LUCY PEMONI / LPEMONI@STARBULLETIN.COM Students at Halau Lokahi Public Charter School held hands during an opening chant yesterday afternoon before the start of a rally at the State Capitol in support of charter schools. Gov. Linda Lingle has said she supports charter schools.

Charter school defended
in plea

Pahoa’s Waters of Life faces closure
by the state after a scathing audit

Parents, students and staff from the financially troubled Na Wai Ola (Waters of Life) public charter school delivered an impassioned plea to the Board of Education yesterday not to shut the school down.

The board is scheduled to decide on Feb. 15 whether to revoke the charter of the controversial Big Island school whose financial and organizational problems were detailed in a scathing audit released last month.

But more than two dozen of the school's supporters testified that revoking its charter would devastate students, many of whom had struggled at other public schools but thrived in Waters of Life's familial environment.

"This school means a lot to me and to a lot of people," said N'namdi Garrett Johnson, a senior at the school.

Waters of Life has come to embody the promise and pitfalls of the state-funded charter schools, and has added momentum to efforts to amend the state charter school law.

It is one of just two public schools in the six-school Pahoa district that has continued to meet state targets on standardized test scores.

In her State of the State address, Gov. Linda Lingle praised charter schools and called for more to be established. Charter schools are free of many state regulations and enjoy more flexibility in policy, hiring and teaching strategies.

But according to the state audit -- the first for a Hawaii public charter school -- Waters of Life suffers from poor planning and governance that threaten its financial viability. The audit also criticized the Board of Education for lax oversight and said the charter school law was too vague.

While acknowledging that some of the audit's findings were on target, Waters of Life Administrator Katheryn Crayton-Shay said corrective steps have been taken, including a reorganization of the school's governing board and the addition of staff with more financial expertise. "What have we done about it? We've been very proactive," she said.

She also offered the board a check for $40,000 toward a $257,000 debt owed to the Department of Education.

About 75 people showed up in support of the school, many of them students from charter schools on Oahu who expressed fear that closing Waters of Life could set a precedent for closing other charter schools.

Johnson, the Na Wai Ola senior, said he was "struggling" academically when he came to the school as a 10th-grader. "Only through the dedication and all-out commitment of the staff and faculty was I able to change that," he said.

State charter schools director Jim Shon said problems at schools like Waters of Life stem partly from the limited state assistance available to acquire and maintain school facilities.

"When charters manage properties and facilities, they often don't have the support systems other DOE schools do, and they get into choppy waters in trying to do this," he said.

Shon, who took his post in September, said his office was working on providing more training and support on management and financial matters.