Boeing sparks aeronautical career academy with $50,000 grant

Students from all across Charleston County can attend a new aeronautical career academy at Stall High School this fall in a Boeing-spurred project.

The academy comes to Charleston County School District through a $50,000 grant from Boeing. Although the concept of career academies is nothing new to the district, this one will be a bit different and a bit bigger.

The goal is to open the academy to any student in the district — and hopefully to students in Berkeley and Dorchester counties’ school districts as well.

“This could be a great example of an innovative program that could work across districts,” said Charleston County Schools Superintendent Nancy McGinley.

After Boeing made the announcement it was locating its second Dreamliner plant in North Charleston, officials from the school district talked with Boeing leaders, and they identified a mutual need to support math and science training.

“We always look to understand a district’s education strategies before we award a grant, and we felt supporting the aviation program would have the greatest impact,” said Angel Ysaguirre, a specialist with Boeing’s Global Corporate Citizenship group.

The district applied for the grant in late December and was notified by Boeing in January. The academy is still taking shape as details are being worked out, but the district knows the project will include multiple partners.

It has reached out to Trident Technical College, the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce and Intertech Group CEO Anita Zucker to provide guidance on how the academy should work, said Lou Martin, the district’s associate superintendent for high schools.

“We’re trying to make it as broad as possible,” Martin said. “It’s bigger than what we can do.”

The academy will mine the expertise of professionals in the field to see what kinds of experience and knowledge students need in order to be equipped for a career in aeronautics.

“As educators, we’re relying on the experts to tell us what students should be taking in high school to prepare for a career in that industry,” McGinley said.

The money from the Boeing grant is to be used specifically in the training of teachers for the new academy. The district is hoping it will be able to hire new teachers for the program using federal Perkins Loan money or money from its general operating fund.

The district is working on development of the program and the curriculum, looking to outside resources like Trident Tech and other models across the country.

Merging business and education
The career academy also dovetails with an initiative of the Chamber of Commerce. The Education Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the chamber that connects schools and business resources, was announced in October as a member of Ford Motor Co.’s Next Generation Learning Community network.
As part of the network, the Charleston community is charged with creation of a master plan to develop career academies and to gain access to best practices and resources of other schools that have successfully developed career academies.

“There are people out there who have learned some lessons and best practices and can accelerate our development,” said Allen Wutzdorff, executive director of the foundation. “We want to provide the best expertise to help the school districts develop their career academies according to the region’s economic needs.”

The Boeing announcement and its subsequent grant catapulted the aeronautical academy to the top of the priority list. This is Charleston’s first career academy that is being developed in partnership with a major business, Wutzdorff said.

District officials recently visited a similar joint business-education academy housed within a school in Pensacola, Fla. It is a partnership between Gulf Power, the main utility company in Escambia County, and West Florida High School.

In addition to the regular academic courses, students enrolled in Gulf Power Academy also take courses to prepare them to work in the electric utility industry after graduation.

The collaboration isn’t just financial. Gulf Power provides expertise and guidance on the curriculum and programming. Students who graduate from the program can go directly to work for Gulf Power.

Although the exact relationship between the aeronautical academy and Boeing hasn’t been formalized, the district is hoping that Boeing will lend its name to the academy — creating the Boeing Aeronautical Academy at Stall High School — and will provide expertise.

“This is the beginning of a partnership that will have a great positive impact on Charleston County and the Lowcountry,” McGinley said.

“Naturally, we believe academies such as this will help inspire students to ultimately pursue careers that will give them the technical and academic skills they will need should they decide to become part of Boeing’s future work force,” Ysaguirre said.

McGinley said she has been impressed with the strong commitment to K-12 education that Boeing has shown.

“They know you have to build the pipeline of workers starting in elementary and middle school,” she said. “You have to get them interested in a career in aeronautics when they’re young.”

Logistics still remains to be sorted out; students probably will take classes at their zoned schools and then travel to Stall for the specialized academy courses.

Stall was chosen for the academy because it is accessible to all three counties. The school had also accounted for growth in its technical cluster and has large classroom space available.

The costs of the academy, such as equipment and textbooks, will come from the district’s general operating fund.

McGinley is hoping public-private partnerships with other industries will follow this partnership. For example, if a computer software company comes in, the district and company would work together to create a career academy for the computer science field.

“We’re building this from the ground up,” she said. “It’s an exciting frontier.”