Health & Fitness
Whitnall Celebrates Career & Technical Education Month
February is Career and Technical Education Month in Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and Wisconsin Technical College System will celebrate Career and Technical Education Month in Wisconsin during February, by highlighting the wide range of exciting opportunities available to youth in the state who wish to explore their career options and the benefit of those programs to Wisconsin industry and communities.
Many of those opportunities exist right here locally, including for Whitnall School District students.
Whitnall, along with the Franklin, Greendale, Greenfield and St. Francis school districts, is part of the Southwest Consortium. This consortium of schools works together to promote career and technical education opportunities to their students. Each school works with Milwaukee Area Technical College to offer college credit for high school classes. The consortium also coordinates several shared career and technology education classes.
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The government’s Carl Perkins Grant and Youth Apprenticeship Grant fund the consortium’s activities. While this is a small source of school funding for its members, it more importantly provides off-site career and technical educational options not available at their home school. For example, Whitnall students can participate in Greenfield High School’s pre-engineering program, Project Lead the Way, or the Assistant Childcare Teacher program, or take Cisco-Computer Networking at St. Francis High School. Whitnall’s career and technology offerings include AutoCad, an electronic drafting class; construction and home improvement courses; various business technology and family consumer science offerings and medical terminology.
In addition, the consortium offers the Youth Apprenticeship Program, which allows students to take courses that will prepare them for a career in a given field. In conjunction with coursework, 20 consortium students are employed in a related occupation. The workplace mentor works with the student and school to develop the student’s technical and personal skills. After completing the skill competencies and the required hours, students earn a Certificate of Occupational Proficiency from the Department of Workforce Development.
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Whitnall students have or are participating in programs that lead to certificates in finance, health science or information technology.
"You get experience in what you are interested in, and it’s hands-on experience,” says Ian Higgins, a Whitnall Youth Apprentice, who is a programmer at integrated inventory technology/SourceTech in West Allis, a company that for years has had a partnership with the Consortium, and especially Whitnall High School.Last year Wisconsin’s 16 technical colleges around the state graduated more than 27,000 students. The median salary for these graduates was $32,262. For more on CTE Month, visit the Wisconsin DPI website.
