Aviation High School soars toward future

Four years ago, 103 students enrolled in Aviation High School, a fledgling experiment with an aerospace-themed curriculum, run out of a rented airplane hangar and a few classrooms.

Now a respected college-preparatory school with nearly 400 students, Aviation High School will graduate its first class in June and has plans to build a $36 million school on the Museum of Flight campus.

The school draws students from districts around the region and boasts some of the strongest WASL scores in the state, which administrators believe is proof that students succeed when they're interested.

"This is the mechanism to get kids excited," said retired NASA astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, president of the Museum of Flight and an Aviation High board member.

A public school in the Highline School District, Aviation High is open to students in any district. The aviation theme is threaded throughout every aspect of the curriculum, though the school, says Principal Reba Gilman, is less about flying airplanes and more about learning to apply math and science in the real world.

Now housed in an old Des Moines school near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Aviation High will get a permanent home in 2011 at the Museum of Flight. There, students will be at the epicenter of Seattle-area aviation, Gilman said.

While students already use the museum's resources, they'll be even closer.

"We're sort of a big laboratory for them," Dunbar said.

The museum's plans for expansion call for a three-story building on property the museum recently acquired on the west side of East Marginal Way South in Seattle. The Museum of Flight offered the district a long-term lease on the property, where it also plans to build two galleries.

But before the new school is even designed, Aviation High needs to raise a lot of money.

The Port of Seattle and the Highline School District have together pledged $10 million. More than $1 million has been allocated toward the school in Gov. Christine Gregoire's 2008 budget. That's enough to get started designing the facility.

Highline spokeswoman Catherine Carbone Rogers said the district hopes to raise the rest from private sources and to avoid asking voters to approve a bond measure. The district's other schools have capital needs of their own, she added, and Aviation High serves students from other districts.

Unique experiment

Gilman, a veteran school administrator, came up with the idea for a theme-based high school after years of watching dismal math and science test scores in the Highline School District. As director of the district's Puget Sound Skills Center, a technical high school, Gilman saw that students weren't applying the skills they had learned in school once they were in the work force.

After brainstorming ideas for a theme-based school, aviation stuck out, Gilman said.

Aviation High is the only school of its kind in the state and one of few in the country.

The curriculum is based on aerospace, but the school doesn't teach students to fly. Students can take an FAA ground-school course — a class that teaches everything about flying, except actually going up in a plane. Many students pursue flying lessons on their own time.

Initially, the school sponsored Young Eagles flights — a chance for students to fly in a smaller plane with an experienced pilot — to show students how exciting flying can be, Gilman said.

But in October 2005, two freshmen on a Young Eagles flight, Brittany Boatright and Kandyce Cowart, and their pilot were killed in a plane crash near Paine Field in Everett.

The school suspended the flight program indefinitely.

Gilman feared the accident would not only traumatize students but threaten the very existence of the school. A few students left the school, and several said they didn't want to fly.

But most of the students remained committed, she said, and now, the school is looking into starting up some sort of flying program again.

Airborne dreams

Students at Aviation High take required core classes and choose from hands-on electives such as Aerospace Engineering and Introduction to Robotics. They work closely with mentors from Boeing, Alaska Airlines and the local aviation community.

Though it's not a requirement, most kids who attend Aviation High are into math and science. They dream of being an astronaut or a commercial pilot.

Many are inspired by family members who work at Boeing. They get excited when they talk about the robotics club or Science Olympiad.

The school doesn't have an athletic program — something that founders bypassed in the interest of saving money.

Some of the country's leading aeronautical universities, such as Embry-Riddle, recruit heavily at Aviation High.

On a recent Monday afternoon at the school, teenagers are hunched over computers, designing a plane they hope will revolutionize air travel. They're preparing entries for a NASA competition.

Several doors down, a guest instructor from the Museum of Flight teaches a basic robotics class. With students crouched on the classroom floor, fine-tuning their robots, it looks like they're playing, but they're actually learning fundamental concepts necessary for a career in aerospace.

Senior Arianna Woltkamp, 17, is headed to the Air Force Academy after graduation.

"I haven't made up my mind yet. I'm going back and forth between cargo and fighter planes," she said.

Aviation High School gives students the foundation they need to pursue a career in a math- or science-dependent field, Dunbar said.

When she was growing up in Yakima County, Dunbar recalls telling her eighth-grade teacher that she wanted to build and fly spaceships. The teacher promptly informed Dunbar that she'd need to start by studying algebra.

Dunbar said her teacher's advice put her on an engineering path that eventually led her into space. She made five space flights as a NASA astronaut.

"It shows what you can do with any student who's inspired," Dunbar said.

Lauren Vane: 206-464-2926 or lvane@seattletimes.com