“Like those of Mark Twain’s death, rumors of the demise of Kahili Adventist School have been greatly exaggerated,” writes Kahili Adventist School Principal Bud Moon after hearing several rumors that his school was not continuing admissions or schooling. Begun 35
“Like those of Mark Twain’s death, rumors of the demise of Kahili Adventist School have been greatly exaggerated,” writes Kahili Adventist School Principal Bud Moon after hearing several rumors that his school was not continuing admissions or schooling.
Begun 35 years ago in Kapa‘a, the current location of the school in Kahili offers “Christian, values-based education” for kindergarten to 12th-grade students. Incorporating the “Christian viewpoint and Biblical perspective,” only 20 percent of the school’s current students also attend the church of the same name.
“Our school is open to any student who can afford this type of education, making them good and godly,” Moon said.
Recent Kahili school board action verifies that the school is maintaining its traditional certified kindergarten through eighth-grade program. Two new teachers with more than 25 years’ experience and three others with more than 10 years’ experience have been added to the faculty.
“This new staff is dedicated to stimulate optimal academic growth for each student,” states a press release from the school.
Kahili’s high school program utilizes the distance-learning program of Keystone High, “an on-line school that has 170,000 alumni and currently a million students,” Moon writes.
While evangelical and secular educators oppose each other on approaches to subjects as vast as history, social studies, gender studies and science, Moon claims that “the vast majority” of the school’s students attend college. He noted that Kahili Adventist presents a science and math program that prepares them for undergraduate studies, “all while providing a Christian, value based education.”
In a 2005 lawsuit filed against the University of California schools by the Association of Christian Schools International, the plaintiff claimed that requirements or credits that were not accepted for admission discriminated against the Christian religion.
The UC perspective argued that empirical historical knowledge accepted by the wider collegiate community is contradicted by the limited Christian perspective. Therefore, it is left to the university to base its admission requirements by the broader standard.
While Moon said that Darwin-based evolution is taught as one possible theory weighted against Biblical creation science, and that both are considered as possible “truths,” it is more typical in such faith-based educations that “the word of God first and science second,” creates the basic guidelines for instruction, as Bob Jones’s “Biology for Christian Students” states in its forward.
Admissions are open for the next school year. For information contact the school’s registrar at 742-9294.
