Written by: Melissa Tanji

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KIHEI — It was dreamed of, talked about, advocated for and fought over.

And on Monday, the years of efforts from lawmakers, community groups, parents and students all paid off as a long-awaited public high school in Kihei finally opened its doors.

Kulanihako’i High, mauka of Piilani Highway and east of the Kulanihakoi Street and Piilani intersection, welcomed 139 freshmen and sophomores to its $245 million campus, with future phases still to be built out.

“It’s such a momentous day,” said Principal Halle Maxwell in between greeting almost every student and parent who arrived at the campus Monday morning. “I just want to say good morning and we’ve done it, we are finally here.”

She said she told a bus driver, “Thank you so much for making history with us.” The driver replied that he was glad that the bus was washed.

“Everyone just feels how momentous this is and it just makes me so proud,” Maxwell said before leaving to greet more parents and students under the already hot Kihei sun.

Currently the campus includes an administrative building, library/cafeteria building, classroom buildings and a play court. A building for electives along with sports fields will be completed down the line. Every year the school will add one new higher grade, with next year being juniors and the following year, seniors. At full capacity, the campus is designed for an enrollment of 1,600 students.

The school has struggled through funding and bureaucracy hurdles throughout the years, and the opening stalled because the state Department of Education had not fulfilled a 2013 requirement from the state Land Use Commission to build an underpass or overpass to the school for students and pedestrians.

Eventually the county and the state came to the agreement this year to issue a temporary certificate of occupancy with the state agreeing to temporarily indemnify the county against theoretical future claims of liability since the decided-upon overpass has not been built. Students will need to ride a bus, a school shuttle or be driven to school. The design for an overpass is being worked on.

Tyler Sammon, the sophomore class president who was a freshman in Kulanihako’i’s first high school class that had to learn in portable classrooms at Lokelani Intermediate last school year, said he didn’t think the high school would open.

“I kind of lost hope,” he said. His class had hoped to be the first freshman class physically on the campus of the new school.

At Lokelani the high schoolers were limited, with Sammon saying he probably could only go 20 feet in any direction before he was out of bounds.

On Monday, he said, “it feels nice” to have the large campus where “you get to walk around a lot more.”

“I feel excited, a little nervous because I don’t know where any of my classes are,” Sammon said.

Freshman Ezekiel Benitez also didn’t think the day would come when he would be going to high school in Kihei.

“I thought I was going to have to go to Maui High,” he said.

For years, students in South Maui have been attending Maui High. Benitez added that “a lot” of his friends decided to go to Maui High instead because it offers football, which the new school doesn’t have yet. Benitez said he would try to sign up for basketball at his new high school if they offer it.

Benitez’s mom, Amy, said she is happy that her youngest child could attend the new high school, as her two older children had to travel to Kahului for high school.

“It’s beautiful,” she said of the campus.

She was also happy for the smaller student body.

“It’s good for him, less kids, more attention,” she said.

Freshman Sophia Ramirez also said she was “kind of nervous but excited.”

She said she chose Kulanihako’i High over high schools in Central Maui as “it’s closer and it’s way nicer.” Ramirez said her parents will be able to drop her off and pick her up at school.

Faculty, too, were excited about the school’s opening.

“Exciting, right?” teacher Jared Watanabe said when asked about teaching at the brand new school.

“It doesn’t happen often,” he said of a new high school opening on Maui.

Born and raised on Maui, Watanabe remembers when King Kekaulike High opened in 1995. He attended Baldwin High.

“Just being here at the start, not just like physically with the buildings and the campus, but the culture that you can build as a staff and school, I feel like every campus kind of has a personality,” he said.

James Larsen, the student services coordinator, knew firsthand what a big moment the opening was for South Maui.

“It’s amazing,” Larsen said. “The South Maui community has been waiting for this for so long. It’s such an honor for myself to be serving our community. I live in Kihei, so this is really amazing for me to live in the community and serve the community.”

He thinks that Kulanihako’i High will not just be a school, but also “a focal point for a lot of community events.”

“So this is big not for just students but everyone in South Maui,” Larsen said.

Maxwell said she currently has 32 teachers but has space for up to 37 and has offers out to other teachers. However, she said finding affordable housing is standing in the way of teachers committing to the school.

She is also looking for a Hawaiian language and culture teacher and is encouraging those interested to apply. She said the teacher could work part time. She currently has 15 students enrolled in the class. Interested candidates can email her at halle.maxwell@k12.hi.us.

Maxwell said she is taking notes and will review how the bus service is doing. The school’s “Manta Ray Squad Shuttle” is not up and running yet, but will be as details are worked out. (The Manta Ray is the school’s mascot and a group of manta rays are called a squadron.)

Maxwell is concerned about her students getting to school and back to home safely, so much so that she was taking a student home on Monday.

The vision for a high school in South Maui stretches back decades, with lawmakers, community groups and leaders all putting in time and effort to get a high school open. The state Legislature made multiple appropriations to the project for design, land acquisition and permits dating back to 2004. But in 2011, nearly $20 million in funding for the project was allowed to lapse.

In 2013, the Legislature included $130 million for the school in its budget, but the Department of Education was only able to access some of the funding due to a procedural issue, officials told Kihei residents in 2015. The department decided to build the school in phases as funding became available.

A groundbreaking was held for the high school in January 2016, with hopes the school could open in 2020. The targeted opening date has changed multiple times over the years, from 2014 to 2016 to 2020 and beyond.

As initial buildings neared completion, the school ran into another hurdle when the DOE tried to ask the Land Use Commission to drop the requirement that a pedestrian crossing be built before the school could open, with the state Department of Transportation instead building a roundabout in front of the school. Caught between safety concerns and a desire to open the school for waiting students, the county and state reached the agreement that allowed the school to open while the overpass plans are worked out.

Andrew Beerer, chairman of the Kihei Community Association’s Recreation and Education Committee, has been pushing for the high school for at least 14 years. He still has the environmental impact statement preparation notice put out back in 2009 and remembers the environmental studies that followed, along with the hurdles the community and school went through, the starts and stops and disappointments.

Beerer had pushed for the high school for the community and his children, who are now in college. He can still remember seeing the plans for the school in 2009.

“We were excited but it looked like kind of the same layout and same buildings they had used at Kapolei and King Kekaulike. So the community asked for them to look at a more progressive-forward design, which they did,” Beerer said Monday morning via phone.

“I think it’s very exciting to see those new buildings. They’re beautiful,” he said, noting he was able to tour the campus before its official opening to students on Monday.

“I’m super excited, it’s surreal really,” he said.

Like the students, he had a hard time believing the moment had finally come.

“I can’t believe we are actually at this point, that we are opening a school,” he said.