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KAPALUA, Maui >> In this airy, sunlit church in Kapalua where Sacred Hearts School has set up temporary operations after most of its Lahaina campus burned down in the wildfire, nearly 220 children are still learning and playing and laughing here.
Classes are taught for now at white folding tables and chairs in the shaded patios of Sacred Hearts Mission Church, a modest gable-roof building ringed with towering pines and palm trees, next to the Kapalua Golf-Bay Course. Teachers set up and tear down lesson supplies and equipment daily as they pop up whole classrooms from neatly stacked storage bins. Student assemblies are held in the nave, where each school day still ends with singing and reflections.
The kids took turns at a podium microphone recently, sharing what they’re thankful for. Except in the wake of the deadly inferno, the children’s gratitudes often took a poignant tone.
“I’m thankful for the first responders,” a small boy said.
“I’m thankful everyone here is alive,” said a young girl.
Last Tuesday afternoon, third grader Maile Asuncion said that although she missed a chance at the podium that day, she would have said that she is thankful “everyone’s safe, and we have our teachers with us. This place does not have much space, but at least we have somewhere to go to school. Because you have to be grateful for where we have to stay.”
A few minutes later she ran off to play with friends and tease her big brother, A.J., 10, as they waited with a chattering crowd of children in the parking lot to be picked up.
That the Asuncions escaped the Aug. 8 Lahaina inferno with only minutes to spare, the children holding hands and praying with their mom, Abby, as she drove them out of the burning town to safety — and that their family has had to evacuate twice and is now living in a hotel — all seemed far away at least for the moment.
Resuming school routines like this in the aftermath of such a traumatic disaster is crucial to help the children find some semblance of normalcy, said Sacred Hearts Principal Tonata Lolesio.
“The children, the youth, process trauma differently than adults do,” she said. “We want to be able to provide that type of support for them, stability for the children. And for the parents, because they need … for their kids to be in a place where they’re being cared for, they don’t have to worry about them, so they can do what comes next.”
The temporary site on Office Road is about 11 miles north of the original school campus, but the 220 students it has drawn represent nearly full enrollment, Lolesio said. However, only about 100 students are from Sacred Hearts School in Lahaina, while the other half are students displaced from Lahaina’s four closed public school campuses.
The makeshift spaces are so small that a rotating schedule is necessary for now, with elementary and middle school students getting only two days of classes per week. Those in kindergarten through second grade attend Mondays and Thursdays, grades three to five go on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the middle schoolers are present Wednesdays and Saturdays.
High schoolers are attending virtual classes but are required to come to the temporary campus regularly to receive in-person support. Sacred Hearts’ early learning and junior kindergarten programs are on hold for now.
All Sacred Hearts students who were enrolled at the start of the year survived the fires, Lolesio said. But many lost homes, or loved ones, or both, and for many of them, the trauma is marked.
Seventeen of the 18 original staff members have pledged to keep working and teaching for Sacred Hearts, even though about half of them lost their homes to the fire, Lolesio said.
“They said, ‘We want to continue. This is when the kids need us the most.’”
Courtney Copriviza is still teaching second grade and science for grades K-2, even after her home burned. On Aug. 8 she had been still lounging at home in pajama pants when her boyfriend saw the fast-moving fire jump the distant Lahaina Bypass highway, and less than five minutes later it was torching their neighborhood. She saw the plants in her yard already burning as they sped away.
Her voice shook and her eyes welled up with tears when she recounted parts of her story.
But Copriviza smiled when she said, “We’re in temporary housing in Kahana so that I could continue to teach. Because that’s what I want to be doing.”
She said working at the school while trying to recover from the trauma has its “pluses and minuses.” Friends tell her, “‘Wow, we can’t believe you’re doing all of this stuff,’” she said. “But to have a schedule and to have something to do each day, and wake up and know what you’re going to do, know that it’s giving back to the community, not feeling aimless … that’s a part of it that feels good.”
Lolesio said some of her Sacred Hearts families initially tried relocating temporarily to neighborhoods and schools in other parts of the island but came back to West Maui.
“We had some families return from South Maui because they said it’s hard being separated from here, from home, because not everybody understands what you’re going through, and it’s like life is normal ‘out there,’” Lolesio said.
About a week ago Lolesio was allowed to enter the burned-out Lahaina campus on Dickenson Street with a police escort. She estimates that about one-half to three-fourths of the school’s 16 structures were destroyed. She’s been told it could be months or years before there is a chance to return.
Lolesio recalled how on the morning of Aug. 8, before the fire’s rampage, the vicious winds generated by passing Hurricane Dora tore a solar panel off the roof of a building at the Lahaina campus. So she had hurriedly created a digital announcement asking parents and supporters to come to the school to help with cleanup and repairs the next day.
But, she said, “There was no school to return to the next day.”
However, Maria Lanakila Catholic Church, which the parochial school was attached to, was spared in the fire, its exterior appearing mostly unscathed — one of the few structures still standing in Lahaina. The church was established in 1846 and rebuilt at least twice, including after a 1971 fire.
“Aside from dust and now-wilted flowers, it is in great condition,” she said. “I hope we can return to celebrate Holy Mass at Maria Lanakila sometime in the future.”
Abby Asuncion considers the church’s survival a sign — “a miracle.”
Asuncion’s belief in the school, and the tight community that has nourished her children Maile and A.J. over the past five years and even in their new temporary location, are why she and her husband, Jayson Asuncion, are determined to go where the school goes, even as its long-term location is uncertain.
The Asuncions’ future home, too, is unknown, as their Lahaina condo is still standing but inaccessible amid surrounding rubble and ash. Jayson Asuncion still has his job as executive chef at the Royal Lahaina Resort, but Maui’s economic downturn since the fires have closed the Coldwell Banker Island Properties office where Abby was a transaction manager. That office was just steps away from the Kapalua church where Sacred Hearts School operates temporarily now.
“It’s been a roller coaster of emotions,” she said.
But she said her family will not leave West Maui, and will not leave Sacred Hearts.
“It’s such a community, such a strong bond. Whatever it takes to make it we’ll make it work,” she said. The school “may not be what we’re used to, but … we’re patient, trusting that they know what they’re doing, and they’re doing the best they can with no complaints. Everything is love. I’m blessed that my kids are a part of it.”
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