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Kamehameha Schools

The prestigious Kamehameha Schools, which serves children of Hawaiian ancestry, is the oldest private school in the state of Hawaii. Under pressure to prepare more children for education, this preschool for 3 & 4 year olds was opened in the back parking lot of a shopping mall on the windward side of the island of Oahu. Land-rich Kamehameha Schools intends to expand and serve 10,000 preschoolers by 2006.

Each 38’ x 60’ building includes two separate classrooms on either side with a children’s restroom, kitchen, and storage room in the middle which can be accessed by both classrooms. There are also an adult restroom and another storage room in each building. Smartside T1-11 siding with vertical grooves is used as the exterior siding, a gable roof with 2/12 pitch and composition shingles on the roof, sheet vinyl throughout the buildings, trough sinks in each classroom, and standard wall hung HVAC units.

All accessories in this school building are at “kid height” to accommodate the 3 & 4 year olds, including kiddy toilets in the restroom and trough sinks for hand washing in each classroom mounted at 24” above the floor. The large 72”x60” atrium windows in each classroom are hung lower on the wall so the children can easily view of the playground.

The preschool classroom buildings were approved for modular construction because the Kamehameha Schools intends to move the buildings to a more permanent location within 4 years. Relocatability and cost effectiveness of modular construction was a strong selling point to the schools’ Board of Trustees.

Because there is a long wait list statewide for preschool spaces, modular construction allows Kamehameha Schools the flexibility of putting modular classrooms on property the school owns throughout the state in a timely and cost effective manner. A very accessible and fairly level asphalt parking lot for this new school allowed the most cost effective installation method of using standard steel jack stands and 16”x16”x6” foundation blocks supporting the I-beams.