Monday message 10.04.2021

Director’s Message

Aloha to the good people in the Alaka’i O Kaua’i Charter School learning community. On behalf of our entire school, we hope this message finds you in good health and happiness in this first week in October.

Mahalo for your efforts to keep our campus safe, healthy and open. We once again wish to recognize your diligence in keeping keiki at home with even minor illnesses so we can continue to operate. Fortunately, thus far, our unique school has avoided any active COVID cases, any close contacts or any quarantine of classes. We are pleased to share that we hope to be offering VOLUNTARY COVID testing on campus for keiki and staff members in the near future. This free program will be administered by the National Kidney Foundation of Hawai’i and once again is totally optional. More details will follow as they emerge.

Last Friday we hosted our second annual Alaka’i O Kaua’i Ninja Warrior contest on campus. The six stage course was challenging and was made even more difficult with rainy weather making the obstacles wet and slippery. Despite these conditions over 150 participants in Kindergarten to Grade Six accepted the challenge and took on the Ninja Warrior course.

As a school with a significant focus on social-emotional learning, Alaka’i O Kaua’i Charter School is extremely proud of each and every participant for having the courage to try a new challenge in life. We are blessed to share that a talented and lucky 13 winners finished the six stage course. They are:

Kindergarten – Bear Thompson

Grade One – Levi Briggs, Keegan Carolan and Tatiana Zimmerman

Grade Two – Demitrius Reilly

Grade Three – Skylar Dinorscio and Cody Timko

Grade Four – Cato Mokeddam

Grade Five – Sawyer Kimball and Carolina Tapia

Grade Six – Prestons Hibbs, Mikaela Mokeddam and Makayla Timko

We celebrated the official launch of the “DreamUp to Space” project-based learning unit last Monday on campus. The learning community has been diligently working on the pre-launch phase. There are visible signs of our keiki’s imagination with a space theme displayed all over campus. Our learners from Kindergarten through Grade Six will all be showcasing their “Presentations of Learning” on Friday, November 5th in the gymnasium. At that time, the judges will be selecting the finalists from all the entries. The winning experiment will head to the International Space Station sometime in May, 2022. Check out the colorful displays, artwork,and bulletin boards from various classes on campus and see the amazing talents of our learners. We are optimistic that with reduced COVID cases on-island – and potential changes to the Tier system – that we may be able to invite members of our learning community to campus for the “Presentations of Learning” on a class-by-class rotational basis.