Fourteen-year-old Tyler Sammon says he really is glad that Gov. Josh Green has announced an agreement meant to end a bureaucratic impasse and finally open the still-vacant new Kulanihakoi High School in Kihei, Maui, possibly this August.

Yet Sammon’s voice is noticeably devoid of elation when he says he and 33 other would-be fellow members of the inaugural freshman class of Kulanihakoi — who have been stuck taking high-school-level classes a mile away in crowded portables at Lokelani Intermediate School all of this school year — are “excited and happy that we might be able to go up to the new campus.”

They had have had their hopes raised and then dashed at least twice before.

“I feel mixed emotions … I’m still a little skeptical because I still don’t really believe it,” Sammon said in a phone interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Such cautious optimism was a common reaction from stakeholders to the announcement Green made Wednesday that the state and Maui County have entered into a memorandum of agreement that finally will bring students and teachers onto the Kulanihakoi campus.

The new school, which so far has cost the state at least $180 million, has been sitting empty, stuck amid a bureaucratic and political tug of war, because the state Department of Education has failed to build a “grade- separated pedestrian crossing” — an overpass or underpass — that has been a requirement of the project since a state Land Use Commission decision in 2013.

Top DOE officials last month took the unusual step of publicly apologizing before the commission for the department’s missteps, which included resisting building the crossing, first constructing a four-lane roundabout in front of the school, and making premature plans and pronouncements for the school to open in 2021, then last August and again in January.

State Schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi and state Deputy Superintendent Curt Otaguro pledged their personal commitment at the Feb. 9 commission meeting to have an overpass built at busy Piilani Highway. But the commission and county up to now had cited broken trust in its unwillingness to forgo their leverage and allow the school to open with temporary pedestrian-safety measures, such as allowing school access only by vehicles and not on foot, while waiting for the overpass to be built.

Under the new memorandum of agreement, the DOE will receive a temporary certificate of occupancy in exchange for the state temporarily agreeing to indemnify the county against theoretical future claims of liability, a news release from the governor’s office said. School buses will take students to campus in the interim so the students will not traverse the highway.

The DOE is “optimistic” that arrangements can be finalized in time for students to start the next school year in August at the new campus, Otaguro said in the news release. “We will continue to work closely with Maui County, Gov. Green, the state Department of Transportation and the Land Use Commission to address any concerns and ensure student safety,” Otaguro said.

The DOE will continue work on building an elevated pedestrian crosswalk, which is required for a permanent certificate of occupancy to be issued; construction will take three years, at an estimated cost of more than $25 million, the news release said.

Rebecca Hill, organizer of the grassroots group Kihei Parents Hui, said Wednesday that “today our students and families are celebrating.”

But she added the situation also “shines light on the inefficiencies and lack of accountability in the Hawaii DOE.” She said by email that she hopes a financial audit proposed by state Sen. Angus McKelvey (D, West Maui-Maalaea-South Maui) will bring clarity to where the DOE went wrong in its handling of the Kulanihakoi project.

“We are disappointed that the DOE still hasn’t stepped up and shown their face at the table the way they ought to. There needs to be more transparency at the DOE,” Hill said.

Sammon said he will be “glad to be leaving behind the small space that we’ve been in, with not enough room, and excited for the campus, and the new classrooms and the new fields and just the new stuff that we might get.”

Lisa Morrison, student activities coordinator for Kulanihakoi, said after the emotional roller coaster especially this school year for students, faculty and staff, learning that an agreement has been reached was “a pleasant shock,” but there was not overt rejoicing. “I think it is the apprehension of wondering, ‘Is it real this time?’” she said.

Morrison hopes operations can start moving on to the Kulanihakoi property soon and not wait until the new school year, since the soon-to-be sophomores and a new wave of freshmen both will need orientation to start the 2023-2024 school year at full strength. Faculty and staff are so eager to get on the new campus that, she quipped, “I think that if we were allowed, our whole school would mobilize and get up there by Friday.”