About Kihei Charter School
Everyday, Kihei Charter School is building a stronger, more diverse workforce for tomorrow. Our innovative approach to learning is challenging outdated methods of educating our keiki (children). Through cutting-edge curriculum and game-changing technology, KCS is able to nurture a new generation of engaged learners and chart new horizons in education.
Kihei Charter School’s Mission
To conceptualize, organize, and build innovative learning environments with custom designed educational programs that will prepare students for a satisfying and productive life in the 21st Century.
Vision
To inspire, create and support innovative, cooperative and productive learning environments.
Goals of Kihei Charter School
- Develop a highly innovative and valuable learning environment on Maui, unique in the world for what it offers and how it is implemented.
- Pioneer a curriculum unique in its blend of research and development in new technologies, the arts, the humanities, and the sciences.
- Help establish a grassroots research and development learning environment on Maui by nurturing progress with original creative concepts that spur products, projects, styles, and start up enterprises.
- Educate students in options for their work by providing them with a strong grounding in arts and sciences literacy.
- Culture a creative community by providing a holistic approach that links the concept of valuable, creative, innovative, and culturally enriching work in school with work driven by these goals in the broader community.
- Create a project environment that simultaneously supports research and development, knowledge acquisition, and cultures self-expression, self-development, and self-esteem through all learning environments.
- Create a continuum of development of student projects and skills throughout grade levels to support these goals.
- Nurture and support the continuing education and creative project development of all school staff.
- Consider areas of community and world challenge in order to focus curriculum towards making valuable innovations and developing school-wide threads of enterprise in those areas. (Such as renewable energy courses, environmental studies, new media, modeling and simulation, special needs accommodation, agriculture, learning environments, and telecommunication.)
- Create and maintain a strong relationship with all segments of the community including, but not exclusively, local businesses, legislators, parents, community leaders, teachers, school support staff, public employee unions, state and county officials, qualified non-profit groups, and other educational and community-minded groups and individuals for the continuing goal of improving education and educational opportunities for our community.
The goals of the school will be explicitly used as a template to help organize course and program development, this will steadily prompt the growth of administrative protocols and support mechanisms within the school for accomplishing them.
What is a charter school?
“Charter schools are innovative public schools providing choices for families and students. ”
Nearly 3,000 new schools have been launched since state legislatures began passing charter legislation in the 1990s. Chartering is a radical educational innovation that is moving states beyond reforming existing schools to creating something entirely new. Chartering is at the center of a growing movement to challenge traditional notions of what public education means.
Chartering allows schools to run independently of the traditional public school system and to tailor their programs to community needs. While not every new school is extraordinarily innovative and some school operations may mirror that of traditional public schools, policymakers, parents, and educators are looking at chartering as a way to increase educational choice and innovation within the public school system. Over one million students are enrolled in more than 3,500 schools in 40 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.”
Source: https://charterschoolcenter.ed.gov
