HILO — Friday marked the fourth consecutive day students were arrested for allegedly fighting at Pahoa High and Intermediate School.
Police Sgt. Charrise Wakita said two 12-year-old girls were arrested on campus at 2:05 p.m. Friday and charged with disorderly conduct for an after-school altercation. Neither girl was injured, she said, and both will appear in Family Court.
That brings to seven the number of students, all juveniles, arrested and charged in a spate of campus clashes between Tuesday and Friday last week — four girls and three boys, ranging in age from 12 to 16.
There were no arrests on the campus on Monday, Wakita said late Monday afternoon.
Chad Keone Farias, Ka‘u-Keaau-Pahoa complex area superintendent, said Monday all the students arrested have been suspended — three days for the six students charged with disorderly conduct, and a longer suspension for a 15-year-old boy facing a misdemeanor assault charge.
Farias said a teacher called a Honolulu television station on Dec. 8 “during school hours, when he should have been teaching class … to make a complaint that a security guard, who’s an adult supervisor, got scratched up in a girl fight.”
The teacher reportedly told KHON-TV the school is “not a safe place to work, and the students overwhelmingly don’t feel safe.” He also told the TV station a school security guard was hurt earlier in the year breaking up a fight on campus and was out on leave, which Farias confirmed.
“He slipped and twisted his back,” Farias said.
Farias, who hadn’t heard about Friday’s arrests when initially contacted by the Tribune-Herald, said the teacher’s concerns are legitimate, but added media accounts painting Pahoa High and Intermediate as “the most dangerous school in the state” are overblown.
“It tears the community apart, and I feel bad for them,” he said. “You don’t want to sound like three fights are acceptable; no fights are acceptable. I don’t want any fights on the campus. We’ve taken a bunch of steps to try to change the culture with teachers and with students — student assembly, faculty meeting, getting more positive adults on campus. Proactive steps. We don’t want (more) police on campus. It doesn’t look right, and the kids feel different when the police are on campus. We do have police presence, though. We have school resource officers.”
Farias said both Keaau Middle and Pahoa Intermediate schools are assigned a school resource officer. He said the Keaau resource officer has been temporarily assigned to Pahoa “so we can have (officers) at two points on campus.”
“They’re both there (Monday); they’ll probably be there (today), too.”
According to Farias, the four students arrested Thursday for disorderly conduct, two boys ages 15 and 16, and two girls ages 12 and 13, are two sets of siblings, in each case an older brother and younger sister.
“I don’t even want to speculate why the two girls fought,” he said. “The two boys fought because their sisters were fighting.”
Farias echoed police Sgt. Brandon Konanui, who told the Tribune-Herald last Thursday the students arrested are “good kids making bad choices.”
“These are really good kids,” Farias said. “Ninety-five to 98 percent of the kids are really making great choices. A small percentage — not even a percent, a few — are making terrible choices.”
He said part of the problem is when two youngsters fight, other students rush in, either to join the fight, watch — or in this day of smartphones, perhaps take video of the hostilities.
“The kids just run to these fights like they’re going to watch BJ Penn and (mixed martial arts),” he said. “It’s frustrating. And it’s frustrating for the teachers, because they want to get in there and help, the ones I spoke to.”
Another problem Farias acknowledged is having both intermediate and high school students on the same campus, which has about 700 students.
“If we could separate the intermediate and high schools and let 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds act like 11-, 12- and 13-year olds without the 16- and 17-year-olds coming up behind them to get their brothers’ and sisters’ backs. That shouldn’t happen,” he said.
Farias said he and others worked over the weekend to try to get a handle on the campus situation, meeting with police, Department of Education psychologists and counselors and Department of Health professionals.
“I’m going to work very, very hard to help create a better culture around the school and hope that permeates the community. That’s what we’re trying to do, create a safe place. If kids can’t feel good at school, feel safe at school, then that’s a problem for me,” he said.
“We think this school is a really good school with a bunch of loving and good kids trying to get an education. And we’re going to handle the ones who are making it hard. We’re going to handle it appropriately.”
Calls to school Principal Darlene Bee and Hawaii State Teachers Association President Corey Rosenlee were not returned by press time Monday.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.