With the school year behind us, On Campus reflect on Kamalani Academy's inaugural year and an unexpected resignation. Despite efforts to build a culture of collaboration and belonging, the school faced a multitude of challenges with staff turnover and figuring out exactly how the school should be run.

Pomaikai Elementary students report from inside their Maui school.

Civil Beat visits Pomaikai Elementary, an arts integration school on Maui, to see why Kamalani Academy's founders used it as a model for their charter school.

Kamalani’s founding vision focused on using Hawaiian culture as a way of connecting a very diverse student body, and closing achievement gaps in the classroom. But Kamalani staff have struggled this year with integrating Hawaiian culture into their classrooms, and connecting with kids from very different backgrounds. In this episode of On Campus, reporter Emily Dugdale travels 4,000 miles east of Hawaii to Springdale, Arkansas — a town with a pretty unexpected group of Pacific Islander immigrants. Springdale is a much whiter community than Wahiawa. But it could have some lessons on cultural representation that even a diverse school like Kamalani could learn from.

Hawaii teacher salaries are the lowest in the nation when adjusted for cost of living, according to a recent analysis by National Public Radio and the education nonprofit EdBuild. But there's a lot more to teacher satisfaction than pay. In Episode 6 of On Campus Kamalani Academy teachers talk about their journey to the classroom, and the triumphs and pitfalls of starting a new charter school.

Kamalani Academy looks for ways to bolster school spirit before students head off for winter break — a time of year when student discipline and motivation can start to backslide. Winter break is also a chance for the school’s principal to take a “temperature check” on school morale. More than a dozen students have left Kamalani since the start of the school year, and Kamalani’s founder seeks advice from an outside source.

Kamalani Academy adopts a medieval school tradition made popular by Harry Potter to help teach Hawaiian values.

Join Kamalani Academy on its first day of school and take a peek inside classrooms as students and teachers get to know each other.

As her new charter school, Kamalani Academy, prepares to open, school founder, Kuuipo Laumatia, take us on a walk through last-minute snafus and solutions.

This school year, Honolulu Civil Beat is following along behind the scenes as teachers and parents launch a brand new charter school in Hawaii. It’s going to be a story about education, but we suspect it will also end up being a story about community. About the challenges facing parents and kids and teachers in Hawaii today, and what happens when a group of people come together to try and overcome those challenges in a new and different way. In coming episodes you’ll sit in on teacher training, find out what goes into getting a charter approved, hear from sleep-deprived board members, and be there when the campus opens its doors. What happens the rest of the year — well, we’re going to have to find that out together.