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What the Heck?
John Heckathorn
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GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Dr. Judith Wagner, chair of Upper School at Island Pacific Academy, teaches science at a school that relies almost entirely on computers.
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Private school grows as fast as sugar cane
Open House: There was a sense of jubilation last Tuesday when Island Pacific Academy held an open house in the new building housing its upper school. Perhaps you've never heard of IPA. Figures. Two and a half years ago, this campus in the heart of Kapolei was three empty acres.
"The traditional way to build a private school is to start small and grow slowly," says headmaster Dan White. "Obviously, we skipped that step."
In 2004, the fledgling school borrowed $6 million from Central Pacific Bank and put up its lower school building. It opened that fall with 190 students, doubled the number in 2005. School began this week with a new upper school building and 530 students, including its first high school freshman class.
The new upper school is virtually paperless. Students turn in homework to an electronic in-box.
New science teacher Judy Wagner showed off a classroom full of electron microscopes, each hooked to a laptop. Lab results can be projected or downloaded into student lab reports. Instead of a blackboard, she has an electronic smart board that renders copying things off the chalkboard obsolete.
A Stanford Ph.D., Wagner taught for 13 years at Castilleja, a private school for girls in Palo Alto, Calif. She's wanted to return to Hawaii since she went to high school at Radford. "Of course, when I went to Radford," she says, surveying Kapolei through the windows of her third-floor lab, "all this was just sugar cane."
Good Answer: On air last week, radio talk show host John Noland was reminiscing with Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona. The two were schoolyard pals at Maryknoll.
Noland went on to attend Stevenson, where he knew Vivian Welch, who years later became Aiona's wife. "Oh, man, she was the best-looking girl in school," said Noland. "She was the bomb."
Duke's reply: "She still is, John."
Teens at Sea: Photographer/filmmaker/sailing buff Phil Uhl was palling around Honolulu last week with Roy E. Disney, who looks a whole lot like his late uncle, Walt Disney. Uhl's consulting for a new Disney documentary called "Morning Light."
Next July, a selected crew of kids under 20, including Punahou senior Mark Towill, will race from Los Angeles to Honolulu in the Transpac -- without adult supervision, but with a camera crew. It's sort of reality TV on the high seas. Training will start in Hawaiian waters some months before the race.
Help Wanted: How do you get a manager's job at the new P.F. Chang's? It helps if you can run in a banana suit. The restaurant belongs to the MacNaughton Group, which also owns Jamba Juice. Triathlete Chris Tang first met the group in 2003, when he volunteered as the Banana Man for the Jamba Banana Man Chase. Jamba needed someone who could run fast in a foam-rubber banana costume, because participants who pass the Banana Man in the charity 5K run get free smoothies for a year.
Now that he's a P.F. Chang's manager, Tang's not racing. But he is scrambling to be ready for the opening Sept. 12.
Let It Flow: Rehearsals began Wednesday for this year's Gridiron Show, scheduled for Diamond Head Theatre, Oct. 20-21. It's satire ripped from the headlines and performed by print, radio and TV reporters. Expect last April's floods and sewage spills to be memorialized in songs like "Ala Wai," "Tainted Flood" and "Let It Flow."
Tickets for the show, called, appropriately, "Raw and Untreated," go on sale this Friday. Proceeds fund summer journalism internships for college students -- if you can stand the idea of your money going to create yet more smart-ass reporters.
Office Politics: "Sweeney Todd" opens Thursday at Army Community Theatre, with UH music professor Larry Paxton in the title role.
Paxton, who plays a barber with a tendency to slit throats, seems to be getting into character. "Every night I get to kill John Mount, who's one of my colleagues at work," he says cheerfully. "More offices should try something like this. I'm finding it very cathartic."
"That's fine for Larry," replies Mount. "It may take me years of therapy to recover."
It's All Greek: At last weekend's Greek Festival at McCoy Pavilion, volunteers cooked up 60 large pans of moussaka and another 40 each of pastitsio and spanakopita. A group of women called the Ladies of Philoptochos made and sold 9,000 pieces of baklava. Spectators quaffed ouzo and pretended they were Zorba the Greek on the dance floor.
Each year the festival nets some $60,000 for Saints Constantine & Helen, the Greek Orthodox cathedral on Lunalilo Street. "This has to be Hawaii's largest church festival, but it goes way beyond that," says festival chair Tom Sofos. "We get far more volunteers than we have members in the church."
Sofos does reserve one job for the church's senior pastor, Father Nicholas Gamvas. "I tell him that I want two hot days with no wind, so we can sell lots of beer, wine and soda," says Sofos. "Every year he delivers. He must have pull."
Genius on a Budget: Chef Philippe Padovani is now a full-time chocolatier. But among those who miss his kitchen skills is sommelier Chuck Furuya. So Furuya, who years ago worked with Padovani at La Mer, set up a guest chef appearance at Vino Tapas and Wine Bar. Padovani will whip up a four-course meal at Vino this coming Saturday night.
"Four courses?" asked the extravagant Padovani. $120 a person?"
No, said Furuya, $39 a head. "I know Philippe can do it. He's a genius." Wine extra, reservations required.