Construction on Mililani Middle School’s New Classroom Building project was launched today in a groundbreaking ceremony with students, parents, staff and community members. The new three-story structure will house 15 classrooms to serve Mililani Middle’s nearly 1,900 students. When complete, the new facility will provide the expanded classroom capacity needed to allow the school to adopt a single-track school year to replace its current multi-track calendar. “The new classrooms will be a significant expansion and allow Mililani Middle to accommodate its entire student body,” said Superintendent Dr. Christina Kishimoto. “They will provide our students enhanced learning opportunities and resources to prepare them for the local and global challenges of the 21st century.” Mililani Middle School currently serves 1,866 students in grades 6 through 8 who come from five elementary feeder schools in the Mililani Complex. Since its opening in 1998, the middle school has operated on a year-round, multi-track calendar to allow the large number of students equitable access to classrooms, teachers and facilities.
Students are divided into four groups called tracks that allow instructional time and breaks periods at regular intervals to be distributed among the tracks independently throughout the year. These different instructional schedules currently allow three-fourths of the student body to be in school at any given time.
“The new classroom facilities will expand students’ academic opportunities here at the state’s largest middle school and help them to achieve their potentials,” said Senator Michelle Kidani. “The single-track calendar will also assist parents by keeping children on the same timetable, making it much easier to plan daily schedules, extra-curricular activities and family trips.”
“Additional classrooms will enable the transition to a single track calendar and provide Mililani families with a better quality of life,” said Senator Donovan Dela Cruz. “We appreciate the Department of Education and City and County of Honolulu for prioritizing this project for the community.” The new three-story building will provide 15 classrooms (five per floor) and over 34,000 square feet of space, along with a new parking area and utilities. It will be built over approximately one acre of land, previously owned by the City & County of Honolulu’s Department of Parks and Recreation, that was formerly part of the adjacent Mililani Mauka Community Park. The new building is anticipated to be ready for use by the spring of 2021 at an approximate construction cost of $14 million.
“Now in our twenty-first year, the multi-track calendar has served us well and has allowed us to stay a step ahead of population growth in the Mililani community,” said Principal Elynne Chung. “When our new building is completed, moving to a single-track calendar will help us to ease the transition between the elementary, middle and high school levels by keeping our students on a regular schedule throughout their academic development.”
Mililani Middle is currently the state’s largest middle school and has the eighth largest enrollment among public schools statewide, following seven high schools. Two other public schools, Kapolei Middle and Holomua Elementary, are also on multi-track calendars.