How Norman Public Schools and OU are partnering on an innovative aviation immersion school

NORMAN — The granddaughter of an aircraft mechanic at Tinker Air Force Base, Alexis Hannah long has had a fascination with aviation and flying. The thought of pursuing a career in that field, she said, always has been “in the back of my head.”

Aviation/aeronautics is the second-largest industry in Oklahoma and as the need develops to produce more workforce-ready people to fill jobs in that industry, Norman Public Schools and the University of Oklahoma are partnering on a project that is benefitting students like Alexis. Known as the Oklahoma Aviation Academy, it’s essentially a public immersion school for high school students wishing to pursue a career in any number of aviation-related fields. Only a handful of similar schools exist anywhere in the U.S.

Norman voters approved a $353.9 million bond proposal in February 2023 with a new building for the academy as the centerpiece. The academy — which received a shout-out from Gov. Kevin Stitt in his State of the State address at the start of the current legislative session — now conducts classes in portable buildings at OU’s Max Westheimer Airport. Construction soon will begin on the new facility, also on airport grounds, a location that will allow for a close connection between the academy and OU’s top-rated collegiate aviation program.

“As I was growing up, I thought less and less about (a career in aviation) until the Academy and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh — I may have a chance to do this!’ It wasn’t until I heard about the academy that I thought I could actually do it,” said Alexis, a sophomore who’s a member of the first class of students at the academy. “None of knew what to expect, but it’s been a really positive experience. We are so lucky, because it’s been made so easy for us. It’s basically just an everyday thing for us, just like normal class, except it’s a little more interesting.”

Who had the idea for the Oklahoma Aviation Academy and how fast was it developed?

The idea for the aviation academy came from Rick Nagel, a member of the OU Board of Regents who’s long had an interest in aviation and its related businesses. He thought a high school with a dedicated aviation and aerospace mission would do well in Oklahoma, given the growth in the state’s economy in the aerospace sector.

In November 2021, he approached Norman Public Schools Superintendent Nick Migliorino with the idea. By the following February, they began recruiting students and the school opened that fall. Terry Adams, a former principal at Bixby High School, serves as the director.

“I felt the alchemy of OU, the private sector, Norman Public Schools … and our amazing CareerTech system, if you could figure out a way to harness all that and bring it together, we’d have the best, most dynamic ecosystem in America to make something like this work,” Nagel said.

“It was a perfect moment in time. We not only had the right leadership at OU to get behind it, we had the right leadership at Norman Public Schools to get behind it. The board was unanimous for this. We had the right leadership at Moore Norman Technology Center and the state of Oklahoma.”

The Norman bond proposal included $32.745 million for the 120,000-square-foot aviation academy facility, and the state Legislature appropriated $20 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding toward the project. Norman officials hope it will be ready by the time the first group of students, including Alexis, are ready for graduation. It will be built with aviation-specific areas, as well as traditional classrooms, and will include a gymnasium in which drones can be flown, Adams said.

“Public schools are government, and government moves at a snail’s pace for a lot of reasons,” said Dirk O’Hara, the chair of the Norman school board and an early supporter of the project. “This district is not moving at a snail’s pace. They are beating the odds. That’s hard. I am proud of watching their advancement at a much higher pace than what you see (other) public schools doing.”

Just how unique is the Oklahoma Aviation Academy?

There aren’t many templates out there for building and running a school like the Oklahoma Aviation Academy. Raisbeck Aviation High School in Tukwila, Washington, is a public magnet school. There’s also the West Michigan Aviation Academy in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is a public charter high school. Adams thinks there might be a few others, but not many. Unlike those schools, Oklahoma's academy is open to any Norman Public Schools student. Academy students can participate in extracurricular activities — such as band, fine arts and athletics — at either Norman High School or Norman North High School.

Academy students, like any others, take their core academic classes such as English and math, but they also use specialized curriculum for other classes that’s produced by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and provided free to schools. The school has 164 students and five staff members, Adams said.

“The goal, once the facility is built, is always to allow those kids who want to to spend all or most of their day with us,” Adams said. “We’ll never fully … be a stand-alone high school. We’ll be an academy that supports the rest of the Norman Public Schools. We share the students with their home site. … We feel like we’ve got a great model and one we’ll continue to scale up and serve more and more kids each year.”

State aviation leaders believe the school will produce graduates that will help address a growing need in Oklahoma for workers ready to enter the industry, which has about 120,000 employees and a $44 billion economic impact annually on the state, said Grayson Ardies, the executive director of the Oklahoma Department of Aerospace and Aeronautics. Oklahoma has numerous large aviation-related employers including Tinker Air Force Base, the American Airlines maintenance facility in Tulsa, the Federal Aviation Administration Academy in Oklahoma City, Boeing and others.

“Norman has taken it up a notch,” Ardies said. “All those kids are going to be out at the Westheimer Airport, getting their education curriculum at an airport. Yes, it’s English, but it may be a little aviation English. Yes, it’s math, but maybe it’s a little aviation math. The full immersion is getting those high-performing kids who are in love with aviation and aerospace and getting them excited. … Those kids are going to be the most post-secondary-ready to go into aviation, coming out of the Norman school.”

Ardies said when he speaks to students, he hears some of them say they don’t want to be a pilot, or a mechanic, or an engineer.

“I say, great, you’ve just eliminated three of probably 500 different job opportunities that you have in aerospace in the state,” he said. “You want to be a marketing professional, you want to be a business professional, you want to be an accountant, you want to be a legal-minded individual, all those careers are still available for you in aviation and aerospace. Whatever you put your mind to is where you can go in the aviation/aerospace sector in the state.”

Academy's connection with nation's No. 1 college aviation program and industry partners is important

Adams said the program is designed so that students will be able to seamlessly move into OU’s program, which was ranked No. 1 nationally by Flying magazine. OU is investing in its aviation program, as well, with regents having approved the construction of two new hangars at Westheimer Airport and increasing the program’s fleet size to 28 aircraft.

“We have a tremendous technology center in our partner at Moore Norman,” Adams said. “We have tremendous industry partners like Boeing that provide us a lot of income and is entrenched in a lot of the experiences we have here at school. Just a lot of stars aligned to get this thing off the ground. And aviation is hot — there are 85 or 90 schools teaching some sort of aviation education in our state right now. I’m a 30-year public educator and never have I been a part of something like this where everybody says ‘yes.’”

Alexis said she’d eventually like to go to college and become a commercial pilot. She believes attending the aviation academy is a big step toward reaching that goal.

“It provides a chance to take classes about something I’m really interested in, that I wouldn’t have gotten to do normally,” she said. “I’m thankful it’s through a public school, because a lot of us couldn’t have paid to go to private school. They make it really easy on us and they’re always trying to find ways to improve the program.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Unique aviation academy a product of partnership of Norman schools, OU