Saturday, February 13, 2010

New Principal for St. Louis School

St. Louis announced yesterday the Board approval of the hiring of former Hawaii State DOE Superintendent Pat Hamamoto as its new Principal.

The news reports said that at an assembly of the school's 650 students there was a spontaneous standing ovation. This was good news that the students recognized that her appointment should provide a great opportunity for establishing stability at the school.

Many people have expressed surprise at the announcement since Hamamoto only recently retired from 34 years of service in the DOE as the head of the entire public school system.

However, for myself, the surprise was reading that the school population had dropped to only 650 boys in grades 5 thru 12! With plans to eliminate the lowest grade level next year, the size of the student body will be about about half of what it was when our oldest son started there only 15 years ago.

I hope that Ms Hamamoto is able to establish a solid curriculum in a timely manner and can quickly reverse the decline in enrollment.

Monday, February 1, 2010

At Fred Pang's memorial service. Spoke to his daughter. She was very grateful for the joy that the Tsaikos brought to her Dad late in his life.