Student enrollment in Lahaina has plummeted over 20% since the 2023 wildfire

Over the summer, freshman Elizabeth “Kooks” Ganer, with guidance from her mom, had a difficult decision about where to attend high school.

Should she make the long commute to her dream school of Lahainaluna in the town in which she grew up? Or should she attend Baldwin in the school district where she now lives because her home was burned in the 2023 Lahaina fire and the direct lease that was available for her family through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s program was in Waiheʻe?

Where displaced students from Lahaina will spend their formative high school years is among the many aftermath challenges from the Maui wildfires.

Lahainaluna High Principal Richard Carosso said 1,012 students were enrolled on Aug. 7, 2023, the day before the fire. That enrollment fell to 870 during the 2023-24 school year and is now down to 813 for this school year.

Carosso said one reason for the nearly 20% drop from pre-fire enrollment is due to “kids leaving the island, going back to the mainland, back to the countries that their families are from.”

Since the start of the 2023-24 school year, 46 Lahainaluna students have moved out of Hawaiʻi.

Carosso added that 36 students left Lahaina to go to Maui Preparatory Academy and other private schools, 11 transferred to other public schools within the state, and eight moved to alternative education or home school.

Ganer is one of the statistics. Last school year, she finished eighth grade at Lahaina Intermediate School. But with her mom’s encouragement, the 14-year-old student-athlete decided to forego her longtime dream of going to Lahainaluna High and attend Baldwin because of its high-ranked volleyball team and being able to avoid the daunting hour-plus commute each way.

“My heart was set to go to Lahainaluna, and moving away from my home and losing my home in my town has been the hardest thing that could ever happen,” Ganer said. “At Baldwin, it’s been so good because of the girls that I play (volleyball) with — they just make me feel like I’m at home. Even though Lahaina was my heart, these girls have helped me after the fire and have made Baldwin my other home.”

Carosso said enrollment numbers are important because they determine some of the funding for public schools. The state Department of Education provides schools between $5,000 and $6,000 per student per year.

Maui High School principal Jamie Yap was informed by the Department of Education on Sept. 19 that his school budget will be trimmed by $1.028 million this year from its July preliminary budget because of a shortfall in the predicted student count of 1,942.

On the official student count day for public schools in Hawaiʻi, 10 days after schools open, Maui High’s enrollment was just 1,725.

Yap said he had “anticipated” the drop in enrollment, “so I budgeted to make sure I had some money to give back to the state.”

One reason for the enrollment drop is more Maui High students going to the three-year-old, $245 million Kūlanihākoʻi High School in Kīhei, which was built to meet the anticipated growth in South Maui population and take pressure off of an increasingly crowded Maui High.

Kūlanihākoʻi High School had a phased-in enrollment, beginning with 139 freshmen and sophomores when its doors opened just before the fire. Now it has 370 students — 175 freshmen, 122 sophomores and 73 juniors.

But Maui High did get some displaced fire students, including junior Solomona Kuresa whose home on Baker Street in Lahaina burned, leading to the family staying in eight hotels before finding a place in Central Maui.

“It was really hard to leave Lahainaluna, those guys were my family,” said Kuresa, who plays for the Sabers football team. “Now these guys are another family. They love me. I love them.”

Several private schools also were impacted by the fire. Maui Prep in Nāpili took in 140 Lahaina students immediately after the fire when it opened for the 2023-24 school year on Aug. 21, 2023.

Before the fire, Maui Prep had 275 students from first grade through 12th grade. And despite “30 to 40” students leaving due to families losing homes in the fire, Maui Prep principal Ryan Kirkham said the immediate additions grew the school’s enrollment to an all-time high of nearly 400 students.

“As other west-side schools began to open, as the Lahainaluna campus (temporarily) moved down to Kīhei, several students filtered out and wanted to go back to their home schools, which was absolutely understandable,” Kirkham said. “We were happy to give them a place for a few weeks for some of them, for a few months for others, but several students ended up staying and enjoying their experience at Maui Prep.”

Kirkham said about 80 of those fire-displaced students are still at Maui Prep, putting the student population at 308.  They include former Lahainaluna student Mckenzie Clarion, a junior whose family lost their house in the fire.

“It was hard because compared to the homework from Lahainaluna, it’s not as easy here,” Clarion said. “But I decided to stay here because the amount of opportunities that you can have at Maui Prep compared to Lahainaluna is different. Also, how the teachers care for you and they want to see you succeed.”

Clarion said he was happy to be on the same campus as his younger sister Mckenna, a third-grader who was already attending Maui Prep prior to the fire.

“For us to kind of cope with everything that’s happened to us, we just joke around with it,” Mckenzie Clarion said. “We try to not focus on the bad stuff, try to realize that we have each other. She’s doing good, she’s happy right now because she’s in the (school) play.”

Former Lahainaluna student Kellen Cordero-Fernandez did not lose his house in the fire, but he and his fifth-grade brother Ryker chose to go to Maui Prep. Ryker had attended King Kamehameha III Elementary School, which was destroyed in the blaze.

“He asks me like how it is changing schools, he knew that my friends are at Lahainaluna, so he always asks me how they’re doing, how I’m doing without them,” Kellen Cordero-Fernandez said of his younger brother. “I always tell him I’m doing good because of my Maui Prep friends like Mckenzie. I want to make sure Ryker is always doing his best and going down the right path.”

Cordero-Fernandez said he probably would not be going to Maui Prep had it not been for the financial aid. According to the private school’s website, cost to attend for grades 9 to 12 is $24,840.

Carosso said it is a unique situation for Lahainaluna following the fire as far as allocations of state money goes. He expects his predicted enrollment for next year to arrive this month from the state Department of Education.

“Then we as principals get to argue and make a case for raising that number or lowering that number based on what we know,” Carosso said. “When we got it last year after the fire, it was predicted that we would have 744 kids coming into this year and at that time we had no idea what to say on that number because we had no idea who was going to be coming.”

With the actual number of 813 being 8.4% higher than the predicted student number this year, the state adjusted the Lahainaluna budget upward based on the official enrollment count. The state Department of Education also allowed the Lahaina schools a “phased reduction in budget,” limiting the maximum decrease in actual money allotted to a 7.5% decrease per year over the next four years. 

“To make it easier for us to deal with the loss from the fires, the state capped our losses,” Carosso said. “So wherever we end up at the end, it will be a phased drawdown rather than a one-time giant drop.”  

Lahaina Intermediate School is at 449 students this year in the preliminary numbers that Yap provided, down from 521 last year and 591 in 2022-23. Princess Nāhiʻenaʻena Elementary School in Lahaina has 425 students this year compared to 620 in the year prior to the fire. King Kamehameha III Elementary School, now housed at a temporary complex built by the Army Corps of Engineers, is at 330 this year after being at 543 two years ago.

The “Canoe Complex” that includes Hana, Lahainaluna, Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi high schools and all the intermediate and elementary schools that feed them had a total of 4,310 students in the 2022-23 school year, 4,254 last year and 3,875 this year, about a 10% drop from pre-fire enrollment.

Comparatively, the Baldwin, King Kekaulike, Kūlanihākoʻi, Maui High complex stayed relatively similar in total numbers from 2022-23 to this year — 14,646 two years ago to 14,702 this year.

Baldwin had an enrollment of 1,193 in 2022-23, 1,345 last year and 1,266 this year.

Baldwin principal Keoni Wilhelm said Baldwin took in about 50 displaced students from Lahainaluna immediately after the fire last year, “but they have moved on from there. I think we have less than six students that remained (this year) because they chose to remain.”

But for Clarion and Cordero-Fernandez, their change in schools likely is permanent. Both competed in outrigger canoe paddling and track and field last year and each plan to do so again this year. Cordero-Fernandez paddles for Lahaina Canoe Club during the summer and he still has numerous friends through paddling and Lahainaluna.

“All my friends ask me if it’s fun, different, they always tell me to come back,” Cordero-Fernandez said. “I always tell them ʻwe’ll see,’ but they know I won’t come back.”