Summer means a break from school for most Alaska kids, but some incoming freshmen in Anchorage are getting a jumpstart earning high school credit through a cosmetology course at King Tech High School.
About 15% of Anchorage School District students took classes this summer. Elementary and middle schoolers can study Indigenous culture, develop career-focused skills or continue to learn the English language. Many high school students recover credits from courses they failed during the school year, and over 400 8th graders earned high school credits early, like the King Tech students taking cosmetology.
The cosmetology lab at King Tech looks like a beauty parlor. Rows of salon chairs stand in the middle with sinks on one end and a line of mannequin heads along the wall. On a Thursday afternoon in May, instructor Normandy Vesel taught a group of 16 students how to apply a moisturizing scalp treatment.
“The reason why we’re going to do the scalp treatment is because this is literally something you can go home and do on your friends, your family, each other,” Vesel told her students.
Cosmetology covers a wide array of services in the beauty industry, including hair, nails and makeup. Students at King Tech focus on hair during the weeklong class. And in doing so, they’ll earn high school science and elective credits, while developing skills they can use at home or in the upper-level cosmetology classes at King Tech.
Vesel gave a demonstration at the start of class, and then students got to work in the cosmetology lab, each standing behind a mannequin head attached to a barber’s chair.
Molly Antijunti will go to Bettye Davis East Anchorage High School in the fall. She said she’s not interested in cosmetology as a career after high school but had fun learning to improve her skills with hair.
“I want to learn how to French braid, because why not? And so I got in here, and we learned, actually, a lot more than just basic braiding skills,” Antijunti said. “I got the chance to learn something new, and that's super exciting.”
Angel Ruiz-Reyes was one of two boys taking the class. He’s not quite sold on cosmetology as a career but still enjoyed learning new things.
“At first, it was definitely intimidating,” Ruiz-Reyes said. “But I like being open minded, seeing what this profession can do. I like testing out new things for the future.”
Alaska beauty schools can cost about $12,000 for a four-year program, and Outside schools charge nearly twice as much, Vesel said. The full cosmetology program at King Tech gets students about half the hours they need to become licensed.
Many students that have come through King Tech are currently employed using the skills they learned there, even if it’s not their full-time job, Vesel said.
“When they're really young like that, it's time to go out and have fun and be behind the chair and do all that stuff,” she said. “But then you get older, you start having kids, and this is a great employable skill to get your insurance, get your benefits.”
The Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development’s 2024 report shows an 11% increase in the number of licensed barbers and hairdressers over the last five years, including a 32% increase in licenses for estheticians, who perform skincare treatments. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts the skincare industry will grow more than twice as fast as other industries in coming years, and barbers and hairdressers show similar growth.
After more than a dozen years teaching cosmetology at King Tech and her previous role as an instructor at private hair schools, Vesel said she’s trained hundreds of students in Anchorage who now run their own businesses.
“It’s a serious program,” Vesel said. “It's not just, ‘Come here because I like to play with makeup and do my hair,’ because it's a lot of science.”
Students started the week learning about infection control and bacteriology, then gave a haircut. The scalp treatment was the final test. The students carefully applied the minty white paste to their individual mannequin heads and brushed the product into the hair.
Zoey Duke will attend Dimond High School in the fall, and she is already starting to develop skills she hopes to turn into a career after she graduates.
“You take a little bit on your pinky, and you put it on her scalp so it makes it not dry,” Duke said as she moved her hairbrush. “You kind of flick it up and try to not get the other hair in there.”
Duke said she took the class this summer in the hopes that she can graduate high school early. She also pointed out how much money she and her family can save from her newfound cosmetology skills at home, without having to go to a salon.
“At first, I didn't want to do cosmetology, because I wanted to be a doctor or something,” Duke said. “But I don’t want to do that for the rest of my life. I don’t want to be a doctor. It's so long to get a degree and everything, so I chose to do this.”
