The King Kamehameha III Elementary School PTA spearheaded the project to cover this playground structure on the school grounds. Photo by Walter Chihara.

LAHAINA – The West Side community has done it again.

Flexing its malama pono philosophy in a most effective effort, the King Kamehameha III Elementary School PTA literally and figuratively put a shade cover cap last week on a campus improvement project that took over a year to complete.

Spearheaded by President Evette Green, Vice President Kari Alexander and Secretary Laura Hersey, the school’s PTA chapter launched the idea to put a giant shade cover over the playground structure on the school grounds to relieve the keiki of the merciless Lahaina sun during their recess time at King Kamehameha III at the beginning of the last school year.

Using the acronym motto of TEAM – “Together Everyone Achieves More – the organization decided to unite the school community with the playground improvement project.

Over the entire school year, the students, families, teachers and the community joined in a focused effort to raise funds to pay for the state-of-the-art shade cover for the playground. Movie nights, a golf tournament, a “Dance-a-thon,” Leilani’s on the Beach breakfast and a fall fun walk all added up to a successful combined effort that brought in $80,000 – over and above the $50,000 price tag for the structure.

The cover itself came from the K-Deck Canvas company, while Goodfellow Construction, Viking Construction, and RR Concrete installed the structure.

The installation project began on July 17 and was completed last week Friday, July 27.

“This really was a team effort,” beamed PTA President Green onsite last week.

“Everyone worked so hard on this project from the very beginning of the school year to get it done, and we send our thanks out to the entire community, the families of the kids, to the businesses that contributed to the cause and to everyone that gave support to the project. Thank you!”