘opili ‘Aina is taking shape.

Among its initiatives: a dual-credit program, in which Native Hawaiian students enrolled at Kamehameha Schools as well as Hawaiian charters and immersion schools can earn college credits; and Makalapua Na‘auao, a UH scholarship that combines four years of financial aid with academic and career support. The partnership also expands food sustainability initiatives.

At Chaminade University in Honolulu, which describes itself as a “Native Hawaiian-serving institution based on Marianist and Catholic values,” about one-quarter of an enrollment of about 1,780 students are Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

Through a partnership initiated a few years ago, the Ho‘oulu STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Scholarship Agreement, cohorts of Native Hawaiian students accepted into the a bachelor of science degree program get free tuition, housing allowance considerations (for students from rural areas and neighbor islands) and “wraparound services” that emphasize on-time graduation. Each student is provided with professional tutoring and professional development opportunities.

Also launched as part of Vision 2040 is an agreement with Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability to work together as “thought partners” to tackle culture-based concerns, such as land management of Kamehameha Schools properties. Among the initial programs is K-12 teacher training in “sustainability STEM pathways that are ‘aina-based.”

Restoration via education

Two years ago, when the partnership formed, Ka‘eo Duarte, Kamehameha Schools’ vice president of Community Engagement and Resources, said: “The ultimate outcome both ASU and KS are striving for is well being. We realize that our goal, to help elevate the well being of Native Hawaiian students … cannot be done alone. A lot of the issues we face in Hawaii are shared by other communities and will not always be solved locally.”

Therefore, Duarte added, Vision 2040 is “looking to … partners with the platform and tools already in place, that can support the advancement of our lahui in this generation.”

In moving forward, Kamehameha Schools’ leadership is guided by the past.

When Princess Pauahi was born, the native population was about 124,000. When she wrote her will, in 1883, it had dropped to 44,000 — due in large part to the arrival of foreign influences, including diseases Hawaiians had no immunity to. At that time, Pauahi was the largest landholder in the Hawaiian Kingdom, owning thousands of acres — about 9 percent of the island chain’s total acreage.

As she bequeathed her entire estate to establish a school to educate Hawaiian children, Wong said, Pauahi witnessed “the death of her people, the loss of her language, the loss of her culture. The loss of identity.”

Through her will, “She wanted to use education to restore her people.” Today, Wong said, “That’s our charge.”