Volcano’s first public school was built in 1915 to meet the needs of the expanding number of families living in the area.  There’s been a public school in the village, on and off, ever since.

The original one-room for students from the first to sixth grade included a teacher’s cottage, garage and and a redwood water tank, on land donated along Haunani Road by entrepreneur Peter Lee. The school was named Keakealani School after one of Lee’s daughters.  (Haunani Road was named for one of Lee’s other daughters.)

The school was expanded to its current two-room design in 1934 to meet the needs of the still growing village.  It’s a single-story wood frame building on raised post and pier with a partial slab foundation, surrounded by a grassy playground. The architect and builder aren’t known.

“My first school,” remembers one student who started attending in 1950.  “Two rooms,  two teachers. Four grades in one room, 1 row each, grades 1 to 4. Other room, grades 5 and 6. Bookmobile came around once a week.”

The only school in the 40 miles between Pahoa and Mountain View, it helped educate hundreds of kids growing up in the village until 1973, when the students were transferred to the recently opened Mountain View Elementary School.

But that’s not the end of the story.

For more than 25 years, the Hawaii Department of Education continued to use the facility as an outdoor education center for elementary students across  Hawaii Island.

When budgetary constraints forced the DOE to end the program in 2010, the property was turned over to the community-organized Volcano School of Arts and Sciences, which had begun operations in the 2001 in  rented buildings in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, moved to a site of a former saw mill and lodge along Old Volcano Road, and now plans to expand its operations to a K-12 facility to be built on the site of the original Keakealani School, which still houses the school’s middle school program.

That original two-room school house one the site will be incorporated into the new school building on the now 3.25 acre site on Haunani Road. When completed the complex is expected to have space for more than 250 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.