HONOLULU (KHON2) — Big changes are coming to the Ewa Beach community–and it’s hitting close to home for hundreds of families.
Ewa Elementary, already the largest elementary school in the state, is bursting at the seams.
At Ewa Elementary School, there’s no such thing as extra space. Classrooms are packed. Hallways echo with the sound of nearly 1,300 students–and that’s 100 more than the campus was designed to hold.
“New Homes are coming up as we speak, and so they’re going to keep coming, and unless we find a way to relocate some of the students, what’s overcrowded now, it’s going to be worse next year,” said Stanley Tamashiro, Ewa Elementary School principal.
So starting in August of this year, a redistricting plan will reassign students to relieve the overcrowding.
Children from the Kaʻuluokahaʻi subdivision and Keahumoa Place will attend Barbers Point Elementary.
Students living in Pohaku Estates will head to Kapolei Elementary, about 100 students total.
School officials say they know that parents are not really happy about this redistricting plan, but they hope to make the transition as smooth as possible
“It’s unfortunate that we have to resort to redistricting students in the middle of their educational elementary career. But just given the situation, we have to do this for next year,” said Sean Tajima, Campbell-Kapolei Complex area superintendent.
Over the next two decades, more than 11,000 homes are expected to be built in the area, along with five new schools to support the boom: one high school, one middle school and three elementary schools.
The top priority is East Kapolei Elementary. While the design for the new school is nearly complete, funding for its $130 million construction was not included in the budget.
“There’s about 550 students in East Kapolei who are attending Ewa Elementary school right now. So by the time the school opens, the chances are there’s a high probability that that school will be at or above capacity on day one that it opens,” Tajima said.
The long-term fix includes not just an elementary school, but a badly needed East Kapolei High School, projected to cost $750 million, but again, there’s no money currently budgeted by the state. The process to build a new school from funding to design to construction takes about six years.
Principal Tamashiro, who attended Ewa Elementary growing up, said he’s proud of his faculty and staff who have been understanding of the situation.
“We are constantly having an increase students throughout the year. I mean, it’s constant. So they’ve been very accepting of a larger class size knowing some of their colleagues at other schools have much smaller classes. It’s just what they’ve come to expect,” Tamashiro said. “So I’m really proud of how our school has become the kind of community that I grew up in sugar plantation time: everybody took care of each other. That’s what our school is like.”
In the meantime, there is a community meeting at Ewa Elementary School’s cafeteria on May 6 to answer questions and hear concerns.