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Good, good morning everyone.
It is mid-morning and you are listening to Civic Media.
My name is Greg Bach.
I am your host and I'm very, very, very happy to have you.
We have a wonderful show ahead for you today after the 9 30 news Wisconsin watches very own Miranda Dunlop lap is here.
She's back and today we are talking about Tech schools tech education and the importance of Lifting that aspect of the educational world up and making it available to youngsters and
the importance of having that conversation in a modern world where some kids do not want to go to a four-year college.
We have these options here, and we're going to be talking to her about her story, highlighting a program in Appleton after the 10 o'clock news.
Excuse me.
After the 10 o'clock news, we're going to be speaking to Dr. Connie Ciskowski, who is the founder of the
the Association of Caregiving Youth that is a group that deals with, helps with young people who have to be the caregivers for families.
So we'll be speaking to Connie in the 10 o'clock hour.
And then 1035, we want to hear from you.
Your thoughts on, you know, are you someone who had to give care to, to an adult, to a parent, to an aunt, uncle, grandpa, or grandma want to know about maybe your thoughts on education?
I am someone who has a very, very staunch
belief on the tech education world, getting people to vocational schools.
And also just want to hear from you about how your New Year's is going so far.
Are you planning those resolutions?
Are you executing those resolutions?
What are you doing in 2026?
And then finally, wrapping the entire thing up with this shouldn't be a thing today is the Crown Jewels Edition.
I'm actually learning a little something with this one today, but you don't want to go anywhere.
Have a great show ahead of you.
Lots, lots.
lots going on in the news today.
And I would be remiss if I did not bring up the fact that today celebrates the fifth anniversary five years since the insurrection, the capital riot that took place in Washington, DC.
Yeah.
I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this just because
We remember those days.
We remember what happened.
I just want to bring up a couple of things of the fact that there is a, there has been a movement over the past few years to rewrite and or erase the history of the January 6th rights, those who gave their lives, those who suffered as a result of this insurrection, this act of, in my opinion, it's my opinion, this was a traitorous exercise that was in, it was,
put hundreds of people's lives in danger, and it's slowly being rewritten by those who actually were in the room that day.
Those who hid for their safety, those who ran for their lives, those who were protected by the very Capitol Police who are now not being honored.
Still to this day, there is a plaque.
This is being reported by NPR.
There's a plaque that was made to honor law enforcement and it was by law to be hung in the halls of The Capitol and is not being done.
We've talked about this many times They believe it's in storage somewhere as it stands right now when you walk into the Capitol building there is no Remembrance there is no reminder of what happened five years ago today and I believe personally that is
a disrespectful act for the very group of individuals that some think are, you know, when we talk about back in the blue, we need to support them.
This is something that support.
I just wanted to put that out there on this, the fifth anniversary of the January six riots on Capitol Hill.
So I, another article has came out, came across the desk this morning out of Wisconsin watch regarding education.
It is
This just really kind of furthers the conversation we've been talking about for a while with regard to how our voucher systems are being paid for here in Wisconsin.
Hongyu Liu from the Wisconsin Watch published this article yesterday.
It's titled DataWatch.
Nearly half of Wisconsin private school students receive a taxpayer funded voucher.
And this is a great article.
It will be in the show notes.
And I, I mean, I love this article because it gives you the numbers, but it also gives you the details and the history and something that people might not realize about the voucher program here in Wisconsin is that it was the nation's first modern private school voucher.
I'm going to be pulling right from this article because he, Mr. Liu did such a great job with this.
It was launched in 1990 as the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.
It served about 300 students at seven secular schools.
And it only qualified, it said the students came from families earning less than 175% of the federal poverty level.
And we as state taxpayers paid about 24, between 24 to $2,500 tuition for each.
So that's where we are.
back in 1990.
That was about $700,000 then.
$1.78 million adjusted for inflation.
Today, it stands that we are going to spend $700 million of our educational funding towards private school vouchers.
That is what's happened over the past 35 years.
In 2011, there was 23,000 students
three out of four private schools, about three, about three out of four private schools student per year got vouchers.
This was something that was led very, very, very aggressively by former governor Scott Walker, as well as the legislature, who a lot of them are still in power.
I mean, they still run Madison right now.
It is an election year.
This is a hot button topic because we want to
We want to make school affordable.
We want to make education accessible.
We want to make our public schooling great.
And the problem I see that we've heard from many of our guests that we've seen in many stories is that people do not believe public school is a viable option.
It's a good option.
People want to send their kids to good schools.
And I understand that.
And I want to be totally open.
an advocate and a believer in public schools, I did not attend public schools.
I went to a private school back in the day, back in the 80s and 90s, and I was actually texting with my mother before we got on the air, because I wanted to find out about the tuition costs, because it's not a, it's not, you know,
Private school education is not cheap, especially today.
And I asked my mom, she told me it was between $1,500 to $2,000 a year for me to go to Catholic Memorial High School in Waukesha, which is a lot of money.
But back in the, in the mid 90s, dual income family, both full-time workers both have career jobs.
It was, I believe not.
In fact, she, I asked her a question.
I said to her, I said to her, I said, is it possible for a,
dual income family back then to afford to send a kid, me being the kid, to that school.
She agreed.
She said, absolutely.
Your dad and I were making fairly decent money and didn't qualify for any tuition relief, but having two incomes made a big difference.
Then, $1,500 to $2,000 a year.
We're talking about schools nowadays.
I believe CMH, where I went to high school, is more expensive than some stateside schools.
My point being is that we want to give our kids the best education.
I understand that and if you want to send your kid to a private school, I also understand that.
The big takeaway though is that from this article and the things we have talked about is that we are taking money away from our public school system and we are diverting that into private voucher programs.
We are allowing our public school education to be defunded
and sent to a second school system completely.
In the article, it says taxpayers through school district budgets provide 10,877 for each
K to eight voucher student and $13,371 for each voucher to students in nine through 12.
Those are for the kids who enroll in the three major voucher programs here in the state.
Each student participates.
There's a special needs scholarship program.
They get 16,000 and that is going to increase by 4%.
And that, for me,
is a problem.
And I mean,
It's hard to have this conversation once hard to have this conversation by myself because I feel like I want to hear from you guys I'm sorry I meant to tell you this you can always get in touch with us You can always be part of the conversation.
You can always be here on the show You simply just got a caller text the numbers the same 8 5 5 7 5 2 4 8 4 2 8 5 5 7 5 civic leave a comment on the live stream You we are on Facebook YouTube and this platform.
We still call Twitter You can also leave a voice note if you have the app get the civic media app if you don't already have it but
It's difficult to have this conversation because I'd never want anyone to think that I'm anti-education or anti the ability to send your kid to private school.
Absolutely.
If you want to send your kid to private school, that's great.
And if there is a place where we can create a system where there are scholarships or whatever available, but the problem is, is that we have a very
Very suffering public school system here in Wisconsin.
It's actually and it's better than people think I'm talking more about the numbers on that as far as private school education value versus public school education value But the fact the matter is is that when we're taking hundreds of millions 700 million dollars out of our public school system and diverting it into private school vouchers one
That is an immediate effect on the teachers in those schools, those students, the faculty, and it creates a problem that we have talked about over and over again.
That if they don't have the access to the funding, they can't give a better education, they can't do what people expect and or want from them.
And on top of that, these private schools receive the money, and that's about it.
That's where the story ends.
And we're going to talk about that accountability when we return from when we're going to get some water and some snacks.
We'll come back.
We'll talk about accountability.
But this article in Wisconsin watch really lays out both the history and the details on where we've come over 35 plus years and what we have to show for it, especially in the day and age where we are now going to the polls.
to vote to raise our own property taxes, to fund our school systems because our budgeting every time doesn't allow for a general injection of funding.
That is another problem is that once again this budget for education doesn't do exactly what it should do and funfully our educational system.
It funds certain things, it funds
It raised the special education reimbursement, which is great, but it also did not really give any sort of general injection of funding.
And that also is the problem.
When you're taking money away and not putting money in, then I don't know what we expect from our public schools other than telling our teachers they have to do even more by way of paying for school supplies, working more, teaching longer hours, and putting themselves in situations that just make it maybe not the most fun to teach.
Therefore, the education is reflected.
That's not me knocking teachers.
I'm saying they're working within the conditions we are giving them.
When we're taking away funding or not giving them funding or both, they have to work with what they got and they're great for doing it.
But we're going to talk more about that on the other side and discuss the matter of accountability on the
voucher program, as well as hear from you, Jack from Merrimack.
I see you on the line.
I'm going to take you when we come back, but I'd love to hear more from you.
Some of you are educators, some of you are parents.
What do you think about that?
I mean, I want to hear from people like me.
I don't have kids, but I voted to raise my property taxes to pay for schooling because our leaders in Madison aren't leading.
And we see this story coming out saying that more money is being taken from that fund to fund private schools.
That to me is a massive problem for Wisconsinites.
And I want to know more from you.
So on the other side, go grab some water, grab some snacks.
We're going to talk to you about this discussing this Wisconsin watch article about the voucher program here in Wisconsin.
Don't go anywhere.
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Good, good, good day to you.
It's mid mornings on Civic Media.
My name is Greg Bach.
I am your host.
We are coming to you live from radio park here in Racine.
Got Kelvin on the boards here.
And if you want to be part of the conversation, you can always call our text 855-752-484-2855, 75 Civic.
Leave a comment on the live stream.
They are on Facebook, YouTube and the platform that we still call Twitter.
We are talking right now about an article in the Wisconsin watch published yesterday.
Yang Yu Liu is the author of this article and we're talking about basically an overview of the private school voucher system, the taxpayer-funded voucher system here in Wisconsin, and its growth over 35 years.
It is influenced in our educational system and how it is...
How is operating as far as me as far as us going to the ballot boxes to the polls and what it gives us as far as accountability and is there a positive outcome for taking so much money and diverting it to our private voucher programs?
And I got Jack from Merrimack on the line.
He's been listening and waiting patiently.
Jack, you were an educator, correct?
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yes, I taught for over 40 years.
in public, private, and parochial schools across the state of Wisconsin and in Minnesota.
And I've got a whole long to add.
I'll try to sharpen it up here.
One of the things that really bugs me is the last budget, $3,000 additional funding per student.
was given out of the surplus by the legislature to private school welfare payment.
That's what I call them.
It's just like any other welfare payment.
In private schools, roughly two-thirds of the people who are getting this money
have already were rich enough to send their kids to private schools.
That's the first thing that's irritating, which means there's essentially no practical means test on this.
Now, the second thing that happened is public schools were allowed to, not financed, but allowed to increase their spending in that budget by about a tenth of that.
I think the $125 per student, but only if either that amount was approved by referendum or elected representatives like the school board or county boards that allocate the funding actually decided to spend that money.
And a lot of school districts did, they had no choice.
They couldn't even open their doors without that extra money.
My property taxes went up about $600.
in the last year, partially because of that.
Now, the next thing is, Bruce Connick in the Wisconsin Examiner had an article and it was as recent as last year, I believe, but basically.
Students in the parental choice program so-called parental choice is really school choice a school gets to choose whom to serve and how to serve Yes, and and I know because I taught in schools that were private schools in any case They scored almost 17 points worse than public schools in English and language arts in that study and Even worse in math almost 20 points behind public school students so the voucher program
to try to improve it.
It's not really doing anything.
Well, Jack, you bring up a bunch of great things there, you know, and I want to start like the accountability of it all, you know, in this article, the DPI report card system they used showed, first of all, that the public schools, 85% of the public schools here in Wisconsin met exceeded or significantly exceeded expectations.
And the voucher schools had the same number.
And the problem is, is that
There is also insufficient data on those private schools because we don't have as much accountability for them.
You bring up also the fact that they can take anyone they want.
They can bring a kid in, they can take the money, and then if the kid doesn't adhere to whatever they like, and that is for another discussion for another day, they can kick the kid out, keep the money, and move along.
And also, yes.
Absolutely, Jack, you bring up a great point, the fact that, you know, people are having to go to their ballot boxes and vote to raise their property taxes.
As I did, Kenosha's measure did fail, but it's in fact what we are having to do.
Because as I believe, we do not have real partnership, we do not have real leadership, and we do not have real investment from our leadership in Madison.
And that is a
conversation, a problem, and I'm going to put this Wisconsin Watch article in the show notes, because I think again, I'm also going to put a wonderful, basically just, we've discussed this many times on the show, Wisconsin Education Network put together this amazing website where you can go and tell them where you live, and it will show you how much of your money is being diverted to what is being called a second school system here in Wisconsin.
You want to find out, you know, you live in Racine, you're going to find out right there how much money is being diverted.
And that is your tax dollars being taken away from school funding for this private voucher program.
And the last thing I want to mention too.
is in this article, they talked about the fact that these young kids from back in the day 1990, they had to meet a certain financial requirement.
It's understood, maybe you want to send your kid to private school, but you absolutely cannot do that.
Now that is not the case.
People who are more than able to send their kids to private schools are utilizing these voucher programs.
And essentially, as Jack put it, getting an educational welfare program when they absolutely can afford to do this.
And that is the other problem that I have as well.
This conversation will keep going.
I know I'll keep going.
I could talk forever.
We have a great conversation coming up after the break with Miranda Dunlap, also from the Wisconsin Watch, talking about a wonderful, amazing program in Appleton and getting kids exposed to the world of manufacturing, technical education, vocational education, but more with that with Miranda when we come back.
Don't go anywhere.
You're listening to Mid Morning on Civic Media.
My name is Greg Bach.
I'm your host.
Be part of the conversation 855-752-484-2855-756.
Don't go anywhere.
Stay tuned.
Stay close.
Good morning.
Welcome to Mid Mornings on Civic Media.
My name is Greg Bach.
I'm your host.
And guess what?
I'm also your friend.
You are listening to us on the Civic Media Radio Network live from Radio Park here in Racine.
If you want to be part of the conversation, you can always get in touch with us at 855-752-484-2855-755 Civic.
You can also leave a comment on the live stream.
We are currently streaming on Facebook, YouTube, and the platform that we still call Twitter in this house.
And we've got lots of great shows still ahead.
We have Connie Ciskowski, who is the founder.
and president of the association of caregiving youth to talk about the the very not known topic of young people out there who whose lives are almost full time taking care of a parent a family member talking about what they face and how she with her group help advocate and give education to those who need it that's coming up after the top of the hour news and then 1035 we're going to be hearing from you hey are you someone
who gives care to a parent who has been through this situation.
How is your 2026 going?
And talking further on the topic, we'll be talking about in a moment with our next guest.
We're going to be talking, excuse me.
Our first guest is Miranda Dunlap is a reporter for Wisconsin watch and in partnership with open canvas, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigating and elevating higher education.
Miranda covers pathways to success in Northeastern Wisconsin.
And she recently wrote an article about Appleton technical Academy and their current challenges.
I want to not just welcome Miranda.
I want to welcome back Miranda cause she's officially a friend of the show.
Good morning Miranda.
How are you today?
Good morning.
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm doing, uh, as my grandma says, peachy keen.
And, uh, really quick, how is 20, 26, everything you thought it would be thus far six days in?
Um, yeah, I can't complain.
Well, that's it folks.
We're done
for the day.
Well, I'm happy to have you on today to talk about this article.
I love talking to you.
Last time you were here in August, we talked about 911 dispatchers in Brown County.
And today we're talking about something that I have a very deep passion for, and that's a technical education.
And this is a program in Appleton that's going on.
Can you tell us more about the Appleton Technical Academy, also known as ATEC?
Yes, we will refer to it as ATEC.
Otherwise, I'm going to trip over myself a ton.
But yes, it's a charter high school in the Appleton School District that lets students take classes that prepare them for advanced manufacturing jobs.
classes like welding, machining, mechanical design, electronics, those sort of things, as they also do, you know, the typical things that you do in high school, like learning math, English, those sort of things.
And that, and that's an important point.
I'm glad you brought up because.
In my head, I am a graduate of Milwaukee Area Technical College, and we always think technical colleges, we think vocational colleges, but this is a high school, this is for high school level, to prepare them for possible college and therefore, and then on, correct?
Yes, and at ATEC, they let students take classes that belong to the local technical college while they're still in high school.
The point is to give them a head start and hopefully they continue on to even more advanced education at the technical college, but hopefully have to do less of it once they get there and save money on that, that, um, higher education, getting a leg up.
And, and that, I mean, it's, it's, when we talk about, when we're talking about higher education, we're talking about college, we are always in the article, it does discuss this matter.
This helps mitigate the cost of future college tuition because that for a lot of young people I'm I love saying that at my age a lot of youngsters That is something that can keep them from going and so these programs can say like all right We can help mitigate that cost.
So you might owe something, but it'll be far less but also It can help this can help
kind of demystify the stigma of technical educations because I feel like for many years in this country, that has been a problem.
And that's something that this that ATEC serves to do is saying, hey, we're going to take these kids who they might not like that this the English might not be their jam.
But maybe as you said, mechanical engineering is something they would like.
And here is here is that foothold in the door.
Yeah, they really want to be of service and help prepare students who
maybe know that they're not going to go on to study literature or get a four-year degree in something like that, but really want to work with their hands and have a passion for that like real hands-on, skilled trade type of work and also expose students to it early on so that maybe they don't know that that's something that they want to do yet, but through taking some of these classes.
They sort of discover that earlier on.
So,
yes.
What is the funding process for ATEC?
How does it receive its funding?
Where is it?
Like, I mean, is it donations?
Is it state federal funding?
What is it?
How does that operate?
Yeah, it's funded exactly like all other schools in the district, really.
it receives the same sort of funding formula per pupil funding that other public high schools in the state receive.
The only difference is, you know, it got some grants when it was starting up to kind of help
help build it.
And
nowadays they do really try to get out in the community and solicit donations and both monetary and equipment-wise to help keep it going because I'm sure you can imagine it's a different price tag to provide
education that requires, you know, big fancy machines and tools and lots of, you know, lots of different equipment rather than, you know, pencils and paper.
So it's funded the exact same way.
But I think, you know, leaders there would tell you that that's not really enough.
So they have to kind of try to make up that difference.
And that's something that's, you know, in the article is
I really love this article, and it's both very informative, but I will warn people it's kind of heartbreaking because, you know, as you put it, this is a school, the very specialized goal, and it takes money to do that.
And in the article, I want to pronounce his name Paul Ender.
It's Ender.
He's a lead teacher at ATEC, and he spends, as you wrote, he spends all of his free time, not just...
Working on his curriculum, but like going out into the community going to schools meeting people getting The school to be known because right now it is I think it says there.
It's the it's a it's a best kept secret, but it's not that's not their intent
Yeah, one thing I would love to really emphasize is Mr. Enter Paul he I mean you could really just call him Mr. ATEC because he is he's the lead teacher of the school, but he's really like
He spends every waking moment really trying to champion this and make it work.
And as you can read in the story, there's, you know, challenges that come with this, but he is really, he, you know, he told me he spends his lunch hour in his free time, calling local businesses, trying to build support, trying to solicit donations, trying to.
you know, it goes to other schools in the district and try to get students interested in coming and enrolling.
So he's really the champion behind the school and, you know, it kind of needs someone like that.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, yes, I completely agree.
And that brings me to a point that I wanted to bring up is that the history of the school, which the school started about 12 years ago, 2014, 2015, it started with the mission that was based in, you know, it was, it was in.
partnership with a local business to help, because they had a need for people to work in their manufacturing firm to find folks who could do the job.
So they thought, well, let's start a program that can get people going.
But over the years, that has kind of changed because of maybe the inability to find a lot of students to go here because of the challenges they face getting kids even to the school itself.
Yeah, it was born out of
really a partnership between a local plastic manufacturer and the school.
And they had said that they were having a, I mean, they're facing a problem that a lot of other workplaces are facing, which is that their workforce is aging and there's not a lot of younger people coming in.
And so they said, you know, maybe if we can get high schoolers excited about this, maybe that can sort of create a pipeline of people coming into these plastic manufacturing jobs.
You know, I think the
issue that is sort of played out or the difficulty is that that's like a very niche sort of job and it's very niche to, you know, maybe want to create a funnel to one business where, you know, it makes sense to maybe out of a few dozen students, a handful of them will go to this one workplace.
But, you know, students go on to complete technical degrees, some do go on to four year colleges, some, you know, go and
other directions in the skilled trades.
And so the school has kind of, I guess, broadened on that original mission a little bit, it seems like, and offers a little bit more than just preparing students for plastic manufacturing.
And if you're just joining us right now, we're speaking to Miranda Dunlap from the, from the Wisconsin watch and she wrote an article regarding a wonderful program in Appleton called the Appleton Technical Academy or also known as ATEC.
It's entitled, we can't do this alone.
An Appleton school prepares students for the skilled trades.
It's not easy.
One of the things, one of the challenges too is, is continual education for the teachers.
And as
When we think tech school, we can think plumbing and we can think electrician, but tech school training is growing and that means we have to have teachers who have an understanding of things like maybe AI and coding and robotics and that's a problem they also face because of maybe that inability to find teachers who can teach.
That's what I got from the article, correct?
Yeah, I think one of the problems that they've sort of run across is that they're teaching students how to use
really advanced complex machines and systems that, you know, not a ton of people know how
to
use.
And so they are really in need of people in the industry who do have experience with these tools to kind of mentor the teachers.
to teach them what they need to teach the student.
And you can imagine that that's difficult because if the problem at hand is that there's not enough people in these jobs, they're spread thin and don't have a lot of time to also mentor teachers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's, I mean, I don't know if we'll have time to get into it, but you, there was another article that you wrote at open campus, kind of discussing this whole thing of like getting the teachers
I don't want to say quality.
I don't want to say any of these things.
I'm not trying to insult the teachers.
They work so hard.
But then when certain programs come along, ask them, well, would you like to learn more and go to school and learn?
They're like, I don't have time.
So it's
this
really, they want to teach these kids, but they need qualified teachers.
these challenges they face on top of just as what you put in the article, Mr. Enter, Mr. Atec, as I will refer to him, just trying to get the word out that this school even exists in the first place.
But I want to, you know, we're going to take a short break.
We're going to come back.
And I want to talk about the school itself, the students itself.
One of the best, you know, if you, when you see this article, like I said, there is some, there is a little heartbreak to it because it's about funding.
It's about education.
That's an ongoing conversation we were just talking about earlier.
But someone like Izzy Chapel, who is a
at Appleton West, who, you know, it's not just about learning how to do, you know, the job.
She's also learning art there as well, which is amazing.
So I want to talk more about that and what the school means to the kids when we come back.
We're talking to Miranda Dunlap from the Wisconsin Watch about a great article.
She wrote about the Appleton Technical.
Okay, you're right.
It's hard to say.
Appleton Technical Academy, also known as ATEC.
We're gonna keep the conversation going.
If you have any questions, comments, if you are a tech school kid or a tech school teacher, we'd love to hear from you.
Don't go anywhere where we're keeping it right here.
You're listening mid mornings on Civic Media.
Stay tuned, stay close.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Good, good morning.
Good day.
You are listening to mid mornings on civic media.
My name is Greg Bach.
I'm your host, your buddy, your pal.
And you are, you are lovely for being here today, sharing your time with us.
If you have any questions, comments or, you know, thoughts on my hair, thank you.
855-752-484-2855-75 civic.
You can be part of the conversation.
Also leave a comment on the live stream, Facebook.
YouTube and the platform we still call Twitter after the 10 o'clock news we will be welcoming Dr. Connie Siskowski who is the founder and president of the Association of Caregiving Youth talking about young people who
as well as having education and living their lives.
They're also taking care of family member or a loved one.
And what goes into that and why we need to bring more light to this topic and the work she does through her association.
That's after the 10 30 news, I'm sorry, the 10 o'clock news.
After the 10 30 news, we're gonna be just audio sorbet, catching up, reading your comments, talking to you.
If you've gone to tech school, I wanna hear from you.
If you take care of a loved one, I wanna hear from you.
If you're having a great 2026, as Miranda just told us, it's going, as she said, great.
But Miranda Dunlop is our guest today.
She is a reporter for Wisconsin Watch, and she published an article on the 30th of December about a wonderful program in Appleton, the Appleton Technical Academy, AKA ATEC.
And it's a program that
gives high school students the opportunity to learn the technical skills that will possibly put them into the future jobs.
Jobs that are sustainable, good jobs, can't be exported.
They're wonderful.
I'm a big tech school advocate, but Miranda is here.
And I'll lead with a double question.
One, what led you to this article?
What brought you to this place, to ATEC?
And what was your experience while doing your research there with the teachers and the students?
Two really great questions.
Thank you First I think what led me to the story was oddly enough my editor worked at the Appleton Post Crescent for quite some time in a past life and she actually covered the opening of the school about a decade ago and She suggested that I
You know, see what's going on there and see how it's fared over the last decade.
And I think that's something that, um, you know, we journalists maybe should do a little bit more of is think about, Hey, whatever happened to that thing that we wrote about when it first debuted, how's that going?
Um, and so I kind of just set out to find, find out how it was going and it led me here.
Wonderful.
And the thing I really liked about this article are the pictures as well, because the students I see, it's not, you know, there's a couple of guys in there that look like my cousins, the guys that I grew up with.
But then there's a young lady right at the top, Marwa Negravi, who is working on a mental project.
There's Izzy, there's Izzy Chappell, who was working on an art project.
So it's not just about one thing, it's about many things to these students.
What was it like?
talking to these teachers, and especially what was it like talking to the students who attend ATEC?
Yes, they were, the folks at ATEC were really kind enough to let us come in for a few hours during a school day and kind of roam around and observe and talk to students when we could.
It's always a little awkward.
You don't want to interrupt their learning, but you do want to hear from them.
I think as you can see in the photos on the article, it's really like a sight to see.
There's so much going on at once.
They have a massive lab that there's equipment that I couldn't even begin to tell you what it does.
what it is.
There's there's you know so much noise of students you know doing using different tools creating different things there's just tons going on but you know when you start talking to these students you know you get a sense of
I guess why this even matters?
Why the story that we're discussing about why it's a little bit difficult to provide this kind of education?
Why that matters?
And it matters because to these students, it's providing them an option that can be really life-changing.
It's providing them a space where they feel
like their skills are really tapped into and the things that they're good at are valued and seen and, you know, count towards something that will make a difference in their future.
So, you know, in talking to these students, I, you know, kept asking them what drew you to this?
What do you like about it?
All of them say,
I love the real hands-on nature of this kind of work.
And it's true.
I don't know that I really saw a pen and paper when I was in there, at least during the time that I was there.
It's hands-on, building things, using tools.
It's really involved like that.
Yeah, these students, you know, one student told me that her other classes, you know, can be difficult for her.
But, you know, when she's in the welding booth and working on something, that comes naturally to her.
So,
you know.
If you're not watching the live stream right now, I'm all smiles because I love hearing this because I think that, you know, and this also fights against, you know, if you want to go to a four year college, that's fine.
I get that.
And you want to live that life.
That's fine.
I did that.
I have a political science degree.
Good job me, but my technical
same.
Yeah, right.
No, look
at us.
Yeah, exactly.
We're
on
a, we're on a live stream right now, Miranda.
We did it, but, but I also have a technical education too.
It's in a trade.
It's in a trade.
I was an apprentice and that means a lot to me as well.
And I think for these kids who can utilize their minds and their interest in something that not only can keep them going and, and, but also can make them money and create a career.
I think is very important.
And these types of stories, these types of conversations help also get parents.
involved in the idea that maybe their kids aren't meant for, for your school and these tech programs are a way to get them for a future that will help everyone.
So Miranda, thank you so much for being back again.
I really enjoy talking to you about this.
Miranda Dunlap is a reporter for the Wisconsin watch.
She published an article on ATEC, the Academy of the Appleton Academy of Tech.
Nope, I
got it wrong.
Appleton Technical Academy, really appreciate your time Miranda.
Please come back again.
Let's talk some more and have a wonderful day.
All right,
when we come back, Dr. Connie
Siskowski.
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