Traveling preschool holds graduation, also facing funding cuts | Events

This year's graduation means much more than a diploma for one group of local students. Forty-eight graduates from Ka Pa'alana Traveling Preschool live with their families in shelters, on beaches, emergency sites and in public housing.

The preschool comes to them with a makeshift classroom.

Like most graduations, there was a keynote speaker, balloons, signs and lots of leis.

Each child gets a backpack filled with school supplies for next year, but more importantly they get a sense of worth.

"Very exciting. My daughter came a long way. She was only two months old when she started Ka Pa'alana. And now, she's going to enter kindergarten," said the Ciaris family.

Just this week, the preschool lost all its state funding.

The school is still receiving help from grants, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and Kamehameha Schools, and will be able to continue next year.