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Mid-Pacific Institute is resuming ocean-related trips off campus this school year with new safeguards, in the wake
of the drownings of a staff member and a 5-year-old boy during a kayaking
excursion over spring break.
In a letter to the school community, Mid-Pacific President Paul Turnbull said the school has adopted a “double-layered review process that
includes consideration
of water safety and proximity” for all nonathletic activities and events off campus.
The school’s director of compliance and risk management will review all requests for off-campus trips, as will the principals of its elementary, middle and high schools, Turnbull wrote in the letter, dated Sunday.
Mid-Pacific has hired a full-time, certified lifeguard and has faculty members with lifeguard certification. Under the new rules, all nonathletic activities involving swimming will have at least one certified lifeguard, and the use of watercraft that doesn’t belong to Mid-Pacific is prohibited.
On March 28, Maria Davis, a school staff member, took three children enrolled in its spring break program for an unscheduled kayak ride at Kaaawa beach. Davis, 63, and Alaric Chiu drowned after the kayak capsized about 150 yards offshore. The two other children, ages 6 and 9, were rescued. Chiu was a kindergartner at St. Andrew’s Schools.
Davis, a Mid-Pacific program supervisor, had borrowed the kayak from a friend who lives nearby. The Kaaawa stop was not on the original itinerary
for the circle-island
excursion that day. No one was wearing life vests, according to fire officials, although state law requires that children ages 12 and under use them while boating.
Mid-Pacific hired an outside firm to investigate. Shortly afterward the school fired its vice president of external affairs and enrollment, Scott Siegfried, as well as its extended learning coordinator, Puakailima Davis, who was Maria Davis’ daughter and her supervisor.
The school created a new full-time position to oversee compliance and risk management, which it filled with attorney Christi-Anne Kudo Chock, a former vice president and compliance officer at First Hawaiian Bank. Carolyn Bell-Tuttle, previously development
officer at Assets School, was hired as the new
director of Mid-Pacific’s
Extended Learning Program.
“Thank you for your support as we take these important steps to ensure the safety of our Mid-Pacific students,” Turnbull wrote in Sunday’s letter.
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