Keith Hayashi, the tempo-environment principal of Waipahu Superior University who is credited with increasing community training to new heights, will choose the reins as interim superintendent of public educational facilities Aug. 1.
The Board of Education and learning unanimously selected the veteran educator Thursday to switch universities Superintendent Christina Kishimoto while a lengthier-phrase search for a superintendent is
underway.
“I am humbled and honored to be chosen to direct our public university technique in the course of this changeover,” he informed reporters just after the assembly. “This is such a vital time for the division, and I am committed to connecting with our faculties, complex regions and state place of work leaders to be certain that we are nicely geared up for the impending university year.”
Hayashi, 56, is qualified to implement for the permanent superintendent position and said, in reaction to a issue, that he intends to do so. He declined to discuss steps he could consider as interim chief, out of regard for Kishimoto, who will be superintendent by means of July.
Questioned no matter whether he considered parents must have a length studying solution in the coming college year, an issue that cropped up at the board conference, he spoke only of his very own college.
“As principal at Waipahu Substantial, we have been quite fully commited to returning our pupils entirely in individual,” he stated. “We want to be certain that at Waipahu … we assist our college students not only academically, but we are also addressing the social/emotional element for people students, for them to appear again and be ready to interact with their peers. Our teachers and their students are extremely a great deal wanting forward to returning in the drop.”
Considering the fact that Hayashi grew to become principal in 2009, Waipahu Significant has concentrated on launching learners toward university and professions with classes pertinent to true everyday living. Each and every pupil is a member of a nationally regarded design vocation academy, including pupils with important disabilities. The six academies assortment from well being to engineering to community provider.
Adverse stereotypes that after dogged the university have been obliterated less than his leadership. As an alternative, Waipahu students are known for getting faculty programs at their higher college campus as early as their freshman yr and performing primary study that is printed in countrywide scientific journals.
“He truly normally thinks of college students initially, what is in the best interest of the pupils,” mentioned Mark Silliman, who just lately retired as director of Waipahu’s pioneering Early School software. “He is selfless, and everything he does is to strengthen, to maximize the quantity of prospects that we can present our pupils of all sorts.”
“You have men and women who are having difficulties, you have men and women who have unique demands, you have pupils who are performing truly nicely,” Silliman said in an job interview. “He’s there for each individual one one of them, no matter whether it’s band, teachers, sporting activities, just about every side of student everyday living.”
The the greater part of students at Waipahu Substantial occur from small-profits families, and whilst poverty can hamper scholar achievement, the staff is effective to clear away obstacles and broaden students’ horizons.
A person spectacular indication of Waipahu’s good results is the actuality that 10 of its college students competent for the 2021 U.S. Presidential Scholars software, out of a complete of 64 learners who certified statewide from equally personal and community educational institutions. And 3 Waipahu college students went on to grow to be semifinalists, out of the state’s 8 semifinalists. (Ultimately, this year’s two Presidential Scholars hailed from Punahou and ‘Iolani.)
In 2012 Waipahu High launched the state’s 1st Early Higher education plan, which brings professors on to higher university campuses to teach university courses. Considering the fact that then it has taken off and spread to universities statewide. Just about a quarter of the 2,800 college students at Waipahu Substantial now consider faculty classes. This spring, 22 seniors experienced earned enough credits to get hold of their school associate’s degrees at the identical time as their high school diplomas.
Waipahu was also the initial significant faculty in the nation to acquire permission to constitution its individual chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, the honor culture for neighborhood faculties. This 12 months the national Phi Theta Kappa bestowed on Hayashi an honor that until then experienced been presented only to higher education presidents: the Shirley B. Gordon Award of Difference.
“I want men and women to know that he will be as dynamic a chief for every pupil in our state as he was for Waipahu and for the numerous other schools he labored for as he moved through his occupation,” claimed Silliman, a former local community school chancellor. “He is an very challenging worker.”
Hayashi started out his vocation in 1989 training at Lehua Elementary School and went on to turned an tutorial leader, principal and complex-location superintendent. He loaded in briefly as interim superintendent before Kishimoto began the work in August 2017. Silliman claimed Hayashi has an uncanny capability to provide out the ideal in every member of his staff members.
“He is a person who will give you the liberty and latitude to be innovative and resourceful and to get dangers,” Silliman claimed. “It’s unusual to find leaders that are like that.”
A product or service of Hawaii’s public faculties, Hayashi graduated from Kaimuki Significant School and acquired his bachelor’s diploma as nicely as two master’s levels from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, just one in academic administration and the other in curriculum and instruction. In 2018 he had the satisfaction of handing his daughter her diploma at her Waipahu Superior graduation.
Hayashi was named point out Principal of the Year by the Association of Secondary School Principals in 2014. The Hawaii Association of Occupation and Technological Education named him Administrator of the Calendar year in 2019. Beforehand, he gained the Masayuki Tokioka Excellence in Faculty Management Award.
“The college students at Waipahu Significant University are incredibly fortunate to have Keith blaze a path of chance for them that they could not get at any other community superior college in the condition,” Sandra Yorong, president of the Mates of Waipahu Significant School, wrote in a letter to the board. “As superintendent for the Division of Education and learning, we are self-confident that Keith will bring that very same electrical power to help all beneficiaries in the Hawaii general public college system.”
“He will make Hawaii the finest public college procedure in the nation, an prospect the Section of Education and the point out of Hawaii are not able to find the money for to miss out on,” Yorong additional.
The interim superintendent posture is envisioned to very last quite a few months, at an annual salary of $210,000.
