School History
Hālau Kū Māna Public Charter School, founded in 1999, is a community, culture, and environment-based place of learning serving children across O’ahu in grades 6-12. We are 100 students strong across six (6) projects that seeks to instill community and environmental stewardship while remaining academically rigorous and addressing Hawai’i Content Standards as a public school. We are at the beginning of our 3rd school year at our long term home in Makiki Valley just ma kai of the Hawai’i Nature Center. Our 30-year lease encompasses 5.3 acres and has provided the school with a place to grow and develop our programs in collaboration with our surrounding communities.
The school opened it’s doors in 2001 at the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai’i-Manoa Campus. In 2003, the school relocated to the Atherton YMCA, and in 2004, came to call the Old Paradise Park facility in Manoa Valley home. The school spent the next 3 years improving the grounds and building extremely valuable partnerships with the surrounding community there.
After months of negotiations with the State of Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources, Halau Ku Mana successfully secured a 30-year lease to the Makiki Forest Recreation Area located in Makiki Valley. The undeveloped and sorely under-utilized park, well-known for mischief and illicit activities, was transformed by the Halau Ku Mana ‘ohana and extended support systems, who pulled together to clear away years of overgrowth and trash, and transformed the park into a home in just 5 short months.
Today, upkeep of the grounds is a labor of love by the enitre 'ohana, The staff and students have transformed the campus from a once weed-infested forest into a well-manicured mecca of native plants and gardens.
