Punahou’s plan to return to campus during the COVID-19 pandemic has required vast changes across campus, including transforming spaces meant for other purposes into classrooms. This includes the Patrick H. Quilter Lab for Creative Arts at the Sidney and Minnie Kosasa Community for Grades 2 – 5. While the space, named for its lead donor, Patrick Quilter ’64, was designed to be a cutting-edge arts and music hub, it will be temporarily used as a regular elementary classroom, since class sizes have to be reduced to allow for social distancing. Quilter, who founded QSC (Quilter Sound Company), which over decades grew to become one of the largest and most successful audio companies in the world, says he’s pleased he helped fund a space that’s convertible and useful, especially during times when such versatility is vitally needed.
“I’m very happy the space was designed to be flexible enough to serve temporarily to allow for smaller class sizes, and thus, enable Punahou to support in-person student learning this coming semester,” Quilter said. “My congratulations go to the designers who figured all this out. I was extremely impressed by the facility when I visited last summer to see the ‘preview.’ It was so much more than I imagined. This speaks well to the School’s commitment to quality at all levels, and to the quality of the designers and builders who made it all happen. I support the many safety precautions that Punahou is doing for the fall semester. We are using many of the same measures at my place of business – face masks, traffic flow management, increased sanitation, reduced group sizes and planned responses in the event that COVID cases are discovered. We will eventually conquer this disease like so many others, but until then, we need to reduce the rate of spread.”