By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
With the admission of boys in kindergarten this year, the formerly all-girls St. Francis School in Manoa was poised to be fully co-ed in 13 years, when those five year olds graduated from high school. However, on Oct. 23 the school announced it would cut the co-ed transformation time in half by accepting boys next year in grade six.
“The initial shock” of the decision, made last year, is waning, said Sister Joan of Arc Souza, principal of St. Francis.
“People have settled in and dealt with it,” she said. “Change is hard and you need to give people space and time to adjust to change. But as I say anytime I talk to people, the only things that don’t change are dead. And St. Francis is alive and well. So you have to expect change.”
The alteration to St. Francis’ admission policy was triggered by the State of Hawaii public school system’s decision to move the sixth grade from elementary schools to middle schools starting in the 2007-08 school year.
Sister Joan of Arc said it seemed like a good opportunity to invite fifth-going-into-sixth grade boys and girls to attend St Francis. She said one parent already told her that his son will be attending the sixth grade next year.
“Looks like we’re going to have at least one boy,” said Sister Joan of Arc, adding that no quota has been set for the number of boys in next year’s groundbreaking class. “But I hope there’s more because I don’t know that he’ll want to stay if he’s the only boy.”
St. Francis decided in 2005 to go co-ed after conducting a detailed evaluation of the economic and demographic conditions affecting the school, including the fact that, while Oahu had four all-girl schools, it had only one co-ed Catholic K-12 school — Maryknoll.
St. Francis’ decision leaves Hawaii with one Catholic all-girl school, Sacred Hearts Academy. Hawaii has two all-boys schools, the 4-12 grade St. Louis, and the 7-12 grade Damien Memorial. St. Louis is adding lower grades each year until it becomes a K-12 facility.
Sister Joan of Arc says there has been no negative response from other Catholic high schools.
St. Francis students, however, had mixed feelings about the move to co-ed status.
“I think I support them in taking this step,” said Leilani Magat, a 17-year-old St. Francis senior. “I think we’re going to be able to enhance other children’s education.”
Sixth grader Haley Faringer prefers the all-girl environment.
“With an all-girls school you can just say what you feel because they’re girls and they’ll understand,” said the 11-year-old. “But boys, sure they might be going through stuff, but their immature about it. They’re not sensitive.”
Faringer said her class recently had an English assignment to write a paper on whether they thought going co-ed was a good idea. Most of her classmates liked being at a single gender school, though two students were for the idea, including 10-year-old Makanani Pili who said, “I think it’ll be kind of cool because there’ll be boys.”
“My parents sent me here because they liked the idea of an all-girls school for a middle school and high school,” said 14-year-old Aline Bronson, a ninth grader who previously attended a co-ed school in Virginia. “I like the girls’ school better than a co-ed school.”
Students enrolled now in grades 6-12 will graduate in all-girls classes. Next year, the seventh and eighth grades will move from the lower to the upper campus. The new co-ed sixth grade class will remain on the lower campus along with a co-ed kindergarten/first grade dual classroom and St. Francis’ co-ed early learning center.
According to Sister Joan of Arc, if enough students are enrolled at the sixth through eighth grade level, the classes will be divided into separate gender classes. For high school, boys and girls will be together.
“Given our training, our teachers are very good at handling girls,” she said. “Now we need to spend some time educating them on how to handle boys. We’re open to gender separated classes where the need is.”
Ideal total enrollment would be about 500 students. “We don’t want to be a large school,” the principal said. “You still get to know all of your students by name. You recognize them. They’re not just numbers on a campus.”
St. Francis School, founded in 1924, did have one male high school student several years ago. He had been enrolled in St. Francis’ co-ed satellite campus in Lihue, Kauai, when the school closed in 2001 due to a lack of enrollment. The student, McKenzie Metcalfe, was allowed to attend his senior year at the Manoa campus. He graduated in 2002.