Dr. Jill Underly visits with La Crosse students in honor of Career and Technical Education Month

Yahoo

12-02-2025

LA CROSSE, Wis. (WLAX/WEUX) – Wisconsin State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly visited students and staff at Western Technical College and La Crosse Central High School to explore career and technical education opportunities. This comes after Dr. Underly proposed $60 million in investments to expand those types of programs through her biennial budget request. Dr. Underly explains, 'Career and Tech Ed is important for us to fund in our schools for a variety of reasons. When you think about a well-rounded learner you think about keeping kids engaged, hands-on opportunities. There's aspects of it that are going to help the workforce in the long run, but the purpose of school is we want kids to discover their passions, to be engaged and to learn those other skills.'
La Crosse Supervisor of Career and Technical Education, Britta Rotering. Says the school district believes it is important to provide students with many different career learning opportunities, 'We want our students to experience everything that they may have a chance to continue to progress in. We want our students, while they're within our system, to have a safe and comfortable place to be introduced to areas that may be difficult or something that they haven't been exposed to.'
Dr. Underly toured through innovative student programs that cover technology, marketing, consumer sciences and more, she said that La Crosse provides plenty of opportunities to students, 'I'm really impressed by how La Crosse partners with, not just the technical college, but with the employers in the community. They place so many students who are in youth apprenticeships and job shadows with employers here in the community. That is what is going to grow the workforce of our community is this partnership between k-12 and high schools as well as our local employers'
The school district is also pleased to hear about the proposed investments toward education programming. Rotering explains, 'It feels like someone sees us. They hear us. They recognize our needs. They recognize the work that is being done in the k-12 districts, especially with the career pathways. They're standing behind us to advocate with the role and opportunity they have to provide us more of what we need so we can keep providing incredible opportunities to our students, families and community.'
Wisconsin is just one of six states that do not have ongoing funding dedicated to career and technical education programs in public schools. Dr. Underly, Brittany Kinser, and Jeff Wright are running in the nonpartisan primary for Wisconsin's Superintendent of Public Instruction on February 18th. The top two finishers will then run in a General Election on April 1, 2025
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