Honoka’a High and Intermediate School (Grades 7-12) is located in the center of Honoka’a Town on the Hamakua Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. The school was established in 1889 and serves a large geographic area including the communities of Waimea, Kawaihae, Ahualoa, Honoka’a, Kukuihaele, Pa’ahau and Pa’auilo. The Honoka’a Complex of schools includes HHIS, Honoka’a Elementary, Waimea Elementary, Waimea Middle, and Pa'auilo Elementary and Intermediate School. The Honoka'a Complex is unique in that we are the only high school in the state that has a K-6 (Honoka’a Elementary), a K-9 (Pa’auilo Elementary & Intermediate) and a K-8 Public Conversion Charter School (Waimea Middle) as feeder schools.

The Honoka’a complex feeder communities are similar to Honoka’a in most educational attainment level respects, but draw students from a variety of ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds. As part of a global community, the school has to compete for students with private and charter schools including Hawaii Preparatory Academy (international and local student body), Parker School (local student body), Kamehameha Schools (Hawaiian Community student body), and Kanu O Ka`Aina New Century Public Charter School (Hawaiian Language and project-based student body).

The campus is situated on nearly 7 acres in the middle of Honoka’a town. The facilities at the school include an administration/library building, a cafeteria facility, a gymnasium, an 11 acre farm area below the main school campus, and an auditorium. Several single-level buildings house a total of 55 classrooms which include facilities for industrial, automotive, agricultural, and culinary arts education, music, graphic arts, computer and science laboratories, and physical education. Our school’s facilities continue to be rated as “Very Good” (School Status and Improvement Report, 2009-2010).

Athletic facilities include a football/baseball/soccer field, tennis courts, and a gymnasium. Other nearby facilities such as softball and soccer fields, a track, and a swimming pool are county property but are accessible for school use. Honoka’a is passionate about sports and has had great success.

The school has school-wide access to the internet. Nineteen buildings, or 100% of the campus, are presently wired. Wiring includes data, video and voice throughout in an extended Star configuration incorporating a layer 3 switch and a fiber-optic backbone. We are running the NorthStar system with a phone in each teacher’s room. A video broadcasting system to all classrooms is in place. There are five fixed computer labs on campus: Library, Video Production and Digital Media Tech Lab, Arts and Communications Lab, a Foreign Language Lab and a general lab of 30, as well as three portable labs (2 PC and 1 Mac) of 25 computers each. A variety and number of computers in each classroom can be found. We have three Windows 2003 Servers for web-page serving, Active Directory and File Sharing. There are a total of over 500 total workstations on campus, including District, SPED and Office staff machines.

The communities of the Hamakua coast are rural and deeply rooted in agriculture. Sugar was the leading industry in Honoka’a and along much of the Hamakua Coast for at least 100 years. That era came to an end in 1994 when the Hamakua Sugar Plantation closed. Today the area has come back with a mix of tourism, farming, small businesses, construction, and ranching. Our largest feeder community, Waimea (aka Kamuela), is a ranching, small business, and diversified agriculture center. The largest employers are the hotels in South Kohala and North Kona. The largest skilled labor employer is Hamakua Energy Partners. The recent economic downturn has had a serious impact on the livelihoods of the community (such as the decrease in the number of construction and development projects) and we have seen our free and reduced lunch population rise to over 56%.