Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 40, Number 2, 1 February 2023 — Untitled [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Long-time Waimea educator Pat Rice and a pair of OHA grants are helping Waimea Middle Puhlie Conversion Charter School expand its student services. There are many people involved in supporting the students of Waimea Middle School, but maybe none as truly dedicated as veteran educator Pat

Rice. Rice has been at the school since 1975, first as a teacher, then as counselor, on to a vice principal, and she's also served as prineipal on four different occasions. She's even retired twice, but today you'll still find her serving the institution, now as the organization's school improvement specialist, tasked with writing grants for the school and following up on grant accountability. "I deeply care for the Waimea

community," she said. "Having worked with our students' grand-

parents and parents and with their expanded 'ohana, I'm grateful for the connections we have made over the years, and it is these connections whieh keep me trying to help even more." Rice is certainly still helping. When students began returning to in-person learning as the COVID-19 pandemic eased, Rice observed that they weren't fully engaging in the school setting and were having behavioral issues. Rice began her grant-writer research and secured an OHA SEE WAIMEA MIDDLE SCH00L 0N PAGE 5

WAIMEA MIŪŪLE SCH00L

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COVID-19 Impact and Response grant worth $60,000. "The Mālama i nā 'Ōpio grant enabled us to hire a trauma informed art teacher/counselor. We knew that students returning from the pandemic would have many socialemotional issues and that they would need trained adults to help them manage their anxieties as they transitioned back to an in-person school setting," Rice said. "Perhaps the most significant thing about this grant has been that students who were hesitant to express their feelings verbally felt safe when afforded opportunities to express them through the creative process. That opened the door for the counselor to collaborate with others at the school and with the students' families to help the students develop effective coping strategies." Waimea Middle School is one of three puhlie conversion charter schools, along with Kamaile Academy on O'ahu and Kualapu'u Preschool and Elementary School on Moloka'i, that make up the community of the Ho'okāko'o Corporation. Established in 2002, Ho'okāko'o is a private, nonprofit organization that has grown to oversee and transform education programs at the three schools whieh comprise nearly 15% of Hawai'is puhlie charter school student population. More than half of the student population at Waimea Middle School is Hawaiian. While Ho'okāko'o served as the fiscal sponsor for Waimea's COVID-19 response grant, Ho'okāko'o Executive Director David Gibson, Kualapu'u Principal Lydia Trinidad and Rice collaborated on writing a second grant whieh received another award ffom OHA. Ho'okāko'o is implementing its Ke Awa Ho'omalu (Safe Harbor) project at Waimea Middle School and Kualapu'u School thanks to a $220,000 Community Grant from OHA. The two-year grant is being used to increase access to Hawaiian culture-based educational, behavioral and mental heahh services for Native Hawaiian children and their families at both schools. "Despite our best intentions, we laek the resources at Waimea Middle School to help all students and their families to access the mueh needed community and/or school services that ean improve student educational and social-emotional learning outcomes. The 'ohana engagement facilitator provided through the Ke Awa Ho'omalu grant is working with students and their families to create personalized plans intended to help our families link to school-level and community-based supports that they have previously been unaware of in an effort to provide wrap-around services individualized for eaeh child," Rice said. 'As a Hawaiian-focused charter school, we utilize all our resources to 'empower all students with the skills, values, and cultural understanding to successfully navigate high school and beyond,' whieh is our mission statement at Waimea. The support provided by OHA has been crucial in expanding our services to students and their families." ■

Wuimea Middle School houmano share their artwork. The most significant impoct of the school's ort progrom has been thot students hesitont to express their feelings verbolly could express them through the creotive process.