LIHU‘E — A weekend dog attack that left three Kapa‘a High School sheep dead highlights the shortcomings in the school’s struggling agriculture program and the dearth of student interest in farming, the school’s principal and primary ag teacher said this
LIHU‘E — A weekend dog attack that left three Kapa‘a High School sheep dead highlights the shortcomings in the school’s struggling agriculture program and the dearth of student interest in farming, the school’s principal and primary ag teacher said this week.
“It’s just devastating because we’re trying to get off the ground,” Meghan Ornellas, science and agriculture teacher, said Monday, a day after she came upon the dogs when coming to the school to feed the sheep.
One sheep was already dead by the time the Kaua‘i Humane Society responded to the scene Sunday afternoon, and another was euthanized when a KHS veterinarian discovered “extensive” injuries, the responding humane society officer, who asked to remain nameless, said Wednesday.
Ornellas said the third sheep died Tuesday after struggling with its injuries for around 48 hours.
The three sheep had been at Kapa‘a High School since April 2009, she said, and were an integral part of the animal husbandry program that taught students about feeding, vaccination, de-worming, breeding and pasture maintenance and rotation — all important skills for a career in ranching.
Had the sheep lasted a bit longer, the students would have been able to learn about slaughtering, Ornellas said.
“(The students) really wanted to eat the animals,” she said. “The three sheep were wasted; we didn’t get to eat them, we just threw them away.”
Ornellas said three large dogs were in the pasture and barked at her when she arrived Sunday. The KHS officer eventually located three dogs fitting Ornellas’ description unsecured at a nearby property. After Ornellas identified the dogs in photographs, the officer cited the dogs’ owner for leash violations and dangerous dog violations.
The officer said KHS policy does not permit the accused owner to be identified until after the case goes to court as the matter is still under investigation.
“I don’t think that there was any intent for this to happen, however, steps do need to be taken to contain the dogs on the property,” the officer said, noting the comments were not on behalf of the humane society. “This is the whole reason why we ask people to obey the leash law. You may have no idea what your dogs are capable of, and you have no idea what they’re doing while you’re gone.”
Ornellas said her biggest concern is the school’s failure to adequately fence its boundary lines, and said she hopes the incident serves both as “a teachable moment” for the students — the need to protect your livestock from predators — and also as a wake-up call to the school to place greater emphasis on its agriculture program, which also includes a greenhouse and vegetable garden.
A ‘24-7 occupation’
Longtime Kapa‘a High School Principal Gilmore Youn grew up on a farm in Wailua Homesteads, but when he moved out, he promised himself, “I would never, ever farm again.”
“I’m not sure that us, the second generation, encourages our children to go into farming because it’s a lot of hard work,” Youn said Wednesday. “It’s a lot of hard work, a lot of sacrifice. Farming you cannot wait to do the weeding, do the fertilizing, do the harvesting. It has to be done now, today. Farming is a 24-7 occupation.”
Youn said students see farmers “battling high taxes, water issues, alien species, weeds, public outcry against use of chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers” and lose interest. He said only 21 students are signed up for the agriculture elective for next year, enough for one class. Years ago, there were two or three sections of ag education, Youn said.
Nowadays, auto mechanics, digital media, graphic communications and other high-technology fields attract more interest from students, he said, because “there are other jobs here on Kaua‘i that are much more attractive than farming.”
“It’s not a farming community anymore,” he said. “Of course we believe it’s very important for our island, because there are a lot of ag lands that are not being productive right now. But how do we change the mindset of our kids that agriculture is an area that they need to go into?”
Ornellas, niece of prominent Kaua‘i farmer Jerry Ornellas, said it is “imperative” that the school continue to have an agriculture program and said the students “see the importance of it.”
“Kaua‘i has such a long history of agriculture and sustainability and we’re an island, we’re 2,500 miles from the Mainland, we need to be growing our own food,” she said. “It’s critical in this day and age with the lack of food security around the world.
“The kids find it bizarre and strange that we don’t have chicken farms and we don’t have a dairy,” she said. “We ship cattle off-island to go to a feed lot, and then we get the beef shipped back.”
Where Ornellas and Youn do agree is the need for the community to put more of an emphasis on local agriculture.
“How can the school alone change things? It should be a community-wide educational process where everyone needs to help the students make agriculture a high priority not only in the school and education but in the community,” Youn said.
Kaua‘i has changed
While Kapa‘a High School’s agriculture program finds itself in the spotlight this week, other schools across the island are dealing with similar issues, Department of Education Kaua‘i Complex Superintendent Bill Arakaki said Wednesday.
“Every level, elementary school, middle school and high school, have components of agriculture within their schools to get the students exposed to an area, a career that may interest them,” Arakaki said. “What has been happening, the enrollment into ag courses, especially in high school, has been dropping considerably. Other areas have been more interesting (to students).”
Agriculture is one of the six “career pathways” offered to students in high school, and is part of the “Career and Technology Education Program” that also includes course programs in automotive, woods, metals, electronics, graphics, business and more, Arakaki said.
“It depends on what students are interested in. It’s not only about getting their hands dirty, but it’s about other things involving research or diversified ag or those other things,” he said. “We need to let them know that there are other job opportunities besides the traditional. …
“There’s room for more students and more expansion as far as agriculture. How do we capture the interest of the children?” Arakaki said. “The more information we get out to the students, the more opportunities and options they have, they can make an educated choice of what they want to go into. Kids have different talents.”
While Arakaki said there has been a slight “resurgence” in ag education in recent years with the increasing awareness of food security, Youn said Kaua‘i has changed and has moved away from agriculture.
“It’s very unfortunate because to let all this agriculture land lay fallow, that’s unfortunate. To get people to work the land is a hard thing to do,” he said. “We had to do the farming, it was a way of life, it wasn’t our passion. … We were pretty much tied to the farm, we couldn’t do anything else. Do we want our kids to do the same? I don’t know.”
On the Web:
Kaua‘i Humane Society:www.kauaihumane.org
Aloha ‘Ike: www.kedb.com/programs.asp
Kapa‘a High School: www.k12.hi.us/~kapaahs
