The teachers, faculty and staff of Holomua Elementary School are living up to their school nickname as "voyagers" by charting a different course at the 11-year-old 'Ewa school.

First, it became the state's first year-round, multi-track school when it opened in 1996. Then, several years ago, it became the state's largest K-6 elementary school with an enrollment of 1,554 students, about 1,100 of whom are on campus at any given time.

"Essentially, we're four schools," said Principal Norman Pang, winner of this year's $25,000 Masayuki Tokioka Excellence in School Leadership Award, which honors a public school principal who is "visionary, community-minded and has an entrepreneurial spirit."

Pang is a proponent of year-around schools. "In the multi-track setting, the students have less summer learning loss because of the short break," he said. "So our teachers really only spend a few days reviewing whereas other schools might have to spend one or two weeks to review before they move on."

Despite its size and the challenges that come with it, Holomua has consistently done well on standardized tests, Pang said. What makes him even happier is that they're continuing to improve.

Student test scores from grades 2 to 6 increased by about 20 percent over the past year, said Rodney Luke, one of the school's vice principals.

One reason may be Holomua's three-year-old partnership with PLATO, a company that manufactures software designed to reinforce skills in reading, language arts and math based on individual student needs.

One component of the PLATO partnership is the Math Achieve Now program led by Holomua math coach Christine "Ulu" Dash. Analyzing the results of standardized assessment tests, "we determine who those just-approaching students are so we can work with them in a smaller environment with a multitude of resources," Dash said.

Additionally, software provided by PLATO allows faculty and staff to determine the specific skills that individual students need to work on to improve their performance, Dash said.

Another faculty member does the same with students in need of extra help in language arts, and there is a learning center for those who qualify for special services.

"Technology has really helped our teachers," Pang said. "But the bottom line is still the teacher.

"From the very first year, the faculty and staff that came in were true learners and were willing to adjust their teaching styles based on research. They were flexible and not afraid to change," thus embracing the concept of being voyagers, he said.