Kapolei parents
want their
schools now
By Susan Kreifels
Star-BulletinEighth-grader Diana Ferris wakes up at 5:15 a.m. on school days to make the long trip from her Kapolei home to Moanalua Intermediate School in Salt Lake.
There's no intermediate school in Kapolei, and Ferris attends the closest one that offers orchestra. But she can't stay after school for basketball or swimming because she has to catch a ride home, which takes up to 90 minutes in bad traffic.
It's the same for Kapolei students who attend Ilima Intermediate School and James Campbell High School in Ewa Beach.
"When I go home I usually go to sleep," Ferris said yesterday. "It gets kind of tiring."
To some students and parents living in Kapolei, the need for neighborhood intermediate and high schools transcends questions about the propriety of contracts awarded to build those schools.
They fear current contracts will be canceled and sent out for bid, causing completion of the schools to be delayed.
"We want to make sure the high school is built by 2000," said Maeda Timson, chairwoman of the Makakilo/Kapolei/Honokai Hale Neighborhood Board.
Timson spoke at a news conference sponsored by members of the Kapolei Elementary PTA, Neighbor to Neighbor, and legislators from the area.
Their message: We want our schools, and we want them now.
The contracts were awarded, without bidding, to a company whose financial backer, Bert Kobayashi, is a close friend of Gov. Ben Cayetano's.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Linda Lingle asked the state attorney general to investigate the more than $40 million in construction, design and planning contracts awarded to Makai Villages Partnership.
Attorney General Margery Bronster said the awards did not violate state laws.
Construction is under way on an intermediate school, scheduled to open next summer. Ground- breaking for a high school is scheduled for next year.
Residents want the high school ready to take the first ninth-graders graduating from the intermediate school.
Jo Ann Abrazado, a member of the Kapolei Elementary PTA and of task forces working for the new schools, said school officials at Campbell told her 800 students of a total 1,800 were showing up late or cutting classes.
She blamed the problem on rough bus schedules.
Bronster said a 1996 law passed to expedite the construction of Kapolei schools allowed the state Housing and Finance Development Corp. to enter into development agreements with private developers.
Rep. Mark Moses, a Republican, said Kapolei residents didn't care if Kobayashi got the contracts.
"No other developer was willing to take the risk," Moses said. "There was no money ahead of time and no guarantee it would go through."
