The Hawaii Supreme Court has rejected Kamehameha Schools’ request to block a judge’s order to turn over evidence trust officials gathered in their own investigation of a former teacher charged with using a hidden camera to record students showering in his apartment.

Kamehameha Schools spokesman Kekoa Paulsen said, “We are reviewing the court’s ruling and will be evaluating our next steps.”

The Supreme Court rejected the educational trust’s appeal Thursday.

Former Kapalama campus speech teacher and debate team coach Gabriel Alisna is awaiting trial in state court on charges of violating the privacy of three students and fondling one of them. The trial is scheduled for June.

Alisna, 40, is hoping the evidence will show that school officials were acting as agents of police when they investigated him, and therefore should have gotten search warrants before they searched his faculty apartment and computers. State law requires employees of public and private schools to immediately report to police or the state Department of Human Services suspected past or imminent child abuse.

Keith Shigetomi, Alisna’s criminal defense lawyer, said he can’t say whether the Supreme Court’s action hurts or helps Alisna’s case.

“It moves the proceedings along,” he said.

An Oahu grand jury indicted Alisna on five counts of felony privacy violation and two of misdemeanor sexual assault in December 2013. His trial was originally scheduled for March 2014, but the court kept pushing back the trial date because Kamehameha Schools officials refused to hand over evidence they used to decide to fire Alisna in March 2013 but withheld from Honolulu police.

Shigetomi asked for the investigation reports, all correspondence pertaining to Alisna’s rental agreement and for the three students’ school records in a court- ordered subpoena in May 2014.

Lawyers for Kamehameha Schools refused and asked state Circuit Judge Rom Trader to void the subpoena. They said the trust conducted its investigation at the direction of its legal department, which makes any evidence it collected privileged attorney-client communication.

After reviewing the material, Trader said Alisna needs the material to get a fair trial and ordered the trust to hand it over.

Kamehameha Schools appealed Trader’s order to the Supreme Court, which sent the case back to Trader with instructions to apply certain guidelines in deciding whether to order the release of privileged communication. Trader did that and in April again ordered the trust to turn over the material.