Lahainaluna High School students who returned to their campus Monday for the first time since the Maui fires encountered a deep swirl of feelings: relief at coming back after more than two months away, worry over safety as well as heartache of schooling so close to the burn zone, and lingering grief for homes and loved ones lost to the disaster, including their classmate Keyiro Fuentes.
Their first day back on campus began with emotional moments at Lahainaluna’s morning “piko,” or protocol.
Many of the 700 returning students and their teachers gathered at the school gym dressed in red, one of Lahainaluna’s colors. School songs were belted out with gusto. Several family members of Fuentes, who was supposed to be a junior at Lahainaluna this fall, attended the gathering, and students gave them ti leaf lei.
“It was really beautiful. His whole family, they were sitting in the middle of the assembly,” teacher Arica Lynn-Souza said later in a Honolulu Star-Advertiser interview. “Not a dry eye in the house. That was really special.”
Lahainaluna High is one of four public schools closed following the devastating Lahaina fire and is the first of them to physically reopen to students this week.
Media are barred by the state Department of Education from covering the reopening of the Lahaina schools. But in Star-Advertiser interviews Monday, several Lahainaluna educators marveled at their students’ and colleagues’ resiliency.
Lahainaluna Principal Richard Carosso also said in an interview taped by the DOE shortly after the assembly that “the energy has been great. We just finished our morning piko, where we recognized what we’ve been through and celebrated being back.” He added that since it was the first day of Lahainaluna’s homecoming week, “it couldn’t be more fitting that we’ve come home.”
The Lunas’ homecoming week culminates with their first home football game, on Saturday against Baldwin High.
Lahainaluna teacher Jarrett Chapin said he was actually delighted to hear his students’ grumbling about getting new loads of classwork and syllabuses after fall break. That moment of relative normalcy was music to his ears after so much terror, displacement and chaos stemming from the disaster.
“Outside of the fire, it was just like any other first day back from break — people are a little sleepy or unfocused,” Chapin said with a chuckle. “I feel like when they’re grumbling just about normal school, you know, they’re not wallowing in their trauma. They’re getting a moment away. Like if that’s the worst, then that’s great.”
Lahainaluna senior and student-athlete Teva Loft in a DOE interview said that “it’s been really nice … to see all my friends. This campus brings back a lot of good memories from last year. It’s good to come back to that, for sure.”
For at least some Lahainaluna families, however, the return to campus has caused anxiety. Fears about contamination from the Lahaina burn zone linger among many in the community despite state and federal officials’ insistence that scientific tests and ongoing monitoring indicate the campuses are safe to attend. Findings of high levels of arsenic, lead and cobalt in burn sites in Upcountry Maui, announced Sunday, have increased concern.
One Lahainaluna mother interviewed Monday said she’s lain awake at night wondering whether returning her daughter to the school really is the best thing to do. The mother, who asked to have her name withheld because she fears retaliation for her daughter, said her daughter has health challenges, and they both worry that they would worsen if she were exposed to fire-related contaminants.
“I have been back and forth, trying to decide if she should go or if we should enroll her somewhere else,” she said. “Worse, we don’t know where we’ll be living in a month. That makes things even more complicated.”
Coming back to campus elicits mixed emotions also for Lynn-Souza.
As a science teacher who’s worked at Lahainaluna for 10 years, she’s thrilled to be able to access her lab supplies and equipment, and nurture her students in her own classroom again. She’s also astonished at how motivated her honors and Advanced Placement students still are.
“They’ve asked me, ‘What extra work can we do? What can we do to make sure that we’re on track for our AP tests?’ I have so much respect for them. They aren’t letting anything get them down. And they’re just so caring for one another. … They’ve helped me in my healing process.”
At the same time, the mother of two children, with a third on the way, looks downslope from her classroom windows with a mix of sadness and worry. She can see the charred ruins of her home below. She also worries about potential exposure. She wore an N-95 mask all day on campus Monday.
“It’s definitely kind of tough. I’m not gonna lie,” Lynn-Souza said. “For me, I’m also pregnant, so I’m probably the most concerned of anyone.”
State schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi on Monday reemphasized steps taken by the state Education and Health departments to ensure the safety of the Lahaina schools, including environmental testing of soil and drinking water, which have been declared safe; professional cleaning of interior and exterior spaces; installation of air quality monitors to detect fine particulate matter; and biweekly wipe tests in classrooms to test for any particles settling on surfaces.
A progress report of reopening efforts, including test results, is posted at bit.ly/LahainaSchoolsProgressReport.
Lahaina Intermediate students are scheduled to return to campus today, and students from King Kamehameha III and Princess Nahienaena elementary schools are set to return Wednesday. Students and staff from King Kamehameha III, which was damaged beyond repair, will share campus facilities with Nahienaena until a temporary school site at Pulelehua near Kapalua Airport opens.
While the DOE said about 700 students attended classes on the Lahainaluna campus Monday, before the fires the school normally enrolled just over 1,000. The DOE did not immediately respond to questions about where the other 300 Lahainaluna High students have gone.
The latest Maui schools progress report posted online by the DOE shows that 759 Lahainaluna High School students had been attending a temporary “school within a school” at Kulanihakoi since mid-September.
That report, last updated Saturday, also said of the 3,001 students who were preregistered in all grades for all four Lahaina public schools, 76 withdrew before Aug. 8; 890 had transferred to another DOE school; 754 applied for Hawaii distance learning; 150 transferred to a Hawaii public charter school; 88 transferred to a private school; and 275 had other “active contact” with the DOE. The number of students in an “active contact not yet achieved” category is nine.
