By Denby Fawcett ’59

PUEO’s message from the beginning is not ‘if you go to college’ but rather ‘when you go to college.’ Higher learning is considered a given rather than a possibility for the scholars.

–  Kehaulani Kealoha-Scullion ’80, PUEO program director

When Kamalani Bacquering-Correa was called into the Kaimukī Middle School principal’s office more than a decade ago, she worried that she was in trouble. “I knew I was not a bad person. I was thinking, ‘What did I do?’” she said.

Far from being in trouble, Principal Frank Fernandes told Bacquering-Correa that she had been selected to be a PUEO Scholar at Punahou School, informing the perplexed eighth grader that she was about to embark on an exciting journey.  

The Clarence T. C. Ching Partnerships in Unlimited Educational Opportunities (PUEO) Program is Punahou’s collaborative initiative with the Hawai‘i State Department of Education to help public school students with limited economic resources but great potential to achieve their goals. Bacquering-Correa fit the bill, as have the nearly 500 other PUEO scholars who have been welcomed into the nationally recognized program over the last two decades.

PUEO scholars are selected from the academic middle of their classes in partnership with public elementary schools around the state. They attend summer school at Punahou at no cost for five weeks every summer until they graduate from high school. To be eligible, they must be part of the federal free or reduced lunch program and have the potential to be the first in their family to graduate from college. Over the years, PUEO has partnered with more than 60 public and private schools statewide.

PUEO’s focus on mid-level students is intentional. The academic needs of students struggling at the bottom may be too significant for Punahou to address in five weeks and the students who are already excelling academically at public schools do not need the extra boost.

“But the mid-level academic students are the ones who start to disappear into the corners of their classrooms, to be forgotten when the attention is focused on the school’s strongest achievers or those most academically challenged,” says PUEO Director Kehaulani Kealoha-Scullion ’80.

From the minute they are accepted into the PUEO program, they are called “scholars” – a term of respect for them as learners, an honorific many of them may never have been called before.

“The title ‘scholar’ is to remind us we were chosen; it is to hold us to a higher standard that is both an honor and a privilege. It says we are capable of bigger things than we imagined,” says Bacquering-Correa.

In PUEO, they begin to blossom, experiencing what Kealoha-Scullion calls “moments of joy and transformation.” PUEO’s message from the beginning is not “if you go to college” but rather “when you go to college.” Higher learning is considered a given rather than a possibility for the scholars.

Bacquering-Correa, who successfully graduated high school in 2014, says that without the college preparation classes and counseling she received at PUEO, it would have taken her much longer to find her path.

Today, Bacquering-Correa has a master’s degree in social work from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is employed by the Queen’s Medical Center to help teenagers hospitalized for psychiatric care learn to manage the twists and turns of their medical conditions.

She has created a Hawaiian-culture based program to help her young patients cope – many of whom are Native Hawaiians, like her. She is hoping her behavioral health program, which is inspired by the Hawaiian values lessons she learned at PUEO, can gain traction and eventually get picked up by other institutions. “I want to help children. I see it as my duty to give back to a community that embraced me when I was young,” she said.

Bacquering-Correa has written papers for academic journals and is comfortable speaking to large groups. “PUEO made me confident, more of an extrovert. When I entered the program, I was too shy to call on the phone to order a pizza. I dreaded talking to strangers. At PUEO, I found my voice,” she says.

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PUEO made me confident, more of an extrovert. When I entered the program, I was too shy to call on the phone to order a pizza. I dreaded talking to strangers. At PUEO, I found my voice.

–  Kamalani Bacquering-Correa, PUEO alumna

TO BOLDLY GO

Bacquering-Correa mentions teacher Ka‘eo Vasconcellos ’96 as particularly inspiring with what she called his “out of the box” style of teaching. Vasconcellos, in conjunction with his academic partner Lisa Kamalani ’77, have been teaching a modern Hawaiian history class to rising ninth grade PUEO scholars for the past 15 years.

They see their work as more than just a summer school job but rather a calling. “The satisfaction has been to see the PUEO scholars graduate from their high schools and go to college and later come back to say thank you. They still remember being cared for and loved here. Sometimes we are the only people in their lives to tell them they are better than they had been told and to encourage them to achieve more than they thought was possible,” Vasconcellos says.

Over the last 20 years, PUEO has been continuously refined – with the endgame of strengthening outcomes for its scholars. “We keep striving to fortify the children for what’s ahead,” Lisa Kamalani says. 

As part of PUEO’s evolution, the program has been expanded to accept scholars at a younger age.

When the program was launched in 2005, the students came to Punahou for summer school when they were about to enter the sixth grade. In 2023, rising fifth graders were accepted and this year, for the first time, PUEO accepted rising fourth graders.

The rationale for the program’s expansion is straightforward: the sooner you provide academic intervention, the better the outcomes. “Studies have shown that children who cannot read at grade level by the start of fourth grade are four times less likely to graduate on time than their grade-level peers,” says Kealoha-Scullion. “It is a startling statistic that shows the weight that early education carries for a child’s future success.” 

With this in mind, PUEO now offers targeted literacy and general academic support in the early years. Scholars will be at Punahou now for nine summers instead of seven. The expanded program has already touched many young students.

When fourth-grade student Temani Reyes-Kamana‘o from Ma‘ema‘e Elementary School began PUEO, the self-described plant lover was amazed by the many different kinds of shrubs, flowers and trees on the Punahou campus and by Bishop Hall where PUEO’s classrooms are located. “I was in awe when I saw the library. So many books. I love books.”

Azalea Garcia, 9 years old and a first year PUEO scholar, said she was grateful for Punahou’s emphasis on Hawaiian studies. “They teach us Hawaiian stuff, Hawaiian words. It has made me excited about school, to know more Hawaiian language and culture and yesterday I got to learn about horses when we had a Paniolo Day.”

For some scholars just getting to the Punahou campus was an unforgettable experience. One of the fourth graders who began PUEO  this summer had never traveled farther from her Waianae home than the five miles up the road to Nānākuli. On the first day of school, the bus trip she took from the Leeward Coast to Punahou’s Mānoa campus greatly expanded the limits of the world as she once knew it.

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We keep striving to fortify the children for what’s ahead.

–  Lisa Kamalani ’77, who has been teaching modern Hawaiian History, along with academic partner Ka’eo Vasconcellos ’96, to rising ninth grade PUEO scholars for the past 15 years.

ENDURING BONDS

Many of the new students said they were worried they would be lonely in the new setting, but they soon realized they were all in the same boat and quickly befriended each other.

Each summer the students reunite with the same friends with whom they started the program. It is one of the strengths of PUEO. The scholars in each cohort support and guide their peers through the rigorous studies, summer after summer; often becoming friends for life.

“We all have different backgrounds, but we bond. Seeing each other again and again is something we can count on. Students in other schools say they hate summer school. Not me. I always looked forward to seeing my friends and kumu,” says Bacquering-Correa.

PUEO has also improved in its 20 years by expanding its counseling program from one counselor – Matt Nakamura ’73 – to a student support team of three counselors as well as Dean of Students Alan Lum ’80.

Nakamura says their main job is to advocate for the scholars, helping them overcome obstacles that prevent them from experiencing all of PUEO’s opportunities, whether that means buying an alarm clock for a scholar so they don’t oversleep, or helping a student get through a tough family situation.

“I remember one particular incident where Tim (Lucas ’62, the former PUEO dean of students) and I drove to a scholar’s house to give him a ride the day after a fire had destroyed most of his family’s belongings. The teenage boy was exhausted and spent but was also grateful for the kindness and support,” Nakamura says.

The program provides three buses to bring scholars each day to their classes from bus stops in Wai‘anae, Waipahu and Kahulu‘u. Students who leave home early each morning for their lengthy commutes often arrive hungry and enjoy the hot breakfast service the program initiated for all the scholars last year.

Punahou Food Service Director Nelson Uyemura ’93 says their enthusiasm has inspired him to go out of his way to serve them the foods they especially like such as an eggs, rice and bacon plate or his signature fried rice loco moco.

Attendance rates for PUEO have always been high since its inception, usually hovering around 92%. But last year, after the inauguration of the breakfast service, attendance soared to 96%.

A key reason the scholars keep showing up besides the hot waffles and bacon breakfasts is the chance to meet adults who are experts in their fields and to go places they’ve never been before.

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BIG DREAMS

Kawa Huang, who will be a senior at Kaimukī High School, this year said until he enrolled in PUEO as a sixth grader he had never been to Hanauma Bay or the Waikīkī Aquarium.

He says his parents – both immigrants from Vietnam – took him and his four sisters to the beach or shopping malls on weekends but with his father working long hours as a taxi driver and his mother employed at a barbecue restaurant, there was little time for extra excursions.

“PUEO made my life more fun. I got to interact with more people, spend time with kids from different schools and go on interesting field trips,” he says.

Huang’s four sisters were PUEO scholars. All of them graduated from college.

He said at Punahou he grasped seemingly small skills that made a huge difference in his learning, “I learned how to ask for help. Before I had been too scared to ask,” he said.

This year he will be applying to the University of Chicago to pursue his goal of becoming a paleontologist, a dream that was sparked by his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.

Ashley Yu, who is entering her senior year at Roosevelt High School, says PUEO’s hands-on style of learning and emphasis on group projects has helped her retain knowledge. The eighth grade performing arts class with its improvisation techniques, has helped her to become more outspoken – more sure of herself.

PUEO’s one-on-one college counseling and college readiness classes have given her the courage to think about attending an Ivy League university, such as Yale and Dartmouth, something she said she never would have considered before. Her hope is to become an anesthesiologist.

Yu and Huang were among the students saying a final goodbye at PUEO’s annual end of summer celebration in the Thurston Chapel on July 19. Punahou President Mike Latham ’86 attended the event and shared warm farewell remarks, telling the scholars: “You brought your best selves here every day. You stuck with it. You have made Punahou a better place.”

The celebration included singing, hula, videos and a hilarious skit. In conclusion, Kealoha-Scullion reminded the cohort: “Together we are stronger. Together we are better. Together we are PUEO. I believe in you and I’m so proud of you.” It was the perfect punctuation to those moments of joy and transformation that Kealoha-Scullion hopes for at the beginning of each summer session.

PUEO is made possible by the generous support of The Clarence T. C. Ching Foundation, Tsuha Foundation, Freeman Foundation, Mamoru and Aiko Takitani Foundation, Victoria S. and Bradley L. Geist Foundation, Fender Play Foundation, Sidney Stern Memorial Trust, Rev. Abraham Kahu Akaka Ministries Foundation; with founding grants from Unbound Philanthropy, The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation and the Harold K. L. Castle Foundation; and the inspirational contributions of many individual donors.

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The Clarence T. C. Ching PUEO Program: Milestone Moments

There have been many highlights during the program’s distinguished 20 years of uplifting Hawai‘i’s youth. Here are a few salient moments: