Fired Up Podcast Ep.12 | 22 High Schools, A Shared Tech Campus, and What "Trade-Ready" Really Means

In this episode we continue the conversation about what we as a community are doing for the quarter of our students who are not heading to college and those currently in high school who want to take a more hands-on approach.

This episode goes an hour north to Grayslake, where Lake County Tech Campus has been answering that question since 1977. It is one building where 2,400 juniors and seniors from  22 high schools go every day  for 19 skilled trades programs their local schools can't run alone.

Welcome to Episode 12 of the Fired Up Podcast, a production of The Trade Collective. Hosts Dr. Pete Bavis and Patrick Hughes sit down with Dr. Sebastian Kapala and Tris O’Shaughnessy to discuss how a shared tech campus is built, funded, and kept relevant to the skilled trades.

🎙️ 𝐃𝐫. 𝐒𝐞𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐊𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐥𝐚 grew up an immigrant kid in Skokie whose teachers never expected much of him. His story has taken him much farther earning a doctorate and has been leading the Lake County Tech Campus for the past twelve years. He was recently named one of the Top 100 Education Influencers of 2025. 

🎙️ 𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐎’𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐲, the Executive Director of The Trade Collective, spent 30 years in Oregon studying college and career readiness at the University of Oregon's Center for Education Policy Research before returning home to the Chicagoland area. Her aha moment came in a Lake County Tech Campus lunchroom, watching two students explain, with total confidence, what they were doing at the school and where they planned to take it. 

In this episode, we discuss:

 🔥 What "trade-ready" actually means, and where the phrase came from

 🔥 How you build a shared skilled trades campus with 22 separate high schools

 🔥 The unique career experiences students get from working in the skilled trades

New episodes drop every other Thursday. Igniting the future of the skilled trades. Let's get fired up! 🔥

Follow our journey on social media.
Contact & Support: info@thetradecollective.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:05

All right, so here we go, Pete. Here we are. Another episode of Fired Up. Fired Up. Uh you've been a little busy. A little busy. Yeah. Yep. What's going on at the high school this week? You you graduated some kids last Sunday?

SPEAKER_01 0:18

My kid among them, last of uh three 12 years of high school in a row from the kids and the family. So that happened. That was great. Wow. Got to give him his diploma and do all that stuff. And then uh this week is final exams for all the other kids. And I'm, you know, I quarterback that process. And we have teacher checkout and a quarterback that process and grades, a quarterback that process. And, you know, we're just trying to get everybody out the door in one piece Friday. So uh yeah, it's been it's been quite a week, but it's been it's great. It's also, you know, flies, time flies. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:55

I'm excited about today because we have uh Dr. Kapala here and we have our executive director from the trade collective here. The Lake County Tech Campus, um it's in what town is it in? It's in Gray's Lake. It's in Gray's Lake. We've taken three trips up there. We've brought the high school, we brought Oakden. My friend Peter Vernon funded this bus three times so that we could bring people up there to look at your model. We are no different than other high schools. We're just grappling with what do we do with this quarter of kids that don't go to college. And how do we get them what we call now trade ready so that they're ready for the world when they graduate from a high school? And we know this is future thinking here right now. I mean, the kids today are just not gonna be trade ready yet. Um, but when I when we went to, we actually developed the phrase, I think we might have stolen it from a kid at your place. But uh, welcome to the podcast, welcome to fire it up. Um, Dr. Capala, would you mind just introducing yourself and just kind of what what you're in charge of?

SPEAKER_00 1:59

So my name is Dr. Sebastian Kapala, and uh I work at the Lake County Tech Campus. Uh, I've been there for this is my 12th year. Uh I have the pleasure of working with 19 different school districts. The we provide services to basically all of Lake County. Uh one school is kind of goofy, uh, that's just because they touch school uh kids in Cook County, Will County, or excuse me, McHenry County and Lake County, so they don't they don't participate directly with us, but they send kids to some of our programming. And then we have three schools in McHenry that come to us as well. So we do have kids that are five minutes away by bus ride, and some kids are about literally an hour that come to us. However, when they do come to us, we pro we offer um 19 different programs. Anywhere from the traditional trades, your automotive, out of body welding, all the way up to the medical fields, CNA, EMS, etc. The neat thing is out of the 2,400 kids that come to us every day. Every single day, right? So we have three sessions a day that they come to us. Uh cosmetology is two sessions a day, is the they all get a college experience, right? So they're all all the courses, but two are dual credited. Uh one of the courses is um And what does dual credit mean for? Dual credit is meaning that the kids come to us and they get college credit. Now, it's some of the courses have one hour credit, but we have courses that have nine-hour credits. And the course that's advanced manufacturing that's being offered off-site, I believe, has up to 36 hours by the time they're done in two years going to their program. So what that means is yes, the kids are saving money, right? There's that, that's always the big conversation with dual credit when they come to us. But the bigger thing is the kids that come to us get a taste of what college life is like, right? Because we don't come in and compromise the curriculum. The kids have to do college-level work at the high school level. So they get that taste, we get them ready. And the coolest thing is when you look at the on and off rents, right? This is what we always talk about is what are you going to do when you grow up? Well, I want to go into industry. That's great. Then you hear this concept, but industry can pay for your college. Well, what does that look like? So we have an on and off rent. Well, you can go to an industry, they can pay for your college. You can stay in industry, not get any college, but you still need certificates. Or you can go to the community college, which a lot of our kids do, or you can go transfer into a four-year institutions. And that could happen one in many ways: community college to the four-year institution, or directly to the four-year institution. So it just depends on what path the kid wants to take, given the circumstance they're in, right? And it's going to vary a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

SPEAKER_04 4:22

What so what I just it's high school. These kids, three different phases in the day, are coming in from 22 different high schools. It's amazing. Just before we get going here, Tris, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_05 4:35

Thank you for inviting me. I've been waiting.

SPEAKER_04 4:37

Okay, here's your invitation. We're happy to have you here. Tell us about you. Where'd you come from? What excites you about the trade collective? And then what excite you about today's conversation, if you don't mind?

SPEAKER_05 4:49

Um, for sure. So my um background is in education policy research. I worked for 30 years in the state of Oregon, and I've just returned to Chicagoland very happily. Um, in Oregon, I worked for the University of Oregon, it was a Center for Education Policy Research, and we looked at college and career readiness, um, kind of at the local, national, state, federal, international levels, all the levels. Um, so I have a lot of experience, not just working with schools, but education systems with regards to career readiness. Um, and it's I love hearing about dual credit and the college experience in high school because that's one of the success indicators for kids, whether it be in community college, the academic experience of the speed of a course in particular and the high-level content of a course. Um, sometimes kids don't get that experience until they're six weeks into college, and that's that's tough. Um, so my excitement when I was working in Oregon was around the career experiences. Um oftentimes you would find kids who were incredibly bright, but because they didn't fit the circle or the round hole because they liked different types of um learning, applied learning, um, they were categorized as not bright. Um, and it wasn't true. They just didn't sit in a chair well or they didn't do a test well. Um, but if you put them in an applied classroom, they would be really successful. So I worked with different types of communities too. The Native American community I like to speak about because they are so um, especially in different tribal communities and on reservations, they have really deep roots with their families and have high expectations for how they communicate with their with their communities. Um, and they worked hard in a lot of academic programs that would be considered less than because they were career and technical education.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

What was your big aha moment when you went out to Lake County to the tech campus?

SPEAKER_05 6:47

Um, my big aha moment was meeting two students in a lunchroom after our tour. Um, incredibly confident. They didn't have any problem explaining what they were doing, um, why they were at the school, how they planned to use their education to their um to their benefit, which I think a lot of kids do maybe have a little bit more difficulty with that. Um, and I think you would you're just telling the story about trade ready. There was we have a photograph of a kid explaining what trade ready is. He did this.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

He did this. I'm trade ready later. You want me.

SPEAKER_05 7:21

I loved that kid.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:22

It was a great experience for us.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Pete, what was your takeaway when you went and visited? So a couple things. One was the scale, you know, the scale of of the facility, the scale of the experience for the kids. I was I was impressed by that. Um, you know, at our high school, you know, we're we're constrained, right? Geographically, you know, so so we can't build out. We have we have a great auto tech lab, we have a great manufacturing lab, but it doesn't scale to what to what you guys have. So I was really, really impressed by the scale and the clarity too, right? It it cuts through the noise when you actually are going somewhere to do something. So it's really mission focused. And that was really clear to me when I when I was in there. Um that was and that's unique, right? I mean, that's not like a uh it's not like a comprehensive high school where everybody's doing everything and everybody's chasing everything. This is very like directed, very the folks wanted to be there. It was almost like uh it felt like a college, to be honest. It felt like a college because there was that directed sense of purpose for all the kids. Um so that was that was my takeaway. Very curious as to you know how you how you how you do that, how you build that culture and how you scale.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

The scale part, so here's the thing. So when the when do when you think about it, 50 years ago, when the collective, just like you guys are trying to do this, right? So 50 that building's 50 years old. So when the superintendents got together, it was exactly that mindset. How do we provide the next step for the child that is not quite sure what they want to do when they grow up? And it worked, right? That's how we did it. However, when you come in and provide a child a choice, meaning, think about it this way here's your schedule. You have to go to math, you have to go to English, right? And then a child goes in and goes, Why do I need to do this? Well, because you're getting ready for next year. And next year you ask the question again, because you're getting ready for next year. Then one day you're gonna be ready for a four-year institution. Uh, we answer the question of why. Yeah. Right? That's really important. Like, why am I doing this? Well, you're here because I'm gonna show you purpose, I'm gonna show you something in this career that's gonna grab your attention. And once you get them, they're yours. Here's what happens once in a while, they're not, you know, they they choose their wrong program. And the benefit we have is that we can move that child around to 19 other career affairs that they want to do. Sometimes they do it because of their friends, sometimes they do it because they're interested and they figure out like we've had this happen. I want to work in cosmetology. Child gets in there. Oh my God, I hate working with hair. This one, like, well, this is a good time to figure that out.

SPEAKER_04 9:45

No, right now so you don't send them back to the high school and say, come back to us next year.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Yeah, so we find another program. Now it could be that there might not be room, so we figure out something for the child that that happens too, right? We only have so many seats, but we scaled it and grow it based on that. So our benefit is that we have enough square footage where we can come in and expand our classes. What we've become really good at is we standardize everything. So, like we're going through renovations right now, we do a little bit every year. When you go to classroom, classroom, they're all the same. Why? Because it's gonna give us an opportunity as the times advance that we have the space and other things to need to adapt, and we don't have to reinvent ourselves every single time.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

So when you say the classrooms are the same, you're talking about like the amperage, the power, yeah. All that is the same. It's all versatile, you can swap in and out. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Okay, we have to do it that way just because if we did it, then we start locking ourselves in and it's not gonna give us an opportunity to evolve. Right, right. So right now, if you walked into the building, we got we are building a basically a wing for a policing department. And the innovation behind that is, yeah, classrooms are classroom, it's actually the lab. In the lab, they're gonna have the state-of-art Milo system that's gonna build, you talked about that kind of confidence where the child, if they want to go into law enforcement, they're gonna know how to talk somebody off the ledge, right? And that's a big deal. Uh, we're gonna come in and have cars in there where they can come and practice tickets, getting people out, just dealing with different scenarios. It's all about building that confidence to ensure that they truly found their passion, right? When I was in high school, I will never forget this. I had an English teacher say, you know, don't chase the money, chase your passion. And once you find your passion, the money will follow. And that's what we're trying to instill, that passion.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

So the other thing like that comes up when you're building those spaces like that is also then those spaces come become responsive to uh the economic needs of business and also like the interest of the students, right? So like you can flex those spaces.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yes, absolutely. We can flex them and have and do whatever whatever we need for that given program. And we do invite industry in on a regular basis. So, for example, our teachers are expected by SEAR to invite industry in to give them the information. Here's where we're going, here's what you should be looking at, this is what you should be adjusting. Now it's not a sale end-all, because industry moves at a different pace. And right, and that's the reality of it. And education is always slightly behind, but at least it gives us an idea where we're going.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

So, like along those lines, I'm sorry, I'm monopulizing the conversation, but you know, I'm super interested. No, no, go ahead. Um so, like, you know, one of the things, you know, I was on a panel uh a week ago at NU, uh, advanced manufacturing, and and and we were talking about that in the pipeline. And AI came up, right? AI always comes up. And what do you how do you deal with AI at the tech center? Like, what are you guys doing for that? Like, how do you think about it and how is that informing the experiences that that the students are?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Great question. A very common question. So here's how we're approaching AI. It's here. We need to come in and have our kids work with it. The challenge that we have right now is getting our teachers up to speed. So we've spent this whole year, uh, myself personally with my curriculum coordinator, training ourselves on how to teach teachers how to utilize AI. And why are we starting with the teachers? Because I need them to be comfortable. So when the kids get on it, the teachers are not afraid when the kids do something wrong with it. Right. So so they know what to expect. So we're starting with simple things like, for example, if you were going to open up a textbook right now and go to the end of the chapter, and this is how education is set up. Read a chapter, answer the questions, get a grade. Where teachers are getting frustrated, the kids don't read a chapter, use AI to answer the questions, submit it, well, where's my grade? Right. And if you do pump those questions in there, you're gonna get the answer you want.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

So what we're teaching our teachers is okay, how do you come in and take that question, reverse it, re-engineer it? That's gonna force the child to read that chapter to get that answer. And AI can't answer it. Or if it does, you can catch it right away because it's a very synthetic answer. So that's what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Are you looking at also like how uh how it shows up in the workforce?

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, great question. Yes, I should have touched that as well. Absolutely. It shows up in every one of our fields when it comes to construction, electrical plumbing. The kids have to understand the technicalities of it because if they don't, they will be replaced. So there's a the line I use with the teachers is you're not going to get replaced by AI. The kids will be replaced by somebody that knows AI. How do they become more efficient given the tools are available to them? So, yes, there's tape measures, right? Everybody should know how to read in construction. However, there's tools that function like a tape measure that makes that mundane task that much faster. But you still have to know how to read a tape measure.

SPEAKER_05 14:31

I was talking to somebody I was earlier, we were talking about this about a community outside of Austin, Texas, where they were they were building modular homes, manufactured homes using 3D printers. And they still had staff, uh obviously workers who were on those sites doing kind of the skilled trades pieces, but they were using new tools. And it's a really interesting concept to think about. I mean, you think about quantum mechanics and how that's gonna inform manufacturing moving moving forward. And in the high school setting, when we're talking about the skilled trades, we do need to be educating kids on these topics because if we don't catch up, it's going to it's gonna surpass the kids' ability to then go into those programs. So I do really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

In all the trainings I've gone with AI specifically, it says you got to start with the top-down. If your leadership uses it, shows people how to use it, naturally people will be adapted to it and you eliminate the fear factor of it. And believe it or not, the biggest fear is the kids will cheat. Yep. They will and kids have cheated without AI themselves. And I'm not supporting cheating, but if you understand how to implement it, then you're gonna minimize it and you're gonna benefit the kids long haul.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Yeah, I think the key there, right, is to make sure that students aren't intellectually lazy so that they're actually doing the mental work and using it as a tool. Absolutely. Um, it's similar to like in autos, right, where you have the sensors you can plug in, but or you can diagnose without the sensors. Well, if you're diagnosing without the sensors today, you're probably out of a job.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Absolutely. So it's I I'm glad you brought that up. So Kuhn is is one of our greatest partners for our institution. They're a car dealership. They're a car dealership, yes. One of the larger car dealerships in the area. And we always had a struggle on how to get our students to intern with the car dealerships. And where we, the relationship we built with them, now they're hiring our kids. But here's what they do: they brought in a car, and the technician, the master technician, hooked up a computer to it. He's like, Let me show you something. Click, the door opens, click, the car starts. And he's like, Look, I'm doing this all from a computer, right? Where you're no longer trying to figure out what's wrong with it. You have to know how to use this tool, and AI is really giving you the solution. Now, do you understand? Like, one, it's one thing getting the solution from AI is, but do you understand the steps take that the AI did to end like get you to that point? So, yes, AI is not going away. We have to teach our kids how to use it. Cool.

SPEAKER_04 16:45

Um, I don't want to spend our whole time talking about AI. I appreciate it, but I think what we're the part that I think we want to talk about is the fact that the AI ain't gonna kill those trades that I mean you might have to play with them, all that, but AI isn't gonna touch what a plumber does when they show up to your house.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

Not at all.

SPEAKER_04 17:06

So uh Pete was saying something, you know, they have a nice auto shop at their place. I bet all the 22 high schools have a nice auto shop at their high schools. They probably have welding bays, they have all the good, what what I'm what we're referring to as appetizers. Uh, so your freshmen sophomores are learning, getting appetizers at their local high schools. They think they want to be in welding, so they go over to tech junior senior year. Can you just describe how you talk with your high schools, your participating high schools, about like what are you doing to develop those freshmen sophomores into the junior, senior to come to you?

SPEAKER_00 17:42

So great question. So we actually start always have good. We we start at seven, eighth grade, actually. So we have a program called Future Quest. Oh, so we reach out to all of our middle schools, uh-huh, seven, eighth grade, and it's a free program to those students. Uh the students get to sign up for three programs one night. So the school will bring the kids to us for one night. Uh they get to choose from three programs. We cycle the kids out and they go to all the programs of interest. So some like do welding, whatever their interests are. Then they come in and take a break from us. Their sophomore year, our recruiter goes up, gets in front of them, and basically revisits revisits those conversations. And what we're finding is when we grab the kids at a young age to show who we are, they are more prone to come back to us. So a recruiting works for us. The other one is word of mouth. I can't tell you how many friends, like, oh, I'm here because of my friend. Oh, I'm here because of my brother and sister. Yeah. Because of the experiences they've gained from us and they pass it back. And those are the most common things we have. However, the biggest thing is the recruiting, the social media presence, all the hands-on things that we do to come in and present this information to the kids to find that interest.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

So when the kids come in middle school, right? They come in seventh, eighth grade, what are they doing in those three, you know, when you break them out into those three uh that that night? What are they they doing hands-on stuff?

SPEAKER_00 18:56

They do hands-on. So, for example, in welding, one year they built a little motorcycle.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

They just came in, they welded. And uh, for example, out of collision, the teacher has like a uh a sample card to paint, they choose a color, they spray it out. Every single program, the key thing is the kids must walk away with something.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

You have to walk away something to make the physical connection to come in and make it so that way they remember who we are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:20

Yeah, I think that's it's really key for us. We've learned from actually from going to Lake County that the information that you give to parents and to kids in middle school, like the career media tech, has there's a career tech um you mail a mailer that you send out to everyone and it talks about all the programs in eighth grade. So rising freshmen are getting information on the programs of study in the career and technical education fields that they can go into before they even get to high school. And to be able to have that kind of information accessible to parents to sit with their kids at home, or for kids who are in school and middle school to talk to their teachers who they know and trust, it's really key to getting that information early, but also getting the kind of whole program of study out in front of a kid before they start school and they don't have to make choices without it.

SPEAKER_04 20:02

This is a shout out to Randy White, who actually brought us up to you uh in the first place from Career Tech Media. Um that's it.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Thanks, Randy. Yeah. The the biggest one though is that we also have to acknowledge it. There's a stigma.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

Yeah. Wait a way, talk about it. Because you got no, you got fancy schools. No, no, no. You're you you've got Lake Forest. We do. You I mean, I'm not gonna go down in the name of the.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

You're not gonna go the fancy school route and just name them all like Lake Forest, and then who's two, Pat?

SPEAKER_04 20:31

I don't know. We're not gonna go there. I mean, I did talk to Highland Park the other day, and you know, they send a bus or a bus or two up, but I I heard the other day that that uh what's it called? Stevenson sends maybe four, maybe five buses up.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Uh Warren saves a lot sends a lot of buses, but Stevenson actually is sending 30 kids more next year.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Interesting. Which is huge. That's huge.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

And that's considered fancy. Would we all agree? Yeah, that's huge. So, like when you look at the every different every school is going to have their own reasoning on why they send kids or not and what the limitations are. And I don't question that. The only thing I can do is provide the path on how to come in and provide those opportunities. You're so innocent.

SPEAKER_04 21:08

Listen to you.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Uh, but ultimately, when you look at that stigma, we as an administrative team at Lake County have spent a tremendous amount of time to change that conversation. I earlier talked about the non-and-off ramps. We do really stress that we are the only career center in Illinois that actually implemented literacy training for our teachers, right? I mean, we talk about kids, right? So they come into us, they might have a seventh grade reading level, they might have a ninth. I mean, it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that, right? But we expect them to reach college college level textbooks. What does that look like? We talked about comprehension, right? You can't read, you can't write. How how can you do these things? So what we have found is since we became focused on the core content of our curricula, like literacy, for example, our kids come out stronger, they're better. We don't have behavior problems. What I have found is when a kid is bored, when a kid doesn't understand, what do they do? They act out. I don't have behavior problems. You know, it yes, do kids make poor choices? Who doesn't?

SPEAKER_05 22:11

Well, I think when we walked in and you have your construction lab, huge construction lab, and in varying parts, you will have different um different pieces being built. And that you have teams of kids who are working on those builds. And if they make a mistake, those that can impl impact their their friends sitting right next to them. If they drop a wrench, that could hit them on the head. And that's a problem. So I really appreciate the fact that when you get kids into a space where they can actually use their hands and connect with a team, you're putting them in a better position to be successful for sure.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Absolutely. They get challenged in a different way. Like for the most part, don't get me wrong, you need to have reading and writing, traditional settings, all that stuff. But when you put the desks away and you challenge a kid to, okay, now apply it.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

This is why it's the application of it. Like everybody, like for example, Evanson, you guys have, I believe, geometry and construction. Absolutely. Right. And that's a great program. But that's a great example of what they started in Colorado between a math teacher and a construction and a CTE teacher getting frustrated, marrying everything up, and they built this great program. That's a prime example of that. You have kids that can do geometry that would normally walk into a traditional geometry class and fail.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

I'm going to tell you, we have kids who go to that class on time every day who struggle with attendance in other classes because it's hands-on and because of that teamwork aspect. I would venture to guess that you don't really have a problem with tardies or absences.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

As I'm shaking my head, it it happens, right? Yeah, but the bus leaves and the bus comes. The bus is the bus. Like that happens. And at the end of the day, kids will miss school for various reasons, right? And we do track it. We deal with it with no other school, but it's not as pregnant as other institutions.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yeah. There's a there's a vested interest in getting there because you're part of a team. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 24:03

Well, that and the certifications require a certain number of hours, too. I think it's different when you have graduation requirements. Um are a little less stringent in terms of You can say it.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

They're not based on seat hours. The courses are based on seat hours, but not the grades.

SPEAKER_05 24:23

How many hours you're actually working in?

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Some programs are more stringent than others. Uh, but absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 24:28

What is your overall goal for when as when a kid comes to your junior year? What do you want to see that young person get out of your program if they stay with you for two years?

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Want to know the most important thing? Whatever program they sign up for, do you like it or not? Do you see yourself in this profession? I think it's just as important to see yourself in that profession or not see yourself in that profession. If you see yourself in that profession, get a certificate. Get those dual credit hours. It will build you a path so you know what the next steps are. If you don't like what you have signed up for, let's find you a course that you're more interested in so we can help you find that path. Right. That's the most important thing is find that passion, grow that passion. So that way you become a productive member of society.

SPEAKER_04 25:12

But if a kid comes to you, it takes 1,500 hours, I think you said. That's a cosmetology. Okay. So what's an average number for getting a certification?

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Um, for the for that classes, so 80%. Great. You're asking great questions. Um for us, I'm gonna give you for us to sustain the program, 80% of our kids have to get or be or better on the state exam. So that that's that's what we should. Is that your criteria? Our criteria, we should so the state has, I believe, 75, we keep it at 80. Okay. So that way we have that 5% buffer. Look, all a kid needs is a bad day, right? So if we want to come and keep them at 80 or above, uh, so that's our goal. Our goal is to get those kids through. Now, cosmetology is an interesting conversation. I think we can lead this into is have you guys ever talked about springboard careers? Like a springboard career, what that means. Yes, right. So cosmetology could be a springboard career here. And here's what we have: we have kids that have come up to us and said, you know what? I need this certification because I want to become a nurse. I can't afford nursing school, but I don't want to work at Jewel. I want to have an actual certificate and a job when I'm in college. So springboard is you get the cert to get you to the next right. So, and then cosmetology, unfortunately, or some careers sometimes get this bad rep. It's like, well, it's not high demand, not high wage, all this good stuff. I get it, but it's a starting point. And for some students, it's a great starting point. So I'm really looking for is find that passion, grow that passion, and we'll help you work your way through it. Whatever on and off ramp you want to go on.

SPEAKER_04 26:44

You know, the uh when I when I we met with our fire chief a year or so ago, um, and he told us that he needs four firefighters a year. Well, it's hard to imagine going to Dr. Bavis over here and saying, hey, let's build a fire program at Evanston High School for four kids a year. Yeah, very expensive. Very expensive and not efficient at all.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

So And they have to wait until they're like 21 before they can actually be a fireman. Right. So there's intervening.

SPEAKER_04 27:11

But yeah, there is so tell us how like fire and police works with you guys. Oh, that's great. Because I think having a civil, yeah, having a public system working for the public system sounds really good.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

So in Lake County, in order to be a fire person, you need an EMS certification and obviously a firefighter, right? You have to be a firefighter. So what we do is, and I'm glad you brought up this starting a program for four kids, right? You have to hire a teacher that's let's say $100,000 at hello with benefits. And now you got to provide a space. And now you have to sustain it for five sessions a day to make it viable. So that's roughly, let's say, 15, 20 kids a session. That's a lot of kids. So what we do in Lake Lake County, the way we're set up, is since we have 19 different school districts, 22 high schools, if I grab five kids here, 20 kids here, 10 kids here, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Next you know, I have 150 kids sitting in.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

You've aggregated it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

So you have to grab it from everywhere, right? Yeah. And what happens is, and I'm glad you brought this up, your chief needs four kids a day. A year, a year. Excuse me, a year. Um, we sent out 40 interns this year into our firehouses. Yeah. Yeah. So we work with all the communities to grab those kids. And what happens is when a child has an EMS cert, goes through our fire program to get preferential treatment. Yep. That way it shows that they're committed, they've worked with our fire chiefs. And the nice thing is just like we're building a relationship now, those kids have already done that at the age of 18, 19. And that's awesome. And they get points on that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

And they're preferential for hire.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Yeah. And then the chiefs get to know their candidates. And that's a huge difference. How many times have you interviewed somebody? And you're like, okay, so it's a five-minute interview or a 30-minute interview, doesn't matter. But do you really know who they are as a human being? No. Until you put them in those high stress scenarios and see what their output is, like an internship that we do for 60 hours. Now you know what you're working with. And you help that young man or young lady grow. That's awesome. Yeah, that is awesome.

SPEAKER_05 29:03

Can we ask about um teachers and credentialing and all of the kind of questions around?

SPEAKER_00 29:09

No, absolutely. Just as I as I talk, just cut me off and just tell me you ask more questions. So about to say 95% of my teachers come from industry. Yeah, that sounds right. And which is awesome. So we don't have an issue of content knowledge. The challenge that we ran into is the last time our teachers saw a high school classroom was when they themselves were in a high school classroom, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Or failing out of high school. Oh man, yeah, that's true. That's a problem.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

That could be a challenge, right? And if you look at a traditional setting, traditional settings hire teachers straight out of the universities, young, whether they're whatever vintage they are, or from other institutions. So do you anticipate that they know what they're doing on the academic side? Uh so what we've done is since our teachers are not traditionally certified, they have a PEL. We come in and I have built a very robust professional development program in two years where we can come in and get the teacher ready to work with high school kids. So prior to this program being developed, I had retention issues. Uh, and that's a big deal. Think about it. In industry, you invest X amount of dollars to get that person ready to do whatever you want to do. For us, is we spend X amount of dollars to get you ready to work with high school kids. And for you to leave after a year because you were deathly afraid of high school kids, not a good thing. Uh so because of that, I don't have a retention issue. Teachers stay because they feel extremely supported. Right. And the best part is they bring that industry experience, they pass it on to the kids. And let's be honest, every profession has its isms, and they can get the kids ready.

SPEAKER_04 30:45

I didn't get the answer that I needed from uh the appetizer to the meal. So geometry and construction is a great example because that's a freshman and sophomore program at the high school, at Evanston High School. Talk to me about how you talk to Lake Forest High School about your student journey.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Okay, so it's in that we don't take a talk to Lake Forest High School any different than any of the high school. So what we do is when you look at traditional settings, they're going to have exploratory programs. Right. So a program, a CTE program could have welding, automotive, a little, a little bit taste of everything. That's a level one or two course. When they come to us, they get the level three and four course, right? So we are the next step. So if you're interested, if you found interest at your home school, for example, in construction, welding, or architecture, you can come to us and we'll give you the next step. You might not get at your home school, like a certificate. We can come in a credential. We can get you dual credit that you won't get it. And you become really you go from a very broad conversation, what that is, we talk about that appetite. Now we can focus you in and laser you in where you want to be. We also have kids with an appetite. So for example, we had a young lady a couple of years ago, she wanted to be an engineer. She came to us to study construction, she came to us to do welding. She was never going to be a construction worker, she was never going to be a welder. But she knew she needed those skills to be a productive engineer. So she's in upstate Michigan studying civil engineering. And to really build this out, up so with engineering universities, they have a bridge building competition there. This bridge is made out of metal. She's the only one on her team as a freshman that could weld.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Yeah, there's a level of confidence that comes with that.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Absolutely. So she went in there, she's like, and I happen to work with her mom, and she goes, I can do these skills where my upperclassmen can. And now she's a sophomore, and they've voted her in as a president of the club because of her abilities, right? And that's awesome. You can't teach that. You can't grow. That just has to be, you have to provide those doorways. You got, and that's what we do. We open up doorways. And when you guys visit it, I believe we might have said every doorway represents a different world. And whether it's welding, EMS, CNA, it's it's a different world. And what I find interesting, go ahead. No, no, no. Keep in it, keep is that when you open up those doors, the teachers' personalities are represented in the kids based on that feel. And that's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 33:08

Yeah. So tell me though, real quick, like what's the benefit of leaving a high school to go somewhere else and be with 22 other high schools or 22 other communities?

SPEAKER_00 33:17

What's the benefit? So it was brought up earlier. It's like a college campus. Yeah. You pull them out of an environment that they're comfortable, comfortable with, and you bring them into an institution. And I've said this, I don't know. I've I don't know if I shared this with you guys. Is when you look at all the individual zip codes in Lake County, they represent a certain social demographic, etc., etc. It just is what it is. And it happens here too, very cool county, right? But when they come to us, we are the melting pot. They come together where we are a true representation of what Lake County is, what we stand for, and how we come in and prep our kids to be that much more advanced and ready for the real life.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Yeah, that's interesting, right? Because you're taking kids from all different schools with all different school identities and all different zip code blocks throughout Lake County, and you're bringing them in and you're forging an identity, but you're also forging an identity around a common experience for each of those kids, which is that's pretty powerful.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

There's a lot of power, and the kids love it.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Like a lot of times we talk about education. Yes, you're gonna go to class, you're gonna learn, you're gonna find that passion, but also having that interpersonal. Can you talk to people across the county and the friendships that are built? Like this morning, I was talking to students just waiting for class to start. And then one was from Warren, the other one's from Oak Honda, the other one's from Anniak. And they were and normally they would never there's a probability of never run into each other.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Come on, that's a big, that's a big geographic swath right there.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

There they are in front of the lobby and being super polite and just being kids. Yeah. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

That is awesome.

SPEAKER_05 34:44

So, can I ask a question about um the ratio of male to female? We know about some of the statistics that come through in the skilled trades in particular around women and their completion rates on apprenticeship programs, for instance. Um we could also talk about we can also talk about minorities and their ability to successfully complete apprenticeship programs. And I'm just curious if at your school you're seeing any indicators of those of the changing dynamics because of the early the early entry into the programming.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

You're asking the right question. So here's we have the data. The problem with the data is I don't have it in front of me to speak to it with that fluently. But here's what I'm gonna tell you. Roughly the building's 50-50. What we have found is that depending on, like, let's talk about CNA. I could tell you if you are a CNA student, you are a Latino female. I could tell you that right off the bat. And if you start looking at the demographics, we can probably pinpoint which part of the county we will grab those. We are doing a tremendous amount of work around attracting students in non-traditional careers. And what I mean by that, a boy taking a more female-dominated class versus a girl taking a more male-dominated class. And we focused on welding. And what we have found is that when and well, by the way, female welders are a lot better than boys. That's what industry is saying, because females happen to be more patient and uh precise in their welds. But we have found is when we were being very prescriptive about it, that we started slowly seeing an increase in the amount of females we started seeing the program. So it's something we work on and your question's awesome, but today I don't have the data in front of me to give you a legit answer. I and I don't want to misinform you.

SPEAKER_05 36:29

Agreed. And I I just find it really interesting as a model in terms of how do you engage kids in something that is non-traditional, and you're doing it in a different way because you're going into schools and you're recruiting them out of their comfort zone and putting them in an uncomfortable space, and also then having that added layer of it being in the trades or in the career and technical education, which has traditionally been more male dominated. And I love the idea because when we were there, I did not notice a dominant, I did not notice it being dominated by men in terms of your student population. And you're saying it's 50-50.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

It's 50-50. And it was really interesting. Not where the dominance happens is CNAs are predominantly female. EET is predominantly female. And I think that's more of a uh societal thing that we're trying to undo, but we're working on it. It's something that like when you even when you look at the state, that's something that the state wants us to focus on is one of the uh Perkins indicators to come in and say, what are you doing to make that more of a reality? And those are the type of things that we're doing. It's just the way we recruit and the way we present it.

SPEAKER_04 37:29

Um you have a strong relationship, probably due to proximity, but also probably intentional with the college of Lake County. Absolutely. Uh from what I heard, I maybe you can that 60% of the kids that come to tech campus end up matriculating on to, is that the right word? Matriculate? No, that's right, Pat. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 37:48

It's a very good use of the term matriculate.

SPEAKER_04 37:50

Thank you. Matriculate over to the College of Lake County. I don't know the exact that was a number I heard. I'm not sure. Tell me about the symbiotic relationship that you have with the College of Lake County.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

It is a very positive relationship. And in order for this to work, us to work, you need that relationship. Yes, we depend on due credits from them, right? And but it goes beyond that. Uh in order for the kids to be ready for the to go to the community college, and we have College of Lake County, which is our biggest partner, and two of our courses are in McHenry County right now. And it's not because the college, just colleges didn't have them, right? And when it comes to do certifying due credit teachers, there's different challenges here and there. So we have we partner with two institutions right now, but that relationship is super important because they come to us. So, for example, we have a career counselor out of the college work with our kids every single day. He's in our building working with our kids, getting those kids signed up, educating them, and we have field trips for the kids to that's just how we bridge them, to go from us to them so that way they can see that path. Ultimately, if you think about it, is like, for example, I'm a first-generation college kid. I immigrated here in 1989, first week, right? To Niles North. Well, I started two years in Chicago, then we moved to Skokie, went to Niles North. That's how I got my high school education. When I was going to college, my parents knew one thing it's going to cost money. That's it. They didn't know what it takes to apply, they didn't, they didn't know that process. I had to figure it out. By having the college next door or having a good partnership with them, having that person here. We still have kids that are first generation college kids. That's a thing.

SPEAKER_03 39:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

So we walk them over there, we introduce them, we we create a path, we provide them a plan that they're more likely to execute. So they do go over there, they do get their education. Now, if the question came up completion rates, I don't have them. You know, that's something that it's very difficult to attain. I we kind of talked about it earlier, but that relationship is priceless and they're good partners. You know, so yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Do they come into your building? They do. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

They do. We invite them in. We have a full-time, uh, they dedicate a full-time person to us that is in our building every single day. Oh, that's fantastic. Working with our kids, signing them up, answering questions, just helping them maneuver that world. Because if you think about it, whether it's a four-year institution, traditional institution, or a small community college compared to a four-year institution, it's still intimidating. You're walking around as an 18-year-old amongst, you know, if you don't know what how to navigate that world, it's hard.

SPEAKER_04 40:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

So it's an awesome relationship. That's great.

SPEAKER_04 40:18

It's great to hear. Um, we're exploring the idea of a tech campus in our area. We're exploring. We're, we're, we're, we're dreaming it into an existence right now. And your model is really, I mean, I I don't know. I think you were listed as he was named one of the top 100 education influencers 2025. What happened in 26? I mean, what? Um, no, but I I I know why. I know why. But I mean, tell congratulations on that. That that's pretty big. It is. Well, what how did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 40:54

What I have no idea. I just here's what I do. I if you guys don't pick up on, I'm very passionate about what I do. I I I I I tell people my my own team makes fun of me because I'm like, I don't work every day. I come to work because I enjoy it. I I love the outcomes that we can come in and create to come in for our kids. And yes, my days are rougher, some other, some rougher than others, but I really truly am very passionate about what I do. And when I look at some of the kids that walk our hallways, I was that kid. I was that immigrant kid that if you ask my teachers from now's north, they would never believe that I have a doctor's degree. I was always assumed, but he's gonna be doing some kind of job, and that's about it for the future. And here I am talking to you guys with a with a degree and about working with these kids. So when I come in and see some of those kids, I see myself in them. And I want to make sure that they understand what opportunities they have in front of them to come in and make those decisions. I don't want to make those decisions for them, but I want to make sure they understand what decisions they're making for themselves by creating those, opening those doors up and up those opportunities for them.

SPEAKER_04 42:00

So when when thank you for that. Um I they you should have gotten in 26 as well. But anyway, um uh all right. Your superintendents apparently 49 years ago, 50 years ago, came together. They were I don't know what happened, what would happen 50 years ago in Lake County? What was going on in the education system or in the industry that was demanding something?

SPEAKER_00 42:25

So it was not only Lake County. So the state got together and allocated funds. So if you take a look at the historical tax line items in the state, we're still a line item in there. The state allocated money where it allowed the local communities to get together if they wanted one, to come in and utilize that money and build a career center. So in 1977, we opened up our doors, right? And there was a it's it's an interesting road to get to this point. So we're gonna be celebrating our 50th, which by the way, you guys are invited to sign out.

SPEAKER_05 42:56

I'll be there.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

So, but the reality, the reality was when they got together, is that they understood that the kids need more than just applied, right? And I at that point, even in 1970, they need more than what? They needed more than just saying you're gonna go to college. Okay, needed an applied education, just that 25% you were talking about, and that's how this whole thing started. And then we just grew and grew. And in the beginning, I can't remember. I used to I read their historical records. We were not a big school. However, with the board's trust and expectations of growth, we grew to 2,400 kids and we continuously evolved. It's one of those things like we talked about AI, then you talk about the integration of technology, like for example, in firefighting. To get the four kids to us is one thing. But then if you have four kids, who buys the equipment? It's a lot more expensive to buy, have a classroom buy equipment for four kids versus buying the same equipment for 150 kids. Right. Right. So, like when we redid our welding lab, was it two years ago? That was a two million dollar project. A welder cost $25,000. Well, if you have 100 kids doing that, that's one thing. But if you have 300 kids interacting with the same equipment, that's a whole different conversation, right? So it's economy of scale for us. So that's the other thing is that superintendents realize that they couldn't do the three and four tier classes because it's expensive to maintain well the equipment. It's expensive to maintain car lifts, all that stuff. But if you do it in one place and allocate your funds there, you can do a lot more. And you're more nimble.

SPEAKER_05 44:26

Yeah, absolutely. Emerging technologies become a real player for a CTE program, more so than I would say a traditional education program.

unknown 44:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

So and if you and I'm not picking like mathematics or science or do it or read. I'm not because I do it. They're awesome. They're more traditional settings, right? They're they're rows and columns, and the kids do what they do, but in hands-on, you have to stay current. And that's what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

Well, that that's the that's that's the thing, right? It's it's forever evolving. Yeah. And if you're not, then you're behind, and then you're not preparing kids. They're not trade ready, Patrick. Yeah. Right. Right. If they're if we're not evolving.

SPEAKER_04 45:04

So how do you stay relevant then? How do you stay in touch with industry? There it is. Or how do you stay relevant? Well, first of all, are you relevant? I know you are, but are you relevant and what keeps you relevant to the industry? And that would go to placements of kids and whether or not the industry's happy with the kids that are coming to them.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

So we do many things. The first two things we do is every one of our teachers required is required to have an advisory committee made up of business partners. Now, some are bigger than others, but they're still required. Industry comes in, tells us what the trends are, what they're looking for, et cetera, et cetera. The biggest game changer for us was give me 10. And here's what we did. And we talked about this a little earlier. When you look at industry, they want a productive human being in that spot. They want to stay and grow with them. Well, education wants to produce that, but there was a massive disconnect of what that looks like. Industry wanted somebody one way, education wanted one expectation. So what we did is we brought industry in and we said, look, here's who you're gonna get. It's an 18-year-old, 17, 18-year-old child that may or may not do a lot of things you would expect them to do. Like when you call, they might not pick up. They're used to texting. Like there's certain things that we as adults are getting used to, right? So we educated, they educated us, we educated them, and we found a common ground. So here's what we did grab our kid for 10 hours. See if you like their productivity, let's see if they're a good fit for you. If that works, you're gonna ask for 50. And what we did with that 50 is 50 hours. The 50 hours. So it's a total when you look at a program of study and you do credits, there's certain things they need, but they need a total of 60 internship hours. Right. So if that works, we said, all right, can you give us 50? Here's a challenge we ran into, and we talked about this a little bit earlier. And this is just a reality. Not every child can give up their day job to do this internship for various reasons, right? So we said, All right, kiddo, what if we paid you 500 bucks? So we were very fortunate to find philanthropists in our area that donated around $200,000 to this initiative. And what we do is we take $500, give it to the child once they complete the actual internship. And what happens is a lot of our kids, because of those internships, get hired. So, like for example, EMS, you know, people don't, schools don't want ambulances showing up in front of their schools or per, you know, with fire trucks. But there's times where all the kids getting off the ambulances are graduates, right? So, like put that into perspective. There are kids. Uh, our CNAs are highly sought after in our all local to support in the industry that they hired up. So those are the type of initiatives that we do to come in and stay current and have that connection to industry and back to us. Plus, we bring the industry in, we celebrate them once a year, and we just had a celebration of our greatest partners, the nominees for next year that we're going to come in and choose that one partner next fall that has done the most amount of work. Now, when we talk about partnerships, we create a pathway. Yes, you don't only just show up. We want you to engage with our kids. We want to advocate for us. The ask of money, sure, it's there, but it's not a requirement. And when you do grab our child, don't just give them a broom on an internship. Make sure they fully understand what you're doing as an industry partner. So we, those at our greatest advocates, we're going to celebrate in the actual fall for them to get that award.

SPEAKER_05 48:26

One of the things the Trade Collective has been really successful at doing is engaging volunteers. Um, and we volunteer our volunteer group, we talk to them about time, energy, and advocacy. Like those are the three kind of pillars of our engagement with them. Um and we've been really successful with ETHS just in terms of building a volunteer core to do that work. And so when I hear you talk about this, I think about what about the community? How how active is a community in the work that you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 48:52

Very active. Uh, we do bring them in. Uh, it's not as active, I think, as we would like it. This is why we started our foundation this year. So it's again a first for a career center to have a five year.

SPEAKER_04 49:02

But you have you're serving so such a wide span. So when you say community, you're talking about how many communities?

SPEAKER_00 49:08

Yeah, that's talking about it's all of Lake County and McHenry, right? A little bit out of McHenry. So we started a foundation to bring that in. Uh, but we are definitely working with our industry the most right now. And like, and this is why I tell people so the our workforce development coordinator will walk 10 industry partners through my office, let's say a week. Two of them are potentials to be great. Really, one ends up to be great because they fit that mold kind of like what you described. They come in, they work with our kids, they give back, they advocate for us, and we have a very and they take our kids on internships. We don't want an industry partner that just says, Well, give me a kid. Well, hold on, time out. What does that look like? We need a little bit more. We need you to be vested in us as much as we'll be vested in you. So we do have an expectation for it. And industry partners, the real good ones have figured that out. And we're figuring them out as well. Don't get me wrong, this is a two-way streak.

SPEAKER_05 49:58

Well, building those relationships and curating those relationships is really essential to the work, especially around college career and technical education. Absolutely. You can't just you can't just invite somebody to be a part of a program, you know, once a year. You need to make sure that they know every program that's coming up so they can help you plan. They can actually be a part of the work. And so um, I I think it's a tough, it's a tough kind of uphill battle if you don't have the capacity of a lane, a lake county tech or of a trade collective in combination with ETHS to get that relationship really solid from the future.

SPEAKER_04 50:33

Dr. Capala, what is the main if you had to say trade ready, college ready, this is not pitting once against another, but it's preparing people for something. What is the difference? How would you describe them in a simplified way?

SPEAKER_00 50:47

Honest answer? I don't see the difference. What do you both require education? The only difference is when you go the academic route, you may be starting at a higher level in that company. Where if you come in and go more the trade route, you're gonna take a slightly different path. Nobody says you can't end up in the same spot. It just depends on what path you want to take. And I think both paths are just as successful. But if we don't always fit, like unfortunately, sometimes we want to all fit in that mold. Everybody's gonna go to college. Far from the truth. You can all find success in a different way, whether you go the true academic route. Like, for example, I wanted to go, I want to be a teacher. I needed to go that route, right? That's what the expectation is. But if I wanted to be going to trades, I would go another path. But the one thing's for certain, whether trades or academics, we're at a point in my personal belief that everybody will have some kind of post-secondary education, whether a cert, a year or two, you know, we're all gonna have it.

SPEAKER_01 51:43

Yeah, we've talked about that as like the two pieces of paper. Yeah, you have your high school diploma and something else. Absolutely. And that's some kind of certificate or a degree or whatever that is. But that's essential.

SPEAKER_05 51:53

Yeah. And you keep coming back, right? You you dip out, you dip in, you dip out, you dip in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:58

Yeah. So that's just my opinion. And it depends on which path you take. And some statistics will tell you if you go this path, you can make more money. If you disco path, you maybe make a little less, but I don't know if I agree with that. Depending on the actual uh profession and where your passions are, I think you can be just as successful whichever path you go.

SPEAKER_04 52:16

What are you thinking about as we're thinking, what we're thinking about? What questions might you have? You know, like what would the first three things you'd suggest us doing if we were to think about building a tech campus?

SPEAKER_00 52:26

And the first thing I would do is it's awesome that you guys want to do it as an institution. Let's say Evanson High School wants to do it. Start gathering the schools in the area that have the same uh questions as you do. It's always easier to start a tech campus when you have many institutions joining. All right. So we talked about it earlier.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

Four kids in firefighting. All right. Well, what if you reached out to the Niles district and they have another four? New Trier, let's say that has another five. All your local communities, Glenview's all of them. And then you can come in. Wait a minute, this works. We have enough to run a full course now. Reach out to the communities, share your story. You guys have an awesome story. I love your mission, and you're gonna get there. And then ultimately, at the end of the day, the geographic location. What makes the most amount of sense? Where can I come in and find a building that's gonna meet the needs of the now and the future where you're gonna be?

SPEAKER_04 53:23

Are you in the most optimal area if you were to do it again?

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Uh, great question. I'm actually gonna answer it with a feasibility study. Uh, my board has asked the question should we entertain opening up a building further west? So when you look at this, is I have not done a study, but this is just an observational opinion. When you look at where we're at, we're landlocked. But if you go further west, it's farmland that's being converted into residential. So we and if you talk to me a year from now, I'll give you that answer. Uh but right now I'm waiting for the feasibility study to happen, what that's gonna look like.

SPEAKER_04 53:55

But as you said, some some buses are coming an hour away.

SPEAKER_00 53:58

Some buses are coming our way out of the west. So uh we'll see what comes out of it. The bigger one is if we did do a circum building, which if that's the case, I'm super stoked. Are we gonna have the same programming? Right. And my guess would be we're not. Right, right. Because just when we talked about zip codes, I think each region of the county is gonna have a different need and different interests. So I think that's gonna happen, but I need that info to come back. I it's that study will take about maybe six months. They were saying they can do that for us, and we're gonna start it about October. Cool so that way we can interview students, parents, community members, board members, so that way we can truly get what we're looking after.

SPEAKER_04 54:34

If you were to start your school again, would you do it the same way? Yeah. Do you like what you've got right now?

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The one thing that we just need to do is we're looking at uh adding new programming. We talked about it earlier, staying with the current times. And uh, we're gonna figure that again. If you talk to me every year from now, I'm gonna tell you what we're looking at. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 54:52

We got to find some farmland, Patrick.

SPEAKER_05 54:56

I think there's a farming kennel, we're heard.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

I heard earlier about this farming kennel.

SPEAKER_04 55:00

Could we talk to Northwestern about some landfill, maybe? There you go.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

Well, you guys have an awesome space. I think you I'm a believer that your mission is gonna come to fruition. You guys are doing great work.

SPEAKER_04 55:10

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for what you do. Um, Tris, thank you for being the executive director of the trade collective, and you've brought a level of seriousness to our mission. No, and to this podcast. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 55:24

It's easy. It's an easy job.

SPEAKER_04 55:26

Do you have anything you'd like to say in closing or anything you're thinking about?

SPEAKER_05 55:30

Um, I just think about the idea that, you know, oftentimes we think that this is such a new idea, but listening to Sebastian and hearing 1977, this is not a new idea. I think the beauty of the work that we're doing is that we can actually stand on the shoulders of those who've gone before us. We just have to remember that they exist. Um, because it seems so new and we're so used to the kind of pro-college, only college arguments. And and we know that there's multiple pathways to success and to and to life success. So um that's what I'm thinking about.

SPEAKER_04 56:01

Dr. Kapala, anything that you're thinking about as uh we close up here? No, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 56:08

I did I'm enjoying your mission. I'm glad we have a chance to cross paths, and I'm looking forward to where our relationship is going to blossom. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 56:15

I I when I saw that kid point, and and um maybe we'll put it in the video here for for those who are watching on online. But this kid was so determined and so to meet your kids in your school, just the composure they had, the agency they had. I don't know if we got them at the end of school year, and I don't know, but they were just focused and excited to be in the building. I can tell that you don't have tardy. I can tell everyone just seemed excited to be there. Um, it was like nothing I've ever seen. So, congratulations on building a school and having a school that um is, I don't know, it just seemed really, really good. And and and I and I bet those kids are more prepared for the world.

SPEAKER_00 56:58

They are. My favorite one is, and I think it was when you guys were there, we had two welding students talking to you all.

SPEAKER_04 57:03

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

And one of them goes, I want to go to industry. That kind of goes into your question, what's more important, industry or college? And the other young man goes, I want to go to college. And it just shows there's no right way, right? But they know what their way is. The other one is this one you were not for. So we're doing our celebration of partnerships, and there's this young lady going. I did an internship, hospitality in the kitchen, and this is what she said. I hate it. I know I don't want to do this, but I wanted to continue doing hospitality. You know, so that to me was very powerful. She knew she didn't want to be in the kitchen, but she found another part of where she wants to be. Yep. Yep. It's that time. It's that time.

SPEAKER_01 57:41

So we got some Heckies. Awesome. And this is something we give our guests because Hecke was an amazing, amazing guy, um, activist, business owner, and outspoken advocate for exactly what we're talking about over decades. Um enjoy the sauce. It is the sauce. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_03 58:09

There you go, Joe. Let us know how good you're. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Really happy to have you on. Thank you. This was a pleasure.

SPEAKER_05 58:15

I guess my sauce is coming.

SPEAKER_03 58:17

Um, a trade collective.

SPEAKER_05 58:23

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 58:23

Thanks for joining in us. Thank you.