Arson puts squeeze
on Aliamanu school

Fire damage forces students into
classes already overcrowded

---

By Susan Essoyan
sessoyan@starbulletin.com

With their portable classroom reduced to ashes, students at Aliamanu Intermediate School are squeezing into an already full classroom as investigators follow up on clues from a weekend arson.

"It's really hard because we have no place to put them," Vice Principal Bryan Miller said yesterday. "We're overcrowded as it is. We're using every single classroom and every single room. We had none to spare."

Miller said the state responded immediately and hopes to have a contractor remove the remains of the classroom as soon as today. Workers have already replaced two doors on another classroom and a restroom that the arsonists also tried to ignite, and painted over extensive graffiti left by the vandals, he said.

"They're trying to get the money to build a new classroom, putting it up on the priority list," Miller said.

Criminal investigators with the Honolulu Police Department are pursuing the case, since the fire was deliberately set. The Honolulu Fire Department estimated damage at $90,000, including $10,000 to the contents of the recently renovated classroom, which held computers, VCRs and personal effects such as research papers.

"You couldn't even find a pencil in there," Miller said. "It's nothing but ashes."

From five to 10 students used the portable each day, he said. The campus has 950 seventh- and eighth-graders, and two classrooms were already doubling up while one was being renovated, he said.

"The students really want to know who did it," he said. "They don't want them to get away with it."

Calls have been coming in with offers of labor or donations. "The community is responding really well, especially the military," he said.