Southwest Virginia’s first lab school immerses students in health care careers

Kasey Ball is a busy junior at Holston High School in Damascus, where she is vice president of the Student Council Association, takes honors courses and is a member of the Future Farmers of America, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Spirit Club.

In addition to cheerleading at football games on Friday nights and playing on the school’s soccer team, she recently shadowed doctors and nurses at the Johnston Memorial Hospital emergency room, where she witnessed the birth of a baby via C-section.

Kasey, who wants to be a nurse or a nurse anesthetist, is one of 44 students who are the first to explore health care careers at the new Southwest Virginia Healthcare Excellence Academy Lab School, or SWVA-HEALS, which opened Aug. 13 on two campuses.

She is working toward a general studies certificate.

“That way, I can basically have one year of college under my belt before I actually finish high school,” she said. “This is definitely a wonderful opportunity, and I think most people don’t realize how truly blessed we are to have it.”

A lab school is a public school that provides an “innovative, high-quality education experience,” according to the state Department of Education. It is a partnership among higher education, employers, school divisions and communities.

A lab school must focus on academic programs in an in-demand field. The need for health care workers in Southwest Virginia is dire, local officials have said, with one hospital official in Marion saying in late 2022 that Ballad Health had 2,500 job openings across its 21-county primary service area.

Lab schools have been championed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and in 2022, the General Assembly allocated $100 million to pay for them.

So far, 15 lab schools have been approved by the state, and SWVA-HEALS is among the first six to open.

Planting the seeds

Talk of the project began in early 2022 when Smyth County school officials asked leaders at E&H if they’d be interested in working together on a lab school. The response was enthusiastic.

One of the E&H officials there that day was Lou Fincher, who was then a senior vice president and dean of the School of Health Sciences. That first discussion centered on E&H and Smyth County, but she said it was amazing how quickly the project grew to include more school systems and additional higher education partners.

Fincher, who led the project for many months, said she was sad when she had to step away to focus on her current job as E&H’s interim president, but she is excited about the school’s recent opening and plans to visit soon.

In July 2023, Dante Lee was hired as the lab school’s first executive director. He had retired from a 30-year education career, spent mostly as a high school principal in several counties, including his last stint as principal of George Wythe High School.

He soon found out that only 17 students from the four eligible school systems had expressed interest in the program, so he got busy visiting high schools, most of them twice, to recruit students. Last fall, another retired school principal, Mike Davidson, joined the school as assistant director.

The school now has 44 students: 25 from Bristol and Washington County, who attend classes at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon, and 19 from Smyth and Wythe counties, who go to E&H’s Health Sciences campus in Marion. 

Keeping up with a ‘rigorous’ curriculum

Originally, the cohort had 49 students, but five dropped out. Some found the curriculum too “rigorous” when combined with their regular high school studies and extracurricular activities, Lee said.

“We have students that are right now taking as many as 15 college credit hours this semester,” he said. “It takes a lot of dedication. It takes them being committed and realizing that they’re developing their college transcript as high school sophomores and juniors.”

That’s a normal college courseload, Lee said, adding that students in the lab school are taking these credits in addition to their high school courses.

Ava Austin, a junior at Marion Senior High School, called the lab school “challenging” but said she has stayed on top of her studies through careful planning and time management.

“As long as I plan out my days, look at what I have to do each day, it’s been pretty manageable,” she said.

Gavin Browning, a junior at Cornerstone Christian Academy in Abingdon, is the only private school student at the lab school. He said it has broadened his horizons and allowed him to have experiences and meet people he never would have otherwise.

Over the summer, he became an emergency medical technician and believes his future career may be in health care. He’s not sure yet what career path he will take, but he wants to go to medical school.

He is doing well but said he can see how some students might struggle with the workload. But he added that the lab school is built to help students succeed. In addition to four instructors, classroom facilitators serve as success coaches who work with students to iron out any difficulties that crop up.

One young woman in the program decided health care wasn’t the career path for her after she watched a procedure that involved a lot of blood.

Some might see her dropping out as a failure, but Lee pointed out that it could have saved her two or three years of college and thousands of dollars in tuition had she not discovered at an early age that health care wasn’t for her.

The mission of the school, which is free for students, is to create an academic pipeline to prepare future health care professionals that will fill the workforce needs in Southwest Virginia. E&H officials also hope some of the students end up enrolled there.

The school is for students in 10^th through 12^th grades, although the current students are all juniors. They actually started at their high schools last January, in the second semester of their sophomore year, when there was a soft opening, Lee said.

Starting in January, the next round of sophomores will start with the training at their high schools. They’ll start the daily regular program as juniors in the fall when this year’s juniors will return as seniors.

All of the classes are dual enrollment, meaning that students get both high school and college credit. The lab school is budgeted for up to 50 students for each level so it could have 150 students across the three grade levels.

All students in the four participating school divisions are eligible. If more students apply than there are spaces, the lab school will use a lottery system so that each applicant has the same chance of being chosen, Lee said. To apply, students fill out an application and write two essays.

The current students are interested in a host of medical careers, including nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, physical therapy, radiology and veterinary medicine.

Right now, Austin wants to be a physician’s assistant, but her mind has changed several times as she has learned about all the jobs available.

“We learn about one job one week, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ And then I change my mind to the next one,” she said.

On a recent Friday morning, students at both campuses worked quietly in their classrooms, some taking a test, others studying medical terminology or ethics of health care. The students attend classes at the lab schools in the morning and return to their high schools for lunch and afternoon classes.

Dennis Carter, the Smyth County superintendent who helped get the project started, said he has visited the school a couple of times and was impressed by the atmosphere and the students’ excitement.

“We could not have designed it any better in my mind. … And it’s just going to get better,” he said.

Several of the students said they like working on their own and feel the classes are less structured than their usual high school courses, and more like college classes.

They do spend time in the classroom, but in addition to job shadowing opportunities, they will visit colleges and universities and will have hands-on experiences that take them into local hospitals. Already, students have watched heart catheterizations and hip replacement surgeries.

To help schedule more of these activities, Shelby Neikirk was hired in August as the school’s clinical placement coordinator. With a background in nursing, she has already set up a trip to East Tennessee State University in Johnson City next month, with plans for visits to the University of Tennessee as well as some Virginia universities.

A sudden shift

Lee, Davidson and many others had been working on the project for months when they got the news in mid-May that might have meant the school wouldn’t open as planned this fall.

Although the project was approved by the state in late April, legislators changed the language in the state budget, which wasn’t approved until May 13, to alter the eligibility definition for receiving public funds to operate a lab school. The change meant that private schools like E&H and community colleges were no longer eligible.

However, they were told that the projects could move forward if they could find a four-year public institution to serve as fiscal agent by June 30, which gave them just six weeks to make it happen.

Lee said it was a difficult time, but he added that Emory & Henry remained “fully committed” to the project and opening this fall.

In the end, Old Dominion University, a public university in Norfolk, offered to act as fiscal agent to all five schools affected: Emory & Henry, Roanoke College and three community colleges — Germanna, Mountain Gateway and Paul D. Camp.

The plan was approved on June 21 by the Virginia Board of Education. Since ODU operates four of its own lab schools, including an aerospace academy approved in June, it will oversee a network of nine schools.

Lee said he wasn’t sure what to expect from ODU, but so far, the partnership is going well. Leaders with the local lab school meet with ODU officials every two weeks via Zoom to ensure regular communication and guidance.

They’ve also talked with the other schools in the network, sharing information and learning from the experiences of others, he added.

“ODU really stepped up in bringing all these schools and people under their umbrella,” he said. “There’s a lot of advantages to that. There’s a lot of collaboration so that we can really share with each other. … They are also going to provide us with a lot of research and a lot of professional development. So, there are some big benefits coming from ODU.”

Each lab school in the network will pay ODU 5% of its operating funding, for a total of $748,800 over the four years they are funded. The state Board of Education also approved additional startup money for each of the five lab schools so they can pay ODU more, depending on their opening date, the travel expenses involved and the number of students served. The board said the amounts would be negotiated.

Since that meeting, there have been no changes or updates to the amounts each school will receive and what will be paid to ODU, said Todd Reid, senior communications advisor for the Virginia Department of Education.

Summits are being planned for ODU’s network of lab schools this fall and next spring, according to Lee.

ODU also has a representative on the 11-member lab school board, which guides SWVA-HEALS along with an advisory council and curriculum team.

A celebration of the opening of the lab school is being planned for later this fall, and Lee said he hopes officials with ODU, the state Board of Education and the Education Department will attend. He has also invited the governor and Lisa Coons, the state’s superintendent of public instruction.

Planning for the future

SWVA-HEALS is receiving $3.85 million from the state to operate for four years. Those involved have said they want to continue past the four years and become self-sustaining, which is required by the state. Each lab school must provide reports showing they’ll be self-sufficient once the state money runs out.

Already, they’ve seen interest from partners and agencies that want to get involved, according to Lee and Carter, who both said they think the lab school will be self-sustaining after the four years and open to area students for a long time.

Fincher said she can’t wait to see the impact the lab school will have, and once that is known, it will help with sustainability.

“It’s going to be several years before we can start to see what percentage of these students do end up pursuing health care and how many of them end up staying in Southwest Virginia,” she said. “But that’s going to be the real joy — getting far enough out that we can track the impact the program can have.”