Tehani Rawlins with her kids and husband. From left: Maya, Noah, Rawlins, Layla, husband Shandale Graham, and Miles. (Photo: Reis Photography)
Special needs among students are important to address but it can be difficult to do so in a Catholic school setting
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Tehani Rawlins attended Sacred Hearts Academy for 13 years and is the third generation of women in her family to go to the all-girls school in Kaimuki. So, she always imagined she’d send her four kids to Hawaii Catholic schools too.
“In my family, all the girls go to Sacred Hearts and all the boys go to St. Louis,” Rawlins said.
And her eldest child, Maya, did attend Sacred Hearts for a number of years. Her older son, Miles, is a current student at St. Louis School.
But her younger daughter, Layla, 7, has autism and ended up attending public school because she needed speech and occupational therapy and a one-to-one aide among other services and accommodations that public schools are required by law to provide. Rawlins’ youngest son, Noah, also goes to the same public school.
Tehani Rawlins’ daughter, Layla, plays on the Don’t Stop Dreaming Firebirds baseball team for kids with autism. (Courtesy photo)
“Coming from private school all my life, I always felt that the school was acting in the best interest of the child,” Rawlins said. “And I’m not saying that the Department of Education doesn’t, but I think they could do a better job in explaining and supporting…and more timely communication, which is what I love about Sacred Hearts and private schools.”
“At Catholic schools, I always know what’s going on with my kids, whereas with the DOE, I really have to work at developing that relationship with the teacher and the aides and the school. Sometimes I feel like I’m fighting. I never felt like I was fighting at Sacred Hearts or St. Louis.”
She said that if a local Catholic school could accommodate her daughter, she would certainly consider going back to one. Besides the supportive environment, Rawlins said she appreciated the lower turnover rate among faculty and staff in her Sacred Hearts years and in her two eldest kids’ time in Catholic schools. She also wishes Layla could receive religious education during her school day rather than on the weekend when she often needs to wind down from the school week.
“That’s where I would prefer her to be at, not just because that’s where I went, but because I think …. it’s important to be in that environment,” Rawlins said. “It’s different, it’s more community, you feel like a family.”
She knows other parents that would prefer private schools but can’t send their kids there because extra services would have to be out of pocket on top of the already higher private school tuition.
Llewellyn Young
Rawlins likes the idea of one central Catholic school that could serve special needs students.
A perennial topic
That idea has been floating around the Hawaii Catholic school circles for years, says Lewellyn Young, superintendent of Hawaii Catholic Schools.
“The topic always comes up every year, it’s always looming in the background to see how we can serve students with disabilities,” Young said. “And it always falls short for one reason or another. Either we don’t have the pool, we don’t have the facilities, or we don’t have the means of accommodating.”
And Young, who worked in special education early on in his career, says he wants to “do it right” when it comes to establishing a program or school that accommodates special needs students.
Public schools must meet these needs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and they have federal funding to do so. Private schools are limited in what they can offer by their staffing and resources.
“I’m hopeful that one day we’ll be able to do something like that,” Young said. “Right now we just seem to fall short every year of pulling that together.”
“We want to make sure that we’re servicing our students, all of our students and their families with the highest quality service possible, not just for academics, but for all the elements that we look at the spiritual, the physical, the social-emotional,” he added.
“And when you’re talking about kids with special needs, all of those things have to be done for them and it has to be done right because it’s very high risk and very high stakes.”
In his discussions and involvement with the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, Young sees local, private, non-Catholic schools also struggling with accommodations for special needs due to the expertise and resources required.
He says most principals at Hawaii Catholic schools want to be able to address this as well.
A Catholic Assets
Sue Ferandin’s daughter was in second grade when she was diagnosed with dyslexia. While her son went to Catholic elementary school on Oahu, she remembers being a bit saddened that her daughter wouldn’t be able to do the same because she needed more accommodations.
Ferandin is the executive director of the Augustine Educational Foundation, which manages scholarships and financial aid programs for Hawaii Catholic Schools, and she experienced firsthand the struggle to find the right school for your child when they learn differently.
One local proposal was, with the foundation’s help, to turn the then-recently shuttered Holy Trinity School in Kuliouou into a “Catholic Assets,” Ferandin said, referring to Assets School, an alternative school in Honolulu.
Students at Oahu Catholic schools could go to this satellite campus for part of the day to receive the specialized learning they couldn’t get at their main school. However, the idea ended up being too expensive to implement.
“Ten years ago, the ballpark figure was $6 million,” said Ferandin. That cost included bussing, insurance and specially trained staff. An additional tuition component would be added to the student’s regular school tuition.
“It’s kind of always been a little bit of a pipe dream.”
Not that there isn’t demand for this type of Catholic school or that Catholic administrators are against the idea.
“I think every administrator wants that. There isn’t one person that I’ve talked to that said they don’t want to be inclusive,” Ferandin said.
She also pointed out that the right fit in a school for a child can affect the whole family, not just the student.
“When someone has the vision to see kids that learn differently in a different light, it makes the whole family flourish,” she said.
“We need to make this whole thing more parent-friendly, where we [parents] have a partnership with the school.”
The fit wasn’t working
David Kenney, the head of school of St. Anthony School on Maui, says that there is definitely a need for more support within local Catholic schools for students with special needs.
For one thing, Hawaii offers very limited services under the federally funded Private School Participation Project to students who go to private schools.
But he says most Catholic schools while wanting to accept students of all abilities are limited in what they can do. It gets more challenging with more complex cases that go beyond accommodations like longer testing time.
David Kenney
The older the student gets the harder it can be for them to meet the workload without additional supports.
Kenney said there was a student last year who had to leave St. Anthony because the fit wasn’t working.
“It really was unfortunate because [his parents] really wanted a Catholic school experience,” he said. “They loved having him here, they liked the environment. But, you know, he really was struggling at school.”
After recommending the student get evaluated through the public school system, it showed he had significant learning difficulties. He eventually switched to a public school.
But Kenney has seen where a Catholic school can fit an atypical student.
In Massachusetts where he is originally from, he points to the Cardinal Cushing Center in Hanover as a model program where special needs students are accommodated in a Catholic setting. He also recently had an inquiry from a family moving to Hawaii from Florida. Their daughter has a learning difference but is in a private, Christian school with resources to support her such as a school psychologist and a learning specialist.
This past summer, Kenney attended a hybrid conference with the Catholic Coalition for Special Education where he networked with other U.S. Catholic educators struggling with the same issue.
CCSE has a “Believe in Me!” program that gives grants to Catholic K-12 schools in Maryland and Washington D.C. to hire special education teachers and staff, buy specialized equipment and supplies, and offer professional development in this area.
“It really is a resource issue,” Kenney said in referring to what holds Catholic schools back. “It doesn’t mean you necessarily need to have a lot of fancy equipment, but it’s about the time to be able to work with the students and the teachers and put the scaffolding and supports in for everyone.”
Before becoming St. Anthony Maui’s principal in 2021, Kenney worked in the DOE. Originally trained as a school psychologist, he worked on the mainland for 24 years, mainly as a special education director for several public schools.
His work with the Hawaii DOE was as a district education specialist for Maui district supervising two Maui school complexes’ special education services, working in behavioral health and on an Inclusive Practices initiative the DOE implemented a few years ago.
The Inclusive Practices initiative started because “Hawaii actually ranked at the bottom in terms of being able to provide inclusive school experiences for students with disabilities out of all of the states,” Kenney said.
Because of that newer initiative, he said much progress has been made though much work also remains.
Kenney does believe teachers are receiving better training in college today than those he saw as a new school administrator back around 2001.
“I think the colleges are starting to come around to the idea of neurodiversity and different ways of teaching students, using brain-based research,” he said.
After starting at St. Anthony, he did some initial professional development with the school faculty and staff on “universal design for learning.”
To explain that concept, he uses the comparison to how a wheelchair ramp can be used by both someone in a wheelchair and someone who can walk. In the same way, a school can work for neurotypical students and also fit neurodiverse students.
“When you talk about special education instruction, it really is good teaching,” Kenney said. It’s all about powerful teaching. The techniques that you use to work with students with disabilities works for all learners.”
