Shown at his Kalāwahine homestead property, award-winning principal Myron Monte has retired from the Department of Education after four decades. Photo: KWO Archive

By Lisa Asato / Ka Wai Ola Loa

After 41 years in the business, educator Myron Monte is starting a new chapter in life: retirement. His first order of business? Taking better care of himself now that he has the time to.

"I'm 63, I'm hoping to live to 84 at least," said Monte, an award-winning principal of Dole Middle School in Kalihi, O'ahu, who retired June 30. He wants to spend the next 20 years traveling with his wife, Barbara Tavares, having weekend campouts with his grandchildren (he has 16) and taking better care of his health.

"I've always been a heavy-set person and part of being that heavy," he said, is stress-related eating. "Stress is being fully responsible without the total control. And that's what a principal is. We have all the responsibility, but we don't necessarily have all the control."

Monte started in the Department of Education in 1968 as a social studies teacher at Jarrett Intermediate School in Pālolo, moving to Kalani High School a year later, where he helped to design a Hawaiiana curriculum as one of the state's first teachers of the program. The program, he recalled, instilled self-worth in the school's Native Hawaiian and Polynesian students. Many of them came from Waimānalo because Kaiser High School hadn't been built yet. "The kids that came in from Waimānalo literally spent much of their time occupying much of the bathrooms on campus," Monte recalled. "They were really out of place in town compared to the people from Kāhala and 'Āina Haina, by their clothes, by everything, by how they speak."

But developing the Hawaiiana class and "having everybody go through experiences that Hawaiians and Polynesians had to go through where suddenly the expert in the class is the Hawaiian, made it interesting," he said. "Hawaiians had a worth in class because they adapted quickly to Hawaiian culture," he said. "If you did weaving, they picked it up real quick, whereas the non-Hawaiian had a harder time at that." The same went for singing and dancing, he said. A result was a May Day program with "350 people on stage" and "a large mass of people interested in Polynesian and Hawaiian ways."

Similar successes followed him throughout his career. As a resource teacher for the Honolulu District in the mid-1980s, he helped create a conference for teachers of at-risk students that later developed into a statewide conference. When he arrived at Farrington High School in the late 1990s, the school had riots and grabbed newspaper headlines for negative reasons, he said. He helped changed that, too, in his 13 years there. "Now Farrington is being noticed more for academic pursuits, especially in science," he said.

Now, after seven years at Dole Middle School, Monte said his retirement is coming on a high note. "Most people feel, and I feel the same, that you cannot get it any better," he said. The school had been beset by low parent involvement and was one of the first dozen schools in the state to undergo restructuring under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Vice Principal David Pila said Monte prepared the staff for a "hard transition" of restructuring, which required an outside provider, Edison Alliance, to come into the school. But Monte made it easier on the staff by working "hand in hand with Edison Alliance," Pila said. "Basically they were able to roll out initiatives, schoolwide practices that help to move student achievement."

The school is not out of restructuring yet, but in four years, it has shown "one of the biggest gains in student achievement," said Monte. Reading proficiency scores have increased to 58 percent from 25 percent, and math scores have risen to 33 percent from 9 percent. "We're very pleased with that, and Mr. Pila and the rest of the staff will be moving it much higher than that," Monte said.

As for parent involvement, that's improved to 78 percent from 5 percent, largely due to a voluntary graduation program that requires students to complete 21 extra challenges, including reading 20 books, running or walking 1.5 miles and participating in service projects. The three-year commitment also requires their parents to be involved through volunteering, attending at least three meetings a year and paying class dues and other financial obligations. This past school year, 74 of 240 eighth-graders graduated from the program.

Monte's work at the school earned him the 2008 Masayuki Tokioka Excellence in School Leadership Award for public high school principals, which came with $25,000, including $15,000 for the school and $10,000 for Monte.

"But I donated my $10,000 to the school because it was really about the school, it really wasn't about me," said Monte, a graduate of Roosevelt High School who landed in college because of a football scholarship.
"I had three offers, I selected BYU," he said. The very next day, he said, Roosevelt put him in college-prep classes. "I wasn't given access (before), but because of … the football scholarship, I was suddenly given access," he said. "When I went to college, I found if I put my mind to it and discipline myself, I can actually pass college."

Monte recently built a new home on the Kalāwahine homestead where he was raised, overlooking Roosevelt High. At Roosevelt, he said, he recognized himself as a "have-not" among "the haves."

"Understanding how to treat people, that's all from my homestead upbringing," he said. "That's why I'm always for the underdog."