Kauai High Foundation awards $106,000 in scholarships to 40 graduates

Forty Kauai High graduates walked away with $106,000 in scholarship support at the school’s senior luau at Smith’s Tropical Paradise, a lift that can mean the difference between starting postgraduation plans with a cushion and starting them in the red.

The Kauai High School Foundation awarded the money to students heading into community college, trade programs, and four-year universities. Recipients were selected by the foundation’s scholarship committee, chaired by Leland Tottori, working with Kauai High counselors, a process that ties the awards directly to students’ plans instead of treating them as a ceremonial handout. The foundation’s two-track structure, one for community college and trade students and one for university-bound students, reflects the reality that Kauai graduates do not all take the same road after commencement.

The size of this year’s distribution also shows how deeply the island continues to invest in its own students. The foundation awarded $108,000 to 38 students in 2025, $80,000 to 33 students in 2024, and $76,000 to 19 students in 2023. In 2024, its largest awards were $2,500 for two-year college students and $5,000 for four-year college and university students, with six of the 10 two-year recipients planning to attend Kaua‘i Community College. Those figures suggest the aid is meaningful, but still modest against the full cost of tuition, books, housing, transportation, and the wider expenses that come with leaving home or moving deeper into training.

The money came from a broad base of support that included alumni, families, and corporate benefactors. Among the largest gifts this year were $35,000 from Milt and Debbie Valera of the Kauai High Class of 1960, $30,000 from the Pauline and Nicholas Street Charitable Fund, now renamed the Street Family Charitable Fund, and $20,000 from Florence and Tad Yoshikawa of the Class of 1956. Nicholas Street attended with his daughters, underscoring how this school tradition has stretched across generations and remained tied to the institution long after graduation day.

Kauai High’s alumni network carries unusual weight because the school itself is woven into the island’s public history. It opened on September 14, 1914, in the renovated courthouse as the fifth high school of the Territory of Hawai‘i and the first high school on Kaua‘i. Today, the foundation says it supports scholarships, educational programs, capital improvement projects, and school activities, keeping that legacy visible in practical ways as each graduating class tries to move from the island’s classrooms to the next stage of work, training, or study.