Community input, creative learning spaces and focusing on student mental health will be critical to the recovery of Lāhainā schools, based on the experience of the public school community in Paradise, California.
Students returned to their schools two years after the 2018 Camp Fire, which blazed through California's mountainous town. Within the first month of the fire, Paradise educators were faced with the challenging task of reopening schools.
Larry Johnson, a principal at Paradise Junior High, said students and staff relocated to nearby towns about an hour away. And some staff taught students in office buildings.
"The quicker the community accepts that they're going to have to get creative with options, the better," he said. "What we found very quickly was people wanted to get together."
If Lāhainā's recovery looks anything like Paradise, rebuilding could take years.
The Hawaiʻi Department of Education plans to let students return to Lāhainā schools in mid-October. Education officials are holding community meetings this week for Maui families to meet with principals.
Four West Maui public schools shut down immediately after the Aug. 8 wildfires. Lahainaluna High, Lāhainā Intermediate and Princess Nāhiʻenaʻena Elementary sustained damages and were closed until air and water quality were deemed safe.
The inferno destroyed King Kamehameha III Elementary, located at Lāhainā's historic Front Street.
But devastation and healing of this kind bear similarities to California's deadliest blaze as West Maui's school community and the state education department figure out a way forward.
A long road ahead
Superintendent Tom Taylor of the Paradise Unified School District said the road to recovery was challenging.
"There's no magic formula for the healing process," Taylor said. "Everybody goes through it at their own time, at their own pace. That's on a personal level."
Taylor found that as superintendent, he had to learn to believe that people were there to help him.
"And also, when help comes, if it's something that is not helping, it's OK to say no. Because what it does, it creates more work for the staff who have just lost their homes, who are already burdened with everything else and trying to keep a school district together," he said.
The Camp Fire spread over 153,000 acres of Paradise, destroying more than 18,000 structures, according to California's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Taylor said 85% of students and staff were displaced from their homes, and more than 4,000 students were relocated to nearby towns more than an hour away from Paradise. All students and staff were accounted for, according to Chico Enterprise- Record.
Paradise students returned to class at temporary sites on Dec. 3 — about three weeks after the Camp Fire on Nov. 8, 2018. Some students were in a traditional classroom at public schools in Chico, Gridley, Durham or Oroville.
For Johnson, he helped set up classes at a hardware store for at least 200 students.
"We literally turned aisles into classrooms and eventually purchased different things to kind of close them off a little bit, so you could resemble a little bit of the structure that kids were used to," Johnson said.
He said educators attempted to make it a normal environment for students, adding that traditional learning was a challenge with some students still being in "flight or freeze mode."
"The next several months of their lives, they'll be learning how to survive," Johnson said. "And having one another is essential during that time."
Johnson said one of the challenges within the first year of the Camp Fire was effectively communicating with the entire school community, in which many families lost their cell phones or had no cell service.
"We spent a week trying to contact people through social media and everything else, and it's just a gut-wrenching process. It was a challenging situation. But the community standing together and coming together was essential," he said.
The damages in Lāhainā have left about 3,000 students and over 300 staff displaced. Lāhainā's school community is torn between returning to a learning setting and grieving.
According to a DOE report, 976 Lāhainā students have re-enrolled in other public schools or the State Distance Learning Program. The remaining 2,025 have not re-enrolled.
DOE Superintendent Keith Hayashi told the Hawaiʻi Board of Education last week that all staff have been accounted for.
The status of the remaining Lāhainā students is unclear. The wildfires claimed the life of a Lahainaluna High student, his family confirmed to NPR.
Addressing mental health
Paradise resident Jessica Bennett is a mother of two children. Her 9-year-old daughter was in the third grade when the Camp Fire happened, while her son was in pre-K.
The 43-year-old said that her family relocated to Gridley, a town about 30 miles from Paradise, and would often check in with the schools about her children. She said her daughter was impacted by their home burning down and feeling ripped away from her friends.
"When my daughter went to class and just started struggling, they (a Gridley school) would allow her to sit by the door or allow her to take a walk."
Bennett said her daughter would miss several days of school because of trauma from the Camp Fire.
She advised Lāhainā parents that children's mental health is a priority.
"Yes, children are resilient, but they are also human," she said. "They need to be able to process their feelings. They need to be able to take a day off when they need a day off. They need healing time, too."
Bennett said her family returned to their Paradise home in 2020. She said watching the town rebuild was healing for her family and the community.
Taylor said addressing students' and staff's social and emotional well-being is essential. He suggested finding a program that addresses that issue.
The Paradise Unified School District uses RULER to aid students and staff in recognizing their emotional and social needs. It's an acronym for recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing and regulating.
Taylor said that the school community in Paradise faced some challenges five years after the fire, including needing more psychology counselors. He said the schools need to be ready to support staff and students.
"We couldn't get enough counselors and we still can't to this day," he said.
Hurdles to overcome
Taylor said the district is still recovering from a learning loss, also heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We're five years down the road from the fire and the pandemic," he said. "We're still addressing the learning deficit within our school district, and we're still dealing with the social and emotional trauma that people experienced. "
Student enrollment was at more than 3,400 before the Camp Fire, according to Taylor. That number decreased to about 1,400 students.
"We had a lot of people that couldn't find housing in the area," Taylor said. "Housing is still an issue, and prices have recently jumped.”
Taylor said the district is still in the growing phase. This year, he said, 1,640 are enrolled in public schools.
Also, Taylor said the district has revamped their evacuation plans. Initially, their policy was to evacuate to a nearby church about six miles away from schools. But the fire spread so fast that teachers gathered students in their cars and drove to nearby towns instead.
"So now the new evacuation plan includes location sites in other communities as well as our local community," Tom said.
The future of Lāhainā's burned school
King Kamehameha III Elementary was damaged beyond repair. The DOE plans for students and staff to share a campus with Princess Nāhi'ena'ena Elementary while searching for a future temporary site.
Taylor said the drop in student enrollment led to the merging of Paradise Elementary and Ponderosa Elementary. It's now known as Paradise Ridge Elementary.
Taylor said between the two elementary schools was a student enrollment of 960, but decreased to 400 after the fire.
He added that the elementary school and Ridgeview High were rebuilt and modernized.
He said the district spent over $100 million in the last few years rebuilding and modernizing facilities.
