By Rachel M. Lusby

In a grand ceremony to present the new location for Raisbeck Aviation High School, people gathered at the Museum of Flight in Tukwila where they watched student-flown airplanes land; attendants and students proceeded to walk to the school’s new site across East Marginal Way.

It has been located at a former school in the Highline District in Des Moines.

With roughly one hundred people in attendance, (including Bill Boeing Jr.) guest speakers stood at the podium and expressed their excitement over this innovative high school.

The student speakers all graduated in 2008.
“Compared to AHS,” the students agreed, “college was easy!”

All three student speakers agreed the school gave them the skills to push them through college and two of these students made it through college in just 3 years.

The mission of AHS is to prepare students for college and beyond.

“To prepare all students for college, career and citizenship through a personalized, rigorous and relevant learning experience that is facilitated in the context of aviation and aerospace,” their mission statement says.
Group work, respect, and high standards are among the core values of AHS.
You can read more about this on the website: aviationhs.org.

Guest speaker, King County Executive Dow Constantine, says the location is perfect for the school and the high school as a whole “gives us a leg up on a national and global scale.”

“We’re not just building a school, we’re building our future,” Laura Peterson, Vice President for NW State and Local Gov. Operations for the Boeing Company, stated.

Peterson believes it is through schools such as AHS where we will discover our future mathematicians, scientists, aerospace experts and other highly educated persons.

Additional guest speakers included James Raisbeck; founder, owner and chairmen of Raisbeck Engineering. His company contributed $3 million, (according to the budget report,) to the high school. Highline School District Superintendent John Welch, (who will be leaving soon to pursue another opportunity.) Reba Gilman, the principal and CEO of AHS. U.S. Congressman of the 9th District of Washington, Adam Smith. Douglas King, President of CEO of The Museum of Flight, which is providing the space for the high school. President of Galvin Flying Services, Inc., and finally, Bill Bryant, Commissioner of the Port of Seattle.

$16 million total has been donated to this project, and the budget of the project is $42.5 million.

“Why do this?,” said James Raisbeck about his company’s donation. “We wanted to contribute to a cause outside of ourselves.”

Raisbeck says when he was in high school there were no electives for a “self-described techy.” He ended up taking shop class. “This is some high school, some shop class,” he joked.

This new facility will be designed to look somewhat like a plane’s fuselage and provide spaces to display projects of “aviation-themes and artifacts.” Bassetti Architects provided the design and Porter Bothers Construction, (a local contractor based out of Edgewood,) will build this new facility.

The ceremony ended with the theme from “Star Wars.”

The school will open in 2013 and accommodate about 400 students.

Aviation High School was founded in 2004 and is the first public aviation school in the nation which prepares students for college work.