The top reported proficiency rate is 39% in English language arts. The lowest is 27% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Kona Pacific - Pcs
Kona Pacific Public Charter School sits along Mamalahoa Highway in Kealakekua, a small rural community in South Kona on the Big Island's west side. The school serves students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade and operates as a charter school under the Hawaii Department of Education, the statewide district that governs public education across the islands. With an enrollment under two hundred, Kona Pacific is a small school, and class sizes in the upper grades taper off noticeably, with only a handful of students in seventh and eighth grade.
The community around the school is dispersed along Highway 11, a two-lane rural corridor connecting Kailua-Kona to the north with the smaller towns of the southern Kona coast. Kealakekua has no traditional downtown. Homes, coffee farms, and scattered small businesses line the highway corridor, and the area's civic and cultural life centers on Kealakekua Bay, a few miles downslope via Napoopoo Road. The bay is a Marine Life Conservation District known for coral reefs, spinner dolphins, and its place in Hawaiian history as the site of first extensive contact between Hawaiians and Westerners. Publicly reported sources describe a community that is stable or slightly declining in population, with little large-scale development pressure compared to nearby Kailua-Kona.
Housing in the 96750 zip code is expensive relative to mainland norms. The typical home value sits well above the national benchmark and moderately above the state median, and the price-to-income ratio indicates a market that demands a substantial share of household earnings. For families considering a move to the area, the housing market is a real factor, and rental data was not available in the provided material.
Academically, Kona Pacific's state assessment results from the most recent school year show mixed proficiency across grade levels. In English language arts, fourth-grade proficiency was the strongest grade, with roughly half of tested students meeting proficiency. Third, fifth, and sixth grades showed lower proficiency rates. In mathematics, fourth grade again stood out as the strongest, while fifth-grade math proficiency was notably low, with only a small fraction of students meeting proficiency. Sixth-grade math fell in between. Science was assessed only in fifth grade, where proficiency was modest. Seventh- and eighth-grade results were not reported in the available data. A parent may want to look into this further with the school, as the missing upper-grade results and the variability from grade to grade make it hard to read a clear pattern from a single year of data.
Only one year of assessment data was available, so there is no trend to trace. The school-wide summary shows ELA proficiency running ahead of math and science, but with small grade-level cohorts, year-to-year shifts can look large even when underlying performance is stable. Participation rates were high in the grades where results were reported.
The student body is diverse in composition. White students make up the largest single group, followed by Hispanic students and students of two or more races. A smaller share identifies as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and a very small number as Asian or Black. Half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which is a moderate level for the area. Information on special education enrollment and English learner status was not available in the provided data.
Because Kona Pacific does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report. No data on discipline, course access, staffing, attendance, or specific program offerings was available in the provided material, so those areas are left out rather than guessed. The Hawaii Department of Education district brief returned no parent-relevant policy or curriculum changes of note.
For a family weighing Kona Pacific, the school offers a small, community-rooted setting in a rural part of the Big Island with strong cultural and natural surroundings. The academic results are uneven across grades and subjects, and the available data is thin enough that direct conversation with the school would help a parent understand how instruction is structured, what the upper-grade experience looks like with such small cohorts, and how the school supports students who are below proficiency. The housing market in Kealakekua is costly, and the area's rural character means limited walkability and services compared to Kailua-Kona to the north.
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