The top reported proficiency rate is 61% in English language arts. The lowest is 44% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Waialua High & Intermediate School
Waialua High & Intermediate School sits on Farrington Highway in Waialua, a former sugar mill town on Oʻahu's North Shore. The school serves grades seven through twelve as a regular public school under the Hawaii Department of Education, and its enrollment is moderate for a combined secondary campus. The community around it is quiet and residential, shaped by plantation history rather than the tourist commerce of nearby Haleʻiwa. The old Waialua Sugar Mill anchors the town center, now home to small shops, a farmer's market, and local coffee. Small-scale diversified agriculture, including coffee and bananas, continues in the surrounding area, and the Kawailoa Solar project represents a more recent infrastructure investment nearby. A Waialua Town Master Plan has been produced through Honolulu's planning department, indicating some formal attention to the town's future.
The student body reflects Waialua's plantation-era heritage as a place where families from multiple origins settled and stayed. Students identifying as two or more races make up the largest single group, with Hispanic, White, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students each forming substantial portions of the enrollment. A moderate share of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. The school's size means students across six grade levels share one campus, which gives it a combined middle-and-high-school character rather than the feel of a standalone high school.
On state assessments, the most recent results show a mixed picture. English language arts is the stronger area. In seventh grade, a majority of tested students reached proficiency, and in eighth grade the proficient share remained above half. Mathematics results sit lower. Seventh-grade math proficiency was around the midpoint, while eighth-grade math dipped below that. Science, tested only in eighth grade, showed a comparable portion of students proficient. When the school's results are aggregated across all tested grades, the summary figures come out lower, partly because the aggregate includes grade bands and subjects where performance was softer. A parent comparing the grade-level detail against the all-grades summary should keep in mind that the two views tell slightly different stories. We looked for multi-year trend data to see whether these results represent improvement, decline, or stability, but only one year of assessment data was available, so no trend could be established.
Several data categories that parents often ask about were not provided. No graduation rate was included in the available data, though the school does serve twelfth grade, so this is a gap a parent may want to look into directly with the school. Individualized education program counts and English learner counts were also missing. No course access information, staffing data, attendance figures, or discipline records were available. Program offerings such as Advanced Placement, career pathways, or dual-credit options were not reported, so we cannot characterize what the upper grades offer beyond the standard curriculum. Civil-rights data was absent as well. A comparison fact-set positioning this school among its peers was not provided, so we cannot place its results against neighboring campuses.
The housing market in Waialua's zip code is expensive by any standard. Home values sit well above the state benchmark and far above the national one, with a price-to-income ratio that signals serious affordability pressure. Monthly rents are also high relative to income. For families considering a move into the attendance area, this is a market where buying a home requires a substantial income, and renting absorbs a large share of it. The community itself offers a rural, tight-knit setting with civic anchors like the public library and post office integrated into the residential fabric rather than separated on distant campuses.
What the available picture says is that Waialua High & Intermediate is a small-town combined secondary school with a diverse student body rooted in the North Shore's plantation past. Its ELA results are a relative strength, its math and science results are more modest, and much of what parents typically want to know about the high school years, including graduation outcomes and advanced coursework, will require a direct conversation with the school.
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