NIU VALLEY — Honolulu Waldorf School has taken a first step toward obtaining city permission to build a high school on its 2.5-acre campus in a Niu Valley residential area.

The city has accepted the school's application for a conditional use permit and will hold a public hearing on the matter Dec. 8. If granted, the permit would clear the way for the school to begin work on a two-story classroom building built in a green design, said Connie Starzynski, Honolulu Waldorf School administrative director. The school's green design could include energy efficient features for building shape and orientation; solar and natural lighting; organic building materials and low chemical emission materials, said Winslow Eliot, community development director for Honolulu Waldorf School.

The school has not hired an architect, so many of the green designs have not been formally chosen, Eliot said.

In the meantime, the school, which has an enrollment of 350 students, is attempting to address community concerns with elimination of Sunday events, using off-duty police to help with the traffic during Saturday events, changing morning family drop-off routines, and offering an outreach to the surrounding community through recycling efforts and traffic studies.

"I feel whether we have a high school here or not that we need to be connected to the community," Starzynski said.

The community's concerns about the school's plans surfaced during Kuli'ou'ou/Kalani Iki Neighborhood Board meetings and in meetings held between the school and the community, said Marty Plotnick, an area resident. The Neighborhood Board voted to oppose the school's plans to build a high school on the Ulua Street campus because of noise, parking and other traffic concerns.

At a meeting held two weeks ago, residents complained that the school's plans lack adequate off-street parking, among other things, and not enough notice to residents in the area who would be affected by the school's expansion. The city requires notification of residents immediately affected by a project, but the community, with its estimated 800 homes, wants widespread notification, Plotnick said.

"They're not being very neighborly and sensitive to the community," Plotnick said. "They keep ignoring the community concerns."

Critics point out that the school doesn't allow members of the community to use its outdoor basketball courts or its playground facilities, citing liability issues when the school is not in session. During morning and afternoon school pickup, parents sometimes park in front of residents' driveways, blocking access, residents have said.

Plotnick said the school, which opened in 1961, for four decades largely ignored the concerns of area residents until they wanted support for construction of the high school.

Last month the school launched an ongoing recycling program in the neighborhood offering residents a place to drop their HI-5¢ recyclables weekdays. Waldorf eighth-graders also are picking up once a month curbside recycling for neighbors on Ulua Street, part of Hale-ma'uma'u Street and Mahimahi Place, Starzynski said. Funds generated from recycling will be donated to the Hawai'i Foodbank.

"We're trying to be very conscious about everything we do to improve our relationship," Starzynski said. "We're trying to live in this community with our neighbors."