DreamHouse ‘Ewa Beach, a West O‘ahu charter school serving just under 500 students, is currently operating without a single governing board member after its last three board members, including the chair, resigned. The Hawaiʻi State Public Charter School Commission is set to meet Thursday to decide what happens next to a school that opened in 2019 and graduated its first senior class last spring.
Hawaiʻi law requires every charter school to maintain an independent governing board responsible for hiring a principal, approving budgets and overseeing academic progress, according to Honolulu Civil Beat. DreamHouse's board was supposed to have seven members but had shrunk to five before this school year even began, and the remaining three subsequently submitted their resignations to the commission, leaving the school with no board at all. No public reason has been given for why those final three members stepped down.
Catherine Payne, a former chair of both the charter school commission and the state education board, told the outlet she did not recall anything quite like the board's mass resignation. A former DreamHouse consultant reported that tensions among the board, school leadership and outside partners had grown in recent months, per the same account, though the exact cause remains unclear.
A School Built From a Shopping Center Storefront
DreamHouse was co-founded by former Teach for America educator Alex Teece and received formal charter approval from the State Public Charter School Commission in July 2017, according to research from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. The school has emphasized leadership, identity development, student voice and collaboration. When it opened in August 2019, DreamHouse served an inaugural class of 100 sixth graders and rented office space at the Laulani Village Shopping Center, as detailed by Honolulu Civil Beat in 2022.
The school has since grown considerably. It opened a new high school building in fall 2024 and now enrolls 473 students in grades six through 12 this fall. That $26 million high school building, which opened two years ago, was financed through municipal bonds issued by a nonprofit associated with DreamHouse, since charter schools are state entities that cannot take on debt themselves and are responsible for finding and paying for their own campuses.
Bond Agreement Adds Another Requirement
The bond agreement requires the nonprofit to hire an independent consultant to evaluate DreamHouse's academics, finances and operations, and the school must adopt that consultant's recommendations. Payne said the bond requirement seems unusual, the outlet reported.
Roger Kiyomura, a member of DreamHouse's associated nonprofit board, said that board is determining next steps and will support students' education and campus facilities. That nonprofit-facility dynamic has proven combustible elsewhere in the state's charter sector: Kamalani Academy in Wahiawā closed permanently after its nonprofit landlord raised monthly lease payments, and a Kauaʻi charter school was threatened with eviction after its own nonprofit landlord raised rent.
Documented Friction Before the Resignations
The mass resignation follows months of documented tension at the school. In May, DreamHouse board chair Shaylan Arneho submitted written testimony to the Hawaii Board of Education opposing the appointment of former DreamHouse co-founding team member Dr. Ryan Mandado to the State Public Charter School Commission, according to records from the Hawaii Board of Education. Arneho did not respond to requests for comment for the Civil Beat story.
Richard Seder, who served on DreamHouse's board until January and worked as a school consultant through June, spent the spring and summer trying to recruit new board members before stopping those efforts amid the tensions. The charter commission had already issued a warning to DreamHouse earlier this month and requested a formal action plan addressing the school's lack of board members — a plan the school now has no board to submit, since it lacks any governing body to respond to another warning or take further action.
What the Commission Can Do Thursday
The commission has three broad options in front of it: escalate its warning, re-establish DreamHouse's governing board with members it selects itself, or inform the school that it is at risk of closure. State law requires the commission to hold a public hearing before it could shut DreamHouse down, and the commission is working with DreamHouse leadership in the meantime to determine next steps and provide oversight.
John Thatcher, a former charter school principal and longtime charter advocate, said DreamHouse has no obvious solution and that the commission usually has an idea of what to do but has no good options in this case. The commission could also open applications for a new governing board this fall and review candidates at its November meeting, though reconstituted boards have produced mixed results elsewhere — the commission has later closed at least two schools after hand-picking their governing boards in the past.
The commission does have precedent for both paths. In May 2019, it appointed an entire seven-member replacement governing board for Kona Pacific Public Charter School after accepting the mass resignation of its prior board, according to the Hawaii State Public Charter School Commission. It has also gone the other direction: in July 2018, the commission voted unanimously to revoke the charter of Kaʻū Learning Academy on Hawaii Island after citing 22 contract violations. School closure or board reconstitution remain last-resort options the commission has used only a handful of times in the past decade.
If the commission does move toward closure, DreamHouse's governing board would normally be able to appeal that decision to the state education board — but with no board currently in place, it remains unclear who could lead such an appeal on the school's behalf. For now, nearly 500 students at DreamHouse ‘Ewa Beach are waiting to see whether the state steps in to rebuild their school's leadership or begins the process of shutting it down.
