By Eva Westein

Contributing Writer

DE PERE - West De Pere School District is moving forward with plans to look into updating and remodeling the trades and technical education (tech ed) spaces at West De Pere High School.

After three months of discussion with the West De Pere School Board, it was unanimously approved that the district could explore the possibility of an April referendum.

By opening up the possibility of a tentative referendum, the district was given the green light to begin planning for potential upgrades.

Although the West De Pere High School appears to have already received a complete overhaul in the past few years, the school’s tech ed spaces — which include a wood shop, auto shop and metal shop —have remained untouched since they were originally constructed in 1969.

A basic classroom for clean-lab education was added with a 2002 referendum, but school staff said that hands-on learning spaces are especially due for an upgrade.

“The tech ed department does a really good job of offering what they can to kids and even going above and beyond, but the space that they’re using and the movement that they have… it’s not efficient for what they want to do with the kids,” said West De Pere School Superintendent Jason Lau.

With the current setup, the high school is unable to run their programs at a capacity that meets the demand they are seeing from students.

Updating the tech ed spaces would allow them more room to run current programs for the entire school year as well as make more courses available to students.

During the 2021-22 school year, the high school saw 568 students enroll in tech ed courses with only one student participating in a youth apprenticeship program.

During the most recent school year, there were 642 students enrolled in tech ed courses and 65 students participating in youth apprenticeship programs.

In terms of updates, the district would like to add shop space to run courses year-round and develop Level Two W.O.R.X. and car care courses; create a flexible automotive and technology lab that would expose students to vehicle service training and instruction in small engine and power sports repair; and improve shop safety for all current and future programs.

It has also been expressed that the goal is to keep the budget for the entire project under $10 million if it were to move forward.

West De Pere High School Principal Russ Gerke explained the benefit of offering these types of programs to high school students. “The big thing is more exposure to higher level trades experiences right now,” he said. “We’d like to meet the community’s needs and also give students that opportunity here so they have more exposure to say ‘yeah, I really do want to be a welder’ or ‘yeah I really do want to be a plumber.’”

Gerke also stressed the importance of investing in trades at this level of schooling just as much as you would expect from any other area of education.

“You could take any college credit class here, any advanced placement course here, any NWTC course here, or Fox Valley Tech courses. One of the areas that we haven’t had a chance to grow and invest in more is this area, the career technical trade program… we’ve done a good job of talking about making your choices available to you so you can pick any path… but I think one of the things we also have to recognize is the best opportunities for some of our kids is to go to trades and apprenticeship programs and we want to fulfill that.”