As Pearl City High School student Jonah Mawae prepares a real hypodermic needle to practice drawing artificial blood from a model arm, it’s clear that this is not your typical high school lab class.

This is phlebotomy, to be precise — a unit in a diagnostics class in one of this school’s three career academies. Pearl City is now one of Hawaii’s first three public high schools that are “wall to wall” with academies, meaning every student enrolls in a career academy to help prepare them for college or work.

Mawae, who aspires to a career in health care one day, listens intently as teacher Judith Morton advises him to adjust his fingers away from the needle’s potential path in the arm, then he moves in with his syringe. Moments later he taps a vial holding a few prized drops of blue-dyed water and proudly proclaims, “That was my first-ever successful draw!”

Such student engagement in their learning, and connections to the “real world,” proponents say, are the magic that career academies make.

A career academy is essentially a school within a school. Students and teachers are sectioned into a closely knit “learning community,” and much of the coursework and extracurricular activities are designed to get students acquainted with their chosen fields.

The goal: to give students a more engaging, intimate school experience that gets them excited about learning and builds work and life skills, whether or not they decide to pursue that field as a career.

Twenty-five Hawaii public schools now offer at least one career academy; the full list can be viewed at hawaiiacademies.net. Of the three schools that are wall to wall with academies, Waipahu High School was the first, and now offers six career academies, plus an academy for English learners; and Pearl City, and Waiakea on Hawaii island, offer three career academies each.

All three schools have earned National Model Academy With Distinction status from the National Career Academy Coalition for their career academies, meaning they have demonstrated meeting rigorous national standards set by the coalition. Castle, Farrington, Kaimuki and Waimea high schools each have one academy recognized by the coalition.

And more career academies are on track to start in Hawaii and get nationally recognized in coming years, state schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi said in a Honolulu Star-Advertiser interview. Nationwide there are some 7,000 career academies, enrolling about 1 million students, according to the coalition.

Transition ‘really hard’

While Pearl City’s academy system is well established now, the shift from a traditional format to wall-to-wall academies was “really hard,” a complex process that took about a decade, says Joseph Halfmann, the third Pearl City principal to oversee the transition.

Over time, classrooms, teachers and the school’s master schedule gradually had to be reorganized to keep each academy’s courses cohesive, teachers have learned new approaches and taken on extra training to learn industry skills and knowledge, and community partnerships and grants have been secured to bring in expertise as well as specialized equipment and facilities. For instance, a digital media classroom includes three authentic TV studio cameras with teleprompters handed down from KHON-2, and set pieces that belonged to the news anchor desk at Hawaii News Now.

Pearl City began with just one health career academy. But as its students began to show improved attendance and graduation rates, plus the benefits of the small learning community connected to an industry sector, “we knew we wanted it for all of our students. And so that’s why we went from that to wall to wall,” Halfmann said. (See accompanying story on how Pearl City’s academies are organized.)

Currently, Pearl City sophomores must choose between the Academy of International Business & Design, the Academy of Technology & Design and the Academy of Culinary Arts, Health Sciences & Leadership. Starting next school year, Pearl City students will have to choose in their freshman year. Each academy also has its own set of supporting industry partners and community advisory board.

Academy high school students still must take all the core courses that fulfill the state Department of Education’s 24 required credits for graduation, but at Pearl City, students every year also take at least one class in CTE, or career technical education, in their selected program of study.

A student enrolled in the cybersecurity pathway under Pearl City’s Academy of Technology & Design, for example, would take a class in foundations of computer systems and technology during freshman year, and advance to programming or networking in sophomore year, cybersecurity in junior year and a “work-based learning” course in senior year.

Even standard core classes in English, math, science and social studies are adapted where possible so that they include at least some content relevant to a career pathway. Teachers are encouraged to learn industry skills to weave into their lessons, Halfmann said.

Engaged in learning

Supporters of the academy model say that students reap benefits academically and socially, and in college and career development. Hayashi and Halfmann, in separate interviews, said that although they didn’t immediately have local data, career academies have helped bring about improvements in areas such as school attendance, graduation and college enrollment.

Hayashi, a former principal of Waipahu High School, said the culture change brought about by its career academies also helped to cut down youth status offenses such as truancy.

It’s in the “deep learning” and engagement, where students are driven by their own curiosity and the connection between lessons and real life, where proponents say academies make a difference.

Skyler Ikeda, a senior and aspiring biomedical engineer enrolled in Pearl City’s Academy of Technology & Design, for example, is developing an automated medication dispensing device with her own mother’s needs in mind.

Ikeda says that she has served for years as her mom’s “human pill dispenser,” helping her manage her medications. So as Ikeda prepares to transition to college in 2023, she wants her mom to have a foolproof way to stay on schedule. Ikeda has learned to use the school’s 3-D printers to build the parts for her invention, is working with a partner to develop the coding for the device’s electronic brain, and hopes eventually to build a matching smartphone app.

While this senior project requires the student to produce two prototypes and a final paper, Ikeda is working on prototype No. 5, long after her paper has been turned in.

“When they find something they’re passionate about, they’ll go way above and beyond,” said engineering and math teacher Traci Kobayashi.

Prepared for the future

The academies’ movement has new momentum under Hayashi, who is widely credited for building Waipahu’s academies when he was principal there. When asked whether Hawaii is now considered a leader in the movement toward academies and creating career pathways, Hayashi demurred, but he did confirm that the state will be the site for the 2025 conference of the National Career Academy Coalition.

But Hayashi said he wants to be clear that Hawaii public schools are not being forced to change to the academy model. Different models work for different communities, he said, adding that the most important thing is to make schooling relevant and beneficial for both students and the community.

“The goal is that we want students to be able to stay home in Hawaii, find a living-wage job and thrive,” Hayashi said. “So the question then becomes, What kind of opportunities do we provide for our students? Academies are one design that (some) schools have elected to utilize.”

Among other ways schools can aim for the goal, Hayashi noted: developing career-related content and industry partnerships within existing school structures; adding Advanced Placement courses; and creating avenues for students to secure internships and mentorships, and offering opportunity for college credits or early college placement to students still in high school.

The academies approach is not without its challenges.

Hawaii public schools that choose to go the academies route still must work within the “weighted student formula,” which the DOE uses to parse out operating budget funds, using a starting baseline of roughly $4,500 per student. So when a school needs additional resources in order to build out career academies, administrators typically learn to seek out grants and industry partnerships.

As for critics who maintain that schools with academies tend to “track” students and limit their opportunities, Hayashi disagrees. “What we’re doing is leveraging the students’ passions and providing an opportunity for them to get engaged,” he says. “Even if students decide to change fields, now they have those life skills, those work skills, those professional skills when they graduate, so they’re able to pivot.”

The University of Hawaii also has added emphasis to career preparation in its new strategic plan, especially in light of the islands’ worker shortages in areas such as education and health care. Both Hayashi and UH President David Lassner have expressed visions for ramping up career exploration and prep stretching from elementary and secondary schools into higher education.

Hayashi sees broad benefits for the islands. “When we’re filling jobs in Hawaii with local kids and local talent, and they’re able to stay home and thrive, that helps with our whole economy. And then a strong economy supports a strong public education system, which connects to the workforce again, so it’s cyclical. We’re really working to help our school leaders to understand that education no longer works in a silo.”

DISSECTING ACADEMIES

Pearl City, Waiakea and Waipahu high schools are Hawaii’s first schools, public or private, offering “wall-to-wall” career academies, meaning each entire school is divided into academies offering courses geared toward preparing students for college, military service and/or work. Each academy typically has its own community advisory board, and industry partners who provide expertise, resources and other support. For example, here’s how Pearl City’s academies are organized:

Academy of International Business & Design

>> International Business

>> Fashion & Artisan Design

>> Digital Design

>> Film & Media Production

Industry partners include Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, First Hawaiian Bank, Queen’s Medical Center-West Oahu, Tori Richard, PBS Hawai‘i HIKI NO.

Academy of Technology & Design

>> Architectural Design

>> Residential & Commercial Construction

>> Cybersecurity

>> Natural Resource Management

>> Engineering Technology

Industry partners include the University of Hawaii at Manoa College of Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers, Hawaii Carpenters Apprenticeship & Training Association, Hawaii Tech Support, RMA Architects.

Academy of Culinary Arts, Health Sciences & Leadership

>> Diagnostic Services

>> Nursing Services

>> Culinary Arts

>> Sustainable Hospitality & Tourism Management

>> Teaching as a Profession

Industry partners include Hawaiian Airlines, Hawaii Pacific Health, the John A. Burns School of Medicine, Outrigger Hotels & Resorts, UH West Oahu.