The largest donation in the 50-year history of tiny St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Kalihi will add more space to the campus and bring in new technology to replace the 1980s-era computers the students rely on.

St. John's "computer lab" is a 20-by-20-foot room in the church's convent that's outfitted with antiquated equipment. The science classroom "isn't really set up as a science lab at all" and is shared by church groups, said Milton Choy, who is on the committee working on the expansion project.

But because of a $1.5 million pledge from the Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation, school administrators are now planning to expand the 17,480-square-foot campus with a 5,000-square-foot wing that will be devoted to state-of-the-art learning for the first- through eighth-grade students, said St. John's principal, Sister Laurencia Camayudo.

"The students are very, very excited," she said, "and the parents are excited, too."

The Ching Foundation will double every dollar that the school raises up to $750,000, said Ray Lamb, who is coordinating the project.

With the foundation's pledge of $1.5 million, school officials could end up with as much as $2.25 million for the project, Lamb said.

So far, they've raised $300,000 toward their $750,000 goal, he said.

Their deadline to finalize the funding and plans is the first week of June 2010. They then hope to break ground after school lets out in summer 2011 and have the building open for students in February 2012.

School officials already have visited Punahou School and Chaminade University to get ideas for a second-story wing that would sit on columns in between the parish hall and existing grade-school classrooms.

Right now, it's planned to include a länai, a science classroom, computer lab and a "smart classroom" filled with high-tech teaching tools, such as smart boards.

Church and school officials tried a similar fund-raising project five years ago that died for lack of money and momentum, Lamb said.

"The bill just kept creeping higher and higher," Lamb said. "Here in Kalihi, we're not a very rich area."

So school officials were stunned last month when the pledge from the Ching Foundation came through, Lamb said.

"We're just getting over the shock now," he said.

One of the church's parishioners, Raymond Tam, is a trustee of the Ching Foundation. Choy said another parishioner, Herbert Ching, is the youngest brother of the late Clarence T.C. Ching, the local developer for whom the foundation is named. Established in 1967, the Ching Foundation has contributed tens of millions of dollars to a host of organizations.

Tam "asked, 'How can we help?' " Choy said.

But when the pledge came through, Choy said, "it was still a surprise."

The school celebrated its 50th jubilee on Sept. 19. The school, church and cemetery sit on 2.3 acres off of Omilo Lane, where 224 students from preschool through eighth grade are taught.

Most of the children come from Kalihi and Fort Shafter, and have computers at home, Sister Laurencia said.

But with the pledge from the Ching Foundation, St. John the Baptist is now committed to teaching students on up-to-date equipment, Sister Laurencia said.

"This is clearly the largest gift that the school has received," she said.

"It will help us prepare our children for the digital age and prepare our students for the workforce 10, 15 years from now."