Maui, Baldwin, Molokaʻi high schools among 27 in Hawaiʻi developing academies for focused career paths

While being raised by a single mother when her father was in prison, Alexis Kahue was struggling as a sophomore at Maui High School until she found her savior: the automotive department.

At age 15, she learned how to change the oil and fix the breaks on her 1991 black soft-top convertible Mustang.

“Oh, wow. It just gives you that sense of power,” Kahue said. “Oh, yes, I know what I want to do.”

Her automotive teacher at the time, Dennis Ishii, also worked with Kahue in areas where she was not doing well, or behind in school work, to ensure she would graduate.

“I wasn’t expecting to walk the (graduation) line, but I did,” she said.

Now, at age 33, Kahue is helping other students find their passions as the lead of Baldwin High School’s Lima Academy, which includes automotive as well as residential and commercial construction pathways.

The academy is part of a program by the Hawai’i State Department of Education that began in 2020 to try to improve student success. The academies bundle similar Career and Technical Education pathways into groups to strengthen the learning process.

Of the 66 public high schools in the state system, 27 now are implementing these “smaller learning communities” within their overall academic plans. In Maui County, there are three high schools participating: Maui, Baldwin and Molokaʻi.

In the state, there currently are 13 pathways that cover a broad variety of careers, including: health services; energy; architectural design and engineering; law and public safety; and cultural arts, media and entertainment.

Career and Technical Education teachers help “students interested in acquiring the academic, technical and employability skills necessary to succeed in postsecondary education and/or high-demand careers,” according to the state Department of Education website.

These academy plans are being adopted into Hawaiʻi public high schools on a step-by-step basis. The 27 schools now participating are in different stages of implementation of the academies, with each structured to meet the unique needs of each school.

In Maui County, Maui High has been at the forefront of the academy plan. During the 2020-21 school year, Maui High academies coordinator Tia Joaquin said she and others in leadership met virtually (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) with the school’s Career and Technical Education teachers.

They discussed which of their programs might “go together,” she said. The teachers came up with suggestions of similar groupings, which were taken to the administration team that agreed and put together the programs now in existence at Maui High.

“However, it is not permanent,” Joaquin said in an email. “We’ll revisit every year depending on student requests and staffing so the master schedule should be what drives our academies.”

The Maui High plan includes the ʻAhinahina Academy, where all of the school’s participating freshmen explore their aspirations and interests and then choose their academy for the next three years: IET (industrial, engineering, technology); arts, media and business; service and sustainability; and HELPS (health, education, law and public safety). 

All students must choose an academy, but if they want to change academies at Maui High, they are allowed to do so one time after their sophomore year.

Joaquin said the biggest advocates for the academies plan at Maui High have included former principal Randy Yamanuha; alumnus and former teacher Shane Okamoto, who is now a behavior support teacher in Los Angeles; former media teacher Clint Gima, who died in 2023; and outgoing principal Jamie Yap.

Current Hale Makua CEO Wes Lo and state school superintendent Keith Hayashi, who led Waipahu High School to national recognition for its academy learning plan as principal in 2021, also played key roles, Joaquin said.

The academy plan at Maui High started slowly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Yap said, but it has since been making steady progress.

A first step was adjusting the bell schedule to allow for the longer academy classes of 70 to 75 minutes. 

Lora-Lea Grando heads Maui High’s largest academy: service and sustainability. Currently, 436 students are studying the culinary, hospitality and agriculture pathways.

“We have a really great foundation of understanding what our program is,” Grando said. “We’re currently working on branding ourselves, which means developing our logos and ensuring that the kids know that they are part of an academy.”

Grando said weekly meetings with teachers have been put in place to establish how to review data, support students and provide different guidelines for kids who aren’t doing well and those who are doing really well.

“I think that the kids who are in each of our academies are in those academies because they are part of something that they love,” she said. “So, for mine for example, if they love culinary, they’re there because they love culinary. If they love agriculture and natural resources, they’re there for that. And so, they all work really well together. And they all have similar interests.”

The Maui High plan includes student ambassadors who lead their respective academies.

Ambassador Jaden Tonyokwe, a junior from Pohnpei, an island in Micronesia, said he hopes to use the knowledge he learns in the service and sustainability academy to help on his family farm when he returns home after graduation. 

Tonyokwe came to Maui for a better education, but said he wasn’t really into agriculture until this year.

“Now I’m in Future Farmers of America and I’m learning a lot,” he said.

Maui High senior Wilson Chau, a student ambassador for the industrial, engineering and technology academy, said he was drawn to the field after taking part in the Maui High robotics program.

“I think it starts with the teachers here and the students,” Chau said. “Since we’re both in the same interest we’re always sharing about similar interests or like internships with each other. I’ve always been able to gain a lot of interest with the Maui Economic Development Board and I’ve gotten to connect with a lot of professionals within the field of technology.”

Chau said the academy plan has helped him focus on his goal of a career in economics and data science.

“Because there’s a lot of connections, I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of great people working under these academies,” Chau said. “And their main goal is just to help us get to where we want to be.”

Maui High senior Ciana Cooper, a senior student ambassador in the health, education, law and public safety academy, plans to pursue a career in medicine. She currently is taking a nursing 100 class at the University of Hawaiʻi Maui College.

“It’s just opened up so many opportunities because I know that even while I’m not interested in nursing, being able to start out as a nurse is just an incredible opportunity to get a basis of the health care field and learn because they really are the backbones of our health care system,” Cooper said. “So it’s a really good introduction to the health care field as a whole and kind of helping me figure out where I want to find my place in that community.”

The Baldwin academy landscape also includes marketing management, film and media production, digital design, fashion and artisan design, and programming in the Po’o Academy; culinary arts, natural resources management, sustainable hospitality and tourism management in the Pu’uwai Academy; and a freshman academy known as Wāwae Academy. World languages and fine arts are also included in each of the academies.

Leo Tomita is the vice principal in charge of Baldwin’s automotive and construction academy, which includes Kahue in the auto shop on the backside of the Wailuku campus. Since graduating from Baldwin in 1996, Tomita was an agriculture teacher for 15 years and is now on the school’s leadership team.

With nearly 80% of recent graduates at Maui and Baldwin high schools not going to college, the academies are a good alternative for many.

“It’s for everybody,” Tomita said of the academy plan developing on the Wailuku campus. “Obviously there is going to be more of a focus on the trades and vocation fields, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t still have the APs, the dual credit college courses. … It’s definitely a restructuring, a change in mindset.”