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Hollister High School will open two new academies this fall: the Early College Academy and the Academy of Health Science.
The academies will be an addition to recent innovative high school pathways Hollister High have already established, the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program and Career Technical Education. The new academies are intended to provide students the opportunities to take dual-enrollment classes in preparation for a four-year college after high school, and to take cross-curricular courses to prepare for careers in health and medical fields.
“All of these changes and additions to our educational offerings are aligned with the district’s goal to support students’ college and career readiness,” said San Benito High School District Superintendent Shawn Tennenbaum in the district’s December 2023 newsletter.
Elaine Klauer, high school district assistant superintendent for academics and instructional programs, wrote, “Our newly introduced Academy of Health Sciences Pathway and Early College Academy open exciting avenues for students, providing a strong foundation for future success,” in the newsletter.
The upcoming academies have been two years in the making, according to Claire Grissom, coordinator of career and college readiness at Hollister High. She said she spent this past year planning out the models of the two academies with a team of teachers, using California schools in the Central Valley, San Diego and Long Beach as models.
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Hollister High School’s Coordinator of College and Career Readiness, Claire Grissom, said the new academies have “been two years in the making,” and that she spent the 2023-2024 school year planning them with a team of teachers. Photo by Jenny Mendolla Arbizu.Hollister High is joining a number of schools in the nation which offer cohort academies where students pursuing the same subject are brought together. According to a report in the American Institute of Research, early college academies have been expanding rapidly since the Early College High School Initiative was established in 2002 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
“Since I came on board as Coordinator of College and Career Readiness, I oversaw the fourteen Career Technical education pathways and I really felt we needed to one up what we had,” said Grissom, who has been in her position at Hollister High for more than 10 years.
She made contact with all K-8 and middle school principals in the county to inform eighth graders of the academies, while also informing ninth graders at Hollister High School. The application period to enroll in both academies for the 2024-25 school year closed on March 15.
Each academy will be cohort-based, with each grade taking designated academy classes together (with the exception of foreign language, math and physical education classes), Grissom said. Both academies will be taught by Hollister High teachers and will follow its bell schedule, while also allowing students to participate in clubs, sports, dances, and other school activities.
The academies will begin with ninth and 10th grades for the 2024-25 school year, adding one grade per year until the 2026-27 school year. For 2024-25, the Early College Academy has a current enrollment of 39 students and the Academy of Health Science is at 74 students.
The Early College Academy will be unlike the Dr. T. J. Owens Gilroy Early College Academy in Gilroy, which locals may be familiar with. That school is a sanctioned campus adjoining the Gavilan College campus, allowing students to take dual-enrollment classes from Gavilan instructors. Grissom said the Hollister High academy will be located on the high school campus.
“Our own teachers are qualified to teach a college course, and the curriculum is also qualified as a college level curriculum, “ Grissom said. “We don’t need to use [Gavilan’s] teachers as of now, and we do not need to use their campus as of now, but in the future that is open.”
Teachers will go through an application process with Gavilan College to meet the minimum qualification to teach a dual-enrollment class, she said.
“We do have a CCAP [College and Career Access Pathways] agreement in place with Gavilan College to offer early college credit, also known as dual enrollment, at our campus during the school day,” she said.
Dual-enrollment classes will not be available for the ninth graders in the Early College Academy, but Grissom said students will take English 9A and AVID [Advancement Via Individual Determination] 9. Dual-enrollment classes will begin in the 10th grade, with that number of classes increasing into their twelfth grade year.
The Academy of Health Science will expose its ninth graders to Intro to Medical Careers, English 9 in the context of Mental and Behavioral Health, and a Health Plans class. Throughout high school, they will job-shadow workers in their place of employment, and take student internships in 11th and 12th grades.
“Along with the curriculum and the workplace learning, we have access to certification,” Grissom said. “So within this program students will get their first aid certification, they will get their CPR certification, they will get their first aid to severe trauma certification.”
Grissom said when she created the Academy of Health Sciences, she wanted students to have “multiple entry and exit points” that would give them the choice to either further their studies in the medical field or go straight to work.
“Not everybody in the health field is a doctor or a nurse, and so we’ll expose them to everything and at every educational level,” she said.
Grissom said with both academies being so new, the courses and policies may change in the future.
”But we really have to be able to find the balance between pushing our students to be successful and making sure that they’re not overwhelmed,” she said
To be considered for either academy, Grissom said, applicants must have at least a 2.0 grade point average, complete an application and go through an interview process. For more information on Hollister High School’s Early College Academy or Academy of Health Science, contact Claire Grissom at cgrissom@sbhsd.k12.ca.us.
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