July 2, 2010
Contributed by Thomas Yoshida
Every summer we extend invitations to attend our three campuses to applicants in our waitpool in grades 10 through 12. As with our regular admissions, we follow our admissions preference policy, inviting students of Native Hawaiian ancestry for each grade level first before inviting all others. This summer, we invited approximately 45 students from the waitpool to join our campus high school 'ohana. One of them is not Hawaiian.
Non-Hawaiian applicants who meet our admissions criteria can be admitted if vacancies exist after the preference is applied. We fill openings at each grade level from the waitpool for that grade level until the waitpool is exhausted. We continually refine and adjust our procedures to serve the mission, and this year on Maui we applied additional vacancies to other grade levels.
We had five additional spaces in the 11th and 12th grades after all of the waitpooled applicants were admitted, allowing us to extend invitations to attend KS Maui to an additional five Native Hawaiian applicants in the sophomore wait pool. While we are pleased to be able to increase the size of our sophomore class, we will be looking for ways to encourage every Hawaiian student who wants to apply to do so.
We will continue to offer admissions preference to Hawaiians because it is the most direct way to fulfill our mission of improving the capability and well-being of Hawaiians through education.
At the same time, KS will continue to extend our reach beyond our campuses and deep into our communities, and we will continue to emphasize programs for Hawaiian children 0-8, post-high scholars and parents and kupuna. We will move forward with our support for an Innovation Zone of learning along the Leeward Coast through our Ka Pua initiative, and to develop programs at our campuses and beyond that strengthen our culture and build pride in our people.
Kamehameha's school year starts in early August with 800 new students joining our three campus programs. We look forward to their contributions to Pauahi's legacy, and we know they all will make us very proud.
Me ka ha'aha'a,
Kamehameha Schools Board of Trustees and Chief Executive Officer
Kamehameha Schools’ policy is to give preference to applicants of Hawaiian ancestry to the extent permitted by law.
