New charter school launches in Ka‘u

Ka‘u Learning Academy, the only school to receive a new charter from the state last year, welcomes its first students this morning.

The public charter school, which is temporarily operating out of the Discovery Harbour golf course clubhouse in Naalehu, is an attempt to try something new when it comes to educating kids, according to Tom Hutton, executive director of the State Public Charter School Commission.

The school’s organizers and administrators set in place a plan to provide more individualized attention for students, he said, allowing students excelling to move ahead, and providing more help for students falling behind.

“Where this concept has really taken root in public education in America has been in special education, where every special ed student has an individualized education program that’s very well thought out and designed,” he said. “They (Ka‘u Learning Academy) are sort of taking that concept and applying it generally to their whole student population.”

The size of the school, which presently serves third- through sixth-graders, allows its administrators to be more flexible and provide that kind of individualized attention, he said.

“Part of the compelling aspect of the application was the success that (Founding Executive Director Kathryn Tydlacka) had in doing it already in a DOE school,” he said.

Previously a teacher at Naalehu Elementary, Tydlacka earned praise for her innovative teaching methods, which helped her young charges in one instance to more than double the average proficiency levels achieved by the rest of the school.

Ka‘u Learning Academy Managing Director Joe Iacuzzo explained Tuesday low class sizes of between 22 and 24 students keep teacher-to-student ratios manageable, and “pull-out” classes keep kids constantly working to achieve their very best.

“We are holding these children to a high standard that we know they can achieve,” he said. “We’re instituting a new methodology that we’ve called contextual foundation learning, and every child has an individual learning plan or education plan.

“What we do is we have pull-out classes, where those students who master the standards are then allowed to go into the computer lab with one of our teachers and work at their level. That’s the unique nature of what we do.”

Tydlacka’s success at Naalehu and the charter school’s plan for taking her methods schoolwide has energized the community, resulting in a strong base of support for the effort to launch the school, Hutton said.

That community support was an important part of why the commission chose to grant the school a charter last year while turning down five other applications from across the state, Hutton said.

“The commission has very significantly raised the bar for approval of a charter school application,” he explained. “That’s a national trend. There’s sort of a feeling that authorizers in the past were a little too loose on the front end. That didn’t serve children very well. So, we’re much more careful about the application process from the front end.

“Theirs (Ka‘u Learning Academy) was a very comprehensively thought out plan. … You have to have a solid plan in all three areas — academia, financial and organization. … You have to have that element of, is this the right team together with the right skill sets … and looking at KLA, that really impressed the evaluation team.”

Classes will begin today, with a total of 99 kids so far enrolled, including about 20 home-schooled students who will use the campus on a staggered schedule, Iacuzzo said. The school employs five teachers, two education aids and an administrative staff of four.

Based on an enrollment target of 85 students, administrators anticipated funding from the state of just less than $555,000 for operations for academic year 2015-16. The school also secured $60,000 in grants and the first year of use of the golf clubhouse was donated.

Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.