Kamaile Academy PCS

Kamaile Academy PCS is a PK–12 public charter school serving 919 students on the leeward (west) coast of Oʻahu in Waiʻanae, Hawaiʻi, and it operates within the Hawaii Department of Education, the state's single statewide district.

About 89.12% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, making this a high-poverty school. Its classroom-level resources look comparatively generous: a student-teacher ratio of 11.7 to 1 and $11,720 in spending per student (2018-19, the most recent year available). Outcomes, however, sit at the low end — 2025-26 proficiency was 13% in ELA, 9% in math, and 13% in science, alongside a 70.0% graduation rate and 50.0% chronic absenteeism, meaning roughly one in two students misses enough school to be flagged. The only nearby school in this comparison set, Hawaii Technology Academy - PCS in Waipahu (12.97 miles away), graduates 92.0% of its students with 14.0% chronic absenteeism. That school, though, is nearly twice as large and just 16.06% low-income, so it works better as a demographic contrast than as a true peer benchmark.

Multi-year trends here are mostly flat or slipping: ELA fell from 17.72% to 16% to 13%, graduation dropped 8.9 points in a single year (78.9% to 70.0%), and math has never exceeded 10.23%. The encouraging exception is chronic absenteeism, which improved from 53.6% to 50.0%. Because Kamaile runs smaller classes and spends more per student than its nearby comparator yet posts weaker results, the data points to obstacles outside the classroom — attendance and economic hardship — rather than a shortage of school resources.