Camp H M Smith

This is the worst school on the planet. The teachers or horrible, staff is rude. They do not care about your child’s wellbeing or education. If you can avoid this school I would at all cost. Your child and there education WILL suffer. No one at this school seems educated or qualified to be in the field of education. I do not understand how a school could be filled with such poor educators. This teachers, staff and administrators don’t care and at the core are also terrible people.

Average, but tends to focus on problem students. Administration has several employees who need to retire, because work ethic and customer service are greatly lacking.

My kids have been going to this school for the past 4 years. Since I have 4, I have experience with them going through pre-k to 6th grade. Overall, we have had a good experience with adequate teacher communication and helpfulness. The staff stay with my kids until they are picked up. The staff even organized a meal-train for my family and offered extra support/counseling when our family was going through a rough time. We are a military family and like that our kids have friends who are in a similar position as them. This year, my kids have been able to have more field trips and more after-school activities are available such as art, language classes, hula, running club etc.

If you’re a parent or guardian looking for a school, this one particular school is not for your child. I will be listing one flaw (or more) of each grade to tell you why this is not the right school. Preschool does not have any flaws. It has great teachers there who really give a head-start in parenting because they teach how to brush your teeth, how to use the bathroom, etc.Kindergarten is the same as Preschool; it has a great teacher who enforces good behavior through a sort of reward system.Now this is where it starts to deteriorate.The 1st grade teacher doesn’t have full control of the class, so the students take advantage of that. I have seen one always punching or aggressively hugging the 6th graders. The 2nd grade has a similar problem with 1st grade, having them break the dress code and typical rules stated in our handbook.The 3rd grade teacher used to be pretty mean. However, I believe that they has turned over a new leaf and now very seldom is mean to the current 3rd graders.4th grade has no flaws in my opinion. The teacher puts the fun in learning by engaging the students to learn with relatable topics. They are always available to speak to students about anything personal. They are currently one of my favorite teachers.Now here is 5th grade. The 5th grade teacher is truly unreliable. From what I have observed, she has took control of some teachers and the way they teach their students. Her methods of teaching are very dumb and can affect the student’s mental health. I am a victim of her acts. She’d make me cry because I felt so embarrassed. She made me think that I was stupid, dumb, and not worth it for this world. She makes me put on this mask that prevents me from being my true self when she was around. Sometimes, I would just fake being sick in order to avoid her class. What really annoyed me was how she treated her students. I saw how she treated this one particular student badly. She’d treat them as if they were their grades. Favoritism. That was what she did. She also feels embarrassed that students that graduated from her grade weren’t doing so well in the next grade. Though, whenever she says that, I always think this: “Why are you embarrassed? You never taught us about anything. You always rant on about your children becoming successful! You know, we should feel embarrassed that we even had you as a teacher! You always say that ‘I care about your future’ but you do you care about mental health? NO!” (TBC)

Absolutely love HKS. There are only positive reviews of this school on fb groups, surprised to see couple neg reviews here. Yes, the school isn't brand new and fancy, but my 5yo thrived in HKS. There was no bullying (unlike public schools in HI, where white kids are bullied a lot), teachers are amazing and there is so much communication between the school and parents. School sends out weekly updates amd reminders, extra reminders when some event is happening. At the beginning of the year I printed out the yearly calendar and it was easy to follow which days are off, as everything is in the calendar. It doesn't matter which school your kid goes, sometimes half days happen (someone here commented saying they didn't know when those days happen until a day before), that is absolute lie, that parent just didn't read their emails properly. And HKS also has an app where that you can easily use to sign up for after school care. 90% families do seem to be military families. Parents can volunteer a lot ildurongbfun events aswell. And they have tuition assistance for thise in need, you just need to ask and apply.