In 2022, Linapuni Elementary School had a chronic absenteeism rate of 92%. Essentially every student was chronically absent. A school serving a low-income immigrant community near Honolulu's Chinatown had, by any statistical measure, ceased to function as a regularly attended institution.

Three years later, the rate is 28%. Still above the state average of 24%, but a 64-percentage-point improvement that represents the largest absolute turnaround of any school in Hawaii.

The Arc of Collapse and Recovery

Linapuni's trajectory is extreme but follows a recognizable shape. Before the pandemic, the school had a 19% chronic rate -- above average but not alarming. Then the disruptions hit:

• 2019: 19% (pre-COVID baseline)
• 2020: 11% (COVID year, rates misleadingly low due to remote learning)
• 2021: 44% (the return to in-person)
• 2022: 92% (peak dysfunction)
• 2023: 44% (first major recovery)
• 2024: 36%
• 2025: 28%

The 2022 rate of 92% likely reflects a school where the systems that connected families to the building had broken down entirely. Linapuni serves many immigrant families, including Marshallese and Micronesian communities, for whom language barriers, work schedules, and cultural differences compound the usual challenges of pandemic-era attendance.

Not Just Linapuni: The Kalihi Corridor Recovery

What makes Linapuni's story particularly notable is that it is not happening in isolation. Several schools in the Kalihi corridor are showing similar improvement patterns:

School	2019	2022	2025	Peak-to-2025
Linapuni Elementary	19%	92%	28%	-64pp
Kalihi Elementary	29%	70%	37%	-33pp
Kalihi-Uka Elementary	12%	46%	17%	-29pp
Sanford B. Dole Middle	20%	55%	27%	-28pp
Kalihi-Kai Elementary	11%	41%	16%	-25pp
Kalihi-Waena Elementary	14%	48%	28%	-20pp

Multiple schools in the same neighborhood are recovering simultaneously. Kalihi-Kai and Kalihi-Uka have actually returned close to their pre-COVID rates, at 16% and 17% respectively. This pattern suggests something community-wide is driving the improvement, not just individual school-level interventions.

The Biggest Turnarounds in the State

Linapuni leads Hawaii's recovery leaderboard, but several other schools have made dramatic improvements from their 2022 peaks:

1. Linapuni Elementary: -64pp (92% to 28%)
2. Maunaloa Elementary: -61pp (63% to 2%)
3. Na Wai Ola PCS: -54pp (57% to 3%)
4. Honaunau Elementary: -48pp (72% to 24%)
5. Kihei Elementary: -48pp (71% to 23%)

These top improvers span multiple islands and include both traditional public schools and charter schools, suggesting that dramatic recovery is possible across different contexts.

Still Not Back to Normal

Despite the remarkable improvement, Linapuni has not fully recovered. Its current 28% is 9 percentage points above the pre-COVID 19%, and 4 points above the state average. At the current pace of improvement -- roughly 8 points per year over the last three years -- the school could return to pre-COVID levels by 2027.

But the math is less encouraging than it looks. The improvement was 48 points in the first year (2022 to 2023), then 8 points, then 8 points. The easy gains came first. The 28% who are still chronically absent are the students with the deepest reasons for missing school.

The Hawaii Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.