Aviation High School

Capital campaign begins for Highline district's Aviation High School

Guest — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:35:22 +0000

Guest (not verified) Mon, 11/23/2009 - 8:35am

James Raisbeck chats with Aviation High School students Navid Shafa and Michael Marinkovich during the event at Raisbeck's home.

Highline Public Schools photo

Aviation High School kicked off a major capital campaign at an event last week at the home of James and Sherry Raisbeck.

The Raisbecks and their foundation have pledged $4 million toward the effort to construct a facility for the school at The Museum of Flight in Tukwila.

Aviation High is temporarily located in the Olympic interim school in Des Moines. The district hopes to open the school as Raisbeck Aviation High School on Museum property in 2012.

James Raisbeck is a world-renowned aerodynamicist and entrepreneur. He is most well known for founding Raisbeck Engineering Inc., which engineers and manufactures performance improvement systems for thousands of business and commercial aircraft worldwide.

The Port of Seattle has contributed $10 million toward the new facility. The school hopes to raise an additional $10 million from private entities and $14 million from state and federal sources.

Aviation is an innovative public school that teaches a college-preparatory curriculum through an aviation theme. The school is administered by Highline Public Schools but accepts students from across the Puget Sound region.

Aviation was the state's third-highest scoring high school in last year's WASL exams. It was the top scoring school on the 10th grade writing WASL.

Unlike other high-scoring schools, 20 percent of Aviation High School's students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

The museum has had a long-standing partnership with the school.

In 2006, the museum's board invited Aviation to be part of the expansion of its campus. The new school is to be located adjacent to the museum's air park.

For more information, go to www.aviationhs.org

Aviation High School

Robinson Papers

4 Aviation High students are aerospace scholars

Guest — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:46:21 +0000

Guest (not verified) Mon, 09/21/2009 - 8:46am

Aviation High students Thomas Malchodi, Andrew May, Andrew Reece, and Michael Thompson are graduates of the 2009 Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS) summer residency hosted by The Museum of Flight in Tukwila.

WAS is a competitive educational program for high school juniors from across Washington state.

Aviation High is temporarily housed at the Olympic site in Des Moines. Plans are underway to build a new school across from the flight museum. The Highline School District administers the school.

They were among the 150 students who qualified for the summer residency program from 260 students who applied in November.

To qualify for the residency program, they spent six months studying a NASA-designed, distance-learning curriculum via the Internet.

Based on their academic performance on the distance-learning lessons, they were selected to attend one of the four residencies hosted at Tukwila's flight museum.

During the residency experience, they collaborated with the other student participants on the design of a human mission to Mars. WAS scholars are guided by professional engineers, scientists, university students and certified educators as they plan these missions.

The WAS program is designed to inspire students to pursue degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and math but the students are divided into teams which also require them to learn about mission management, budgets, the legal aspects of space exploration, and medicine.

As graduates of WAS, Malchodi, May, Reece and Thompson join over 380 alumni representing 170 different Washington high schools.
The program began accepting applications in early September for the 2009-10 program cycle; visit www.museumofflight.org/washingtonaerospacescholars to download an application.

WAS participants must be high school juniors with 3.0 minimum grade-point-averages, United States citizens and Washington state residents. The deadline for student applications is Nov. 6.

Aviation High School

Robinson Papers

Aviation High students intern for Blue Angels

robinson_newspapers_staff — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:16:00 +0000

robinson_newsp… Wed, 08/26/2009 - 1:16pm

Lucky Aviaition High students, who assisted the Blue Angels during their recent Seafair visit, pose with their adviser at Tukwila's Museum of Flight.

Photo by Tony Miller

When am I ever going to use this in the real world?
Teachers, parents and students alike know this concern all too well. For years, students have struggled to apply real-world significance to the lessons taught in classrooms. But, with the aid of a three-year $600,000 grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, students enrolled at the Highline School District's Aviation High School are beginning to realize that real-world significance.
The district administers the high school, which also includes students from other school districts.
Between July 27 and Aug. 2, four Aviation student interns were given exclusive access to assist the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels at Boeing Field as they prepared for their annual air show during the 60th anniversary of Seattle's Seafair festival.
"[The Blue Angels] have the coolest job in the Navy and get to experience something no else really gets to," said Alyssa Hernandez, Aviation sophomore. "I want to experience something no one else in the world would get to experience."
The other interns were Amanuail Ambaye, Michelle Koy and Jenny Gao.
While Aviation has worked with the Seafair festival for the past four years to provide its students with volunteer opportunities, the school is now positioned to offer state-recognized internships, said Nancy Pappas-Barnhart, the school's mentoring and internships coordinator.
Since the grant took effect in the fall of the 2008-09 academic year, Aviation has solidified existing relations with area companies and organizations, resulting in nine internship opportunities for its students.
Pappas-Barnhart said she expects to develop 20 total internships by this time next year.
Washington state requires interns to perform at least 90 hours of service to receive academic credit. However, the students' week-long assistance to the Blue Angels comprised just 40 of those hours.
As a solution, officials at Aviation constructed a schedule offering 20 hours of pre-internship training and 30 hours of post-internship reflection.
Pappas-Barnhart said the internship differs from volunteer opportunities offered in the past by requiring students submit a professional resume, cover letter and letters of recommendation from people outside their families.
"The students who were really serious about this kind of experience, they really dug in and came to me many times," Pappas-Barnhart said. "They'd ask, 'What will this really be?' and 'Will my parents be involved?"
Hernandez said while the selection process and pre-internship training were important, she felt the ability to ask pressing questions of Naval officers and Blue Angels team members, along with the chance to see the whole event materialize, was most beneficial.
"My dream is to become a Blue Angel pilot," Hernandez said. "I felt really lucky being one of the only four doing the kinds of things we were doing. Seeing what the other volunteers were doing, I felt so lucky to be doing so much more."
Air show security lead Jim Combs, who has worked with Aviation since it was established in 2004 to provide volunteer opportunities for students, said he and Pappas-Barnhart teamed up to develop an outline of duties the interns would carry out, ranging from assisting guests with information and directions to meeting, greeting and networking with special guests such as the Seattle Sounders' Kasey Keller and University of Washington president Mark Emmert.
Combs said the interns were taught beforehand how to socialize professionally and represent their school respectably.
"How many times does a high school student get to meet the president of a major university and get his business card?" Combs asked. "The students were prepared to make those encounters and knew how to step into the conversation and take control."
Pappas-Barnhart said the internship put her students in a position to not only practice socializing in a professional setting, but to realize the wide range of team members involved in the Blue Angels' air show.
Combs said the interns were able to meet with, speak with and spend time with more than 100 Blue Angel team members from the medicine department, event coordination department and the public affairs office, to name a few.
"When you walk through an airport, for example, you see the luggage area, the ticket counter and the information kiosk, and everything represents a job," Combs said. "[The students] aren't just seeing six pilots flying over Lake Washington. They are seeing every little thing that goes into that final air show."
Hernandez said she still hopes to become a Blue Angels pilot someday, although she said she now has a clearer understanding of the hundreds of possible career paths available to her.
"The entire crew was so nice, kind and polite the whole time," Hernandez said. "I saw that I can be a Blue Angel without being a pilot."
Hernandez said she feels lucky to be attending a school that can offer opportunities so closely related to the lessons taught in her classes.
"[The Blue Angels] do all the simple things we do in our classes, but it's much more complicated out there," Hernandez said. "I know using what I learned out there will help me in the classroom."

Aviation High School

Robinson Papers