ANAHEIM : Help on Way for School Hit by Iniki

It’s the dream of many schoolchildren: to wake up one morning and find that the school has been blown away. No more classes, no more books, no more teachers’ warning looks.

That’s what happened to Hanulei Elementary School in Princeville on the island of Kauai when Hurricane Iniki ripped through Hawaii last summer. Students there have not attended classes since school closed for the summer.

All of which sounded pretty cool at first to 10-year-old Benny Mastropaolo when his aunt, who lives in Princeville, told him the school had been severely damaged.

But after thinking about it, Benny, a fifth-grade student at Woodsboro Elementary School, concluded that he was the lucky one. The Hanulei students “are probably getting bored,” he said.

Benny and many of Woodsboro’s 600 students have spent the past six weeks gathering school supplies for the students of Hanulei. Woodsboro’s student council decided to adopt the school as its Christmas project after Benny told the council what had happened there.

Jane Blasius, Benny’s teacher and an adviser to the student council, said the students brainstormed to come up with a list of items they considered essential, such as pencils, storybooks, lined paper and crayons.

“School supplies are scarce over there to begin with,” Blasius said. “Even when they get the school rebuilt, they will have a hard time stocking it.”

According to Woodsboro Principal Dale Downey, only high school students in Princeville are attending classes in makeshift locations. Classes for kindergarten through sixth-grade students of Hanulei Elementary will not resume until the school is repaired.

“We haven’t heard anything about how long that might be,” Downey said.

About a dozen boxes full of pencils, scissors, rulers, glue, crayons, paper and books have been collected. Students have also contributed a total of nearly $200 to pay for postage, but Blasius said that wasn’t nearly enough.

“It’s going to cost about $125 to send just four of these boxes,” she said.

Blasius has asked several commercial shipping companies and airlines to reduce their shipping cost but has had no luck so far. If the school doesn’t receive some assistance before the Christmas holiday, Blasius said the students will send what they can now and raise funds to send the rest early next year.

In addition to sending school supplies, the students at Woodsboro have written letters to their counterparts in Princeville in hopes of establishing pen pals.

Many of the letters referred to the hurricane, with some children expressing envy over being out of school while others said they thought it would be boring.

“I am sorry that your school got flattened by the hurricane,” wrote fifth-grader Alana Glauthier.

Another student wrote: “How are things after the hurricane? I bet it was scary. The only thing I go through are earthquakes.”

Fifth-grade student Jeffery Smith wrote: “I hope your school gets fixed because I’m sure you had a good school like ours.”