Huntley High School will take the first step to a planned medical academy this fall, when it introduces the “Medical Skills and Services” course to students.
The course will offer instruction on “health care professions, medical terminology, basic anatomy and physiology, a history of medicine, and basic medical skills and competencies,” according to a record of a May 5 District 158 Board meeting.
The vision for the academy is a school-within-a-school. Students who want to pursue a career in healthcare can attend the medical academy and receive an education tailored to their future, while other students can have a traditional high-school experience.
Curriculum for the academy would be built up gradually. Since each course is a prerequisite to the next, only one new course will be started per year until the pathways are defined. The academy could take up to ten years to become fully developed.
Though only one course will be available next year, district officials see student interest toward the course as a good sign.
“The reaction has been very, very positive,” Mary Olson, chief academic officer for District 158, said. “We only have 70 slots for next year, and we had to turn kids away. We had to turn away almost as many students as we were able to accept.”
Renae St. Clair, a math teacher and athletic trainer at the high school, initially wanted to start an athletic training course for students interested in entering the field. Principal Dave Johnson liked the idea, but thought a progression of classes would be better.
“So it blew up from just one class into like a three or four class progression, and then we blew it up even bigger into this academy idea where we could kind of meet the needs of any student going into any type of medical profession,” St. Clair said.
Once fully developed, the academy would be able to prepare students to work in several medical jobs, whether they need certification or a medical degree.
The school also hopes to eventually be able to provide college credit courses for students in the academy, allowing them to graduate and enter the workforce faster.
Planning for the medical academy has been done with the state of the economy in focus.
“We’re always going to need nurses. We’re always going to need paramedics. We’re always going to need those people, and we’re thinking what kind of an edge can we give to our students so that they do get employed quicker and they do become better employees compared to students from other high schools,” St Clair said.
Huntley High School will not be able to start the academy alone, and the school is working to build partnerships with businesses, universities, and the community.
A partnership has already been started with Centegra Health System, whose presence is growing in Huntley. Representatives of Centegra have attended meetings regarding the academy.
“They [Centegra] are very valuable to us in terms of what they can tell us [about] what they look for in employees,” Olson said, adding the potential for job shadowing in the future.
The high school is also in communication with Northern Illinois University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as McHenry County College and Harper College.
Olson added some of these partners could invest financially into the academy, and the high school is researching grant opportunities to fund the academy.
“We obviously are going to try very hard to not have to increase any funds to do this,” Olson said. “We’re certainly going to look for any outside funding sources that might be able to help us with this, but we also are just going to look at what our normal kinds of costs were and can we take it out of our regularly budgeted funds?”
Huntley High School is also looking to partner with Project Lead the Way, an initiative to provide innovative science, technology, engineering, and mathematics curricula to high schools and middle schools. According to the meeting notes, Huntley High School would be the first school in Illinois to implement Project Lead the Way’s biomedical engineering program.
Because implementing the program costs $25,000 for materials and equipment and $6,000 for teacher training, next fall’s pilot course will serve as the stepping stone for the rest of the program to follow.
According to Olson, the only expense associated with the introductory course is new textbooks, as the high school already has a teacher who is certified to teach the course.
“Are we increasing our textbook budget for this course? No. It’s coming out of the existing budget would be a better way to put it,” she said. “We are not increasing the textbook budget line.”
Olson noted the high school’s enrollment is increasing at about 200 students per year. St Clair mentioned a possible wing addition to accommodate the academy, but no concrete plans have been discussed for how the academy will fit into the school’s expansion.
