2008-12-11 THAWIJODOMISSION - Laserfiche WebLink

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HOUSEL: Right. SZILAGYI: I think there’s a bike trail. I think there is enough area there where somebody could kind of pull over. But it’s so far away from the building that no one would ever pull over and drop off their children and let them off, you know.And I don’t even allow that; in our policies and procedures for the school there will be specific instructions on how to drop your children off. HOUSEL: Okay, that’s great. Thank you very much. SZILAGYI: You are welcome. WATANABE: Any -? Mr. Domingo? DOMINGO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Has there been a strong desire or request to establish this K-to-6 grade school in the community? SZILAGYI: I don’t know if I can determine how strong the desire is, but there’s certainly a need and a desire. I’ve spoken with many families already in the community, and they would like another option for their children. There is the public school, and then there is the Kohala Mission School, which is right across from our building. But there are parents who would like possibly a different type of educational curriculum as an option. And so we would be able to provide a different option to some of these parents. DOMINGO: From a philosophical point of view and for discussion, with the present situation with the schools today with regards to the lack of funding and I want to say competition with charter schools, you know, it seems like the community in itself and the parents are somewhat loosing a bit of the trust and confidence that’s put in the public schools. So what we are seeing now is more charter schools coming up. And now with the talk of consolidation and closing of schools and redistricting, you know, that would cause a lot of concerns in a community. And perhaps in the future there will be more demand for schools such as yours or for charter schools. And you know, that’s something that I’m seeing now. And perhaps, if your pursuit in this direction becomes real successful, you may find strong demand for enlarging your facility to accommodate more students. So have you -? What’s your long-range plan? Are you just going to stop at 105 or around that figure? SZILAGYI: Yeah, in our conversations, my conversations with Mr. Miyazaki, we don’t want a large school; we’d like to keep the school small. And right now, our goal is just to have a successful preschool. And then we really don’t know if we want to take the step in a direction of adding anything else. So we are really at the beginning stages. And if there was more and more of a desire from the community to grow the school, then we would seriously look at that. But we would want to do this in harmony with the other schools and the community; we certainly do not want to cause any disharmony in the community with the other families and other schools, the public schools as well. So that’s really our intent, is just to provide something else. And there is a need; there is definitely a need for another preschool at this point. EXHIBIT A 5