As high school students across Massachusetts slept in, went on trips, or hung out with friends during the February school vacation week, students at Boston’s Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers woke up early each day for a weeklong nursing assistant bootcamp.
Dozens of students spent their Wednesday morning emptying urine drainage bags and debating the best responses to test questions. These students, all juniors at the health care-focused Boston Public Schools high school, were preparing to take the state-certified nursing assistant exam in April. Part of their “health assisting” career training, the credential will open up higher-paying jobs immediately and ease the path to further opportunities
“Some people, during break, they don’t have anything to do,” said Calvin Grayson, a Grade 11 student from Dorchester Center. “It allows us to study for something that’s really important for our lives.”
The school, a longstanding in-district charter school, is in the early stages of a new partnership with Mass General Brigham announced in 2024. The partnership, funded by a $38 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, aims to help fill the more than 13,000 health care vacancies across the state and give more Boston students a path to the middle class.
Grayson, for example, now lists his potential future hospital jobs like items on a grocery list, up to one day becoming a surgeon. As a nursing aide, Grayson could work through college and medical school, he said, exactly the sort of outcome school leaders hope for.
The review week is the latest innovation enabled by the Mass General Brigham partnership, which is also slated to double enrollment, add additional state-approved career training programs, and offer students critical hands-on experience in hospitals and nursing homes
For Mass General Brigham, the partnership is intended to help them fill staff shortages. They have more than 2,000 staff vacancies each year. Acute hospital staff shortages that arose during the pandemic have abated somewhat, but problems persist, with more than 13,000 vacancies for positions such as nurses and technicians at hospitals across the state.
But the hospital network also hopes career programs such as health assisting, which includes the CNA certification, will offer economic mobility for the students, said H. Kay Howard, Mass General Brigham’s director of health careers training.
“There’s all these different roles, many of which don’t require a college degree ... but then have tremendous pathways for growth,” Howard said. It “gives them really strong choices.”
Health care has become the driver of US job growth, accounting for nearly two-thirds of new jobs in January.
About three-quarters of Edward M. Kennedy students are low-income, and more than 90 percent are Black or Latino. Nearly all graduate on time and a larger faction go on to college than in Boston as a whole.
Many certified nursing assistants work in long-term care facilities, helping residents eat and wash and taking note of any changing needs or symptoms. Alongside the exam, nursing aides need on-site training, which Edward M. Kennedy students are getting through six weeks of shadowing nursing aides.
Ghyani Burris-Rowell, another student at the bootcamp, said she’d like to one day open her own nursing home with her mom.
“I really love old folks,” she said. “I just enjoy giving them that care. It’s what you would want for yourself, but you might not be in the state to do for yourself.”
Burris-Rowell said she’s missing her February break and all the extra sleep she’d be getting. “But I know I’m going to appreciate it," she added.
During the bootcamp, students begin each morning with a 75-minute practice test for the knowledge portion of the aide exam. Teachers then lead reviews of the material or guide students through practices of the skills portion of the exam.
In Burris-Rowell’s class, students broke down the process of emptying a urine bag in extreme detail. One girl politely introduced herself to the mannequin patient and asked for permission before pulling a privacy curtain in behind her. Two others deliberated on the volume of the urine they collected.
An instructor gave a boy his trick for removing a gown without contaminating himself.
“Imagine it’s the dirtiest thing on the front of you, that you don’t want to touch,” he said.
Most of the skills are simple, but the dozens of different steps add up. Whether students use their training to work in nursing homes or hospitals or they pursue further education, it will give them more choices, said Annemarie Tesora, a registered nurse and teacher at the school.
In the first year of the hospital partnership, 51 students in grades 11 and 12 passed the CNA exam. This year, 52 more, all in Grade 11, are eligible to take it. As seniors, they will bring their skills to weeklong stints at Mass General Brigham hospitals.
The school will add a medical assisting program next year, with students picking between the current health assisting pathway and the new medical assisting option in Grade 9. Students who follow that program will be able to get jobs or further education in areas including X-ray technology and sterile handling of surgical tools.
Like many career-oriented high schools around Massachusetts, Edward M. Kennedy leaders have plans to expand further. Currently, the school serves just 424 students, but it has long had hundreds of students on its waitlist.
The city is currently seeking a new site, with a goal of moving in the fall of 2028. Enrollment would double, classrooms would have space for model hospital rooms that meet standards of care, and the school would add a third career program, biotech. Students in that pathway could go on to laboratory science or pathology roles.
During the summer, the state also approved a partnership for the school to offer courses from Bunker Hill Community College.
For years, Tesora taught the same health assisting course at Northeast Metro Tech, a vocational high school in Wakefield. She called her Boston students’ experience “unparalleled.”
“There’s no other school around that’s doing what EMK is doing,” she said. “They get such great experiences.”
Christopher Huffaker can be reached at christopher.huffaker@globe.com. Follow him @huffakingit.