Southeast Technical College Vital to the Health of the City

From SiouxFallsLive.com

 

One of the great promises of American democracy is that education is a pathway to the middle class.

 

That’s why we have free, public education for every child through secondary school. Despite the hand wringing, finger pointing and moralizing that often accompanies the execution of that public education, that guarantee has endured and expanded from the earliest days of the republic.

 

Yes, there have been failings, let’s not be naive. Yet it remains an essential pillar of a free people and a healthy society.

 

At this point, you’re probably thinking, thanks for the civics lecture, old man.

 

But what’s that got to do with life as we know it, today, in the Best Little City in America?

 

Fair question.

 

We find ourselves as a community, the metropolitan area, at something of a crossroads. Not in the sense that there is this existential question that requires answering, a choice between A and B. Rather, it’s the accumulated decisions, a gradual move toward one vision or another.

 

In this case, it’s education.

 

There’s plenty to say about the long-term implications of the demographic shift in the K-12 systems through the metro, the de facto economic segregation that continues to divide urban and suburban, as houses and apartment complexes pop up ever further from the city core.

 

This is not that.

 

This is about what happens after students leave the confines of high school and enter the greater world.

 

The challenges are daunting, either face a future of limited opportunities with only a high school degree, or the prospect of a big bill, and probably debt, to attend college.

 

That of course is a binary version of reality. There are post-secondary options in Sioux Falls, most notably Southeast Technical College.

 

Forgive the long march to the point.

 

Like so many cities in the country, we have a workforce problem. This isn’t new.

 

 

What is new was the announcement Friday, Sept. 22, of a $25 million fund-raising drive for the Southeast Technical College Foundation.

 

Campaign NEXT has been quietly raising money since last year, with the public kickoff last week at Southeast.

 

The foundation will use the money to fund capital projects, academic programs, scholarships and access to education.

 

In short, allow more Sioux Fallsians to get the training and education they need to build a career and raise families, the bedrock of a healthy society.

 

Southeast Technical College is an invaluable link toward that end.

 

The fund raising has already begun. In fact, it’s well on its way with about $20 million committed, said Cynthia Mickelson, the former Sioux Falls School Board member and co-chair of the group spearheading the effort.

 

 

Mark Mickelson, in addition to being married to Cynthia, is the former speaker of the house in South Dakota, whose family has long ties to Southeast, including the administration building named in honor of his father, the late Gov. George Mickelson.

 

“Education in general is a passion of Mark’s and mine,” Cynthia said in an interview recently.

 

The NEXT campaign will help open doors for people in that niche between high school and the working world, people who want to change careers and work their way up the economic ladder and those who would not have had access otherwise.

 

In 2018, Mark Mickelson led an unsuccessful effort to increase the tobacco tax to reduce the cost of technical school education in the state. That campaign was driven by the need to get more people job skills in areas critically short of workers, just the kind of thing that the tech schools can do.

 

“He went out to Southeast and saw them as a great partner to fill that need,” Cynthia said.

 

While that effort failed at the ballot box, the mission continued.

 

The technical schools are not community colleges, though they may seem that way.

 

It’s a weird hole in the South Dakota education system that the state has been unwilling to address for generations. Instead, the K-12 school districts in Sioux Falls, Mitchell, Watertown and Rapid City oversee the technical schools.

 

Those schools have morphed from the image of training car mechanics (not that there’s anything wrong with car mechanics) to multi-faceted institutions able to navigate the changing workplace.

 

Today, students can study everything from accounting to sports turf management. There are incredible opportunities in the trades and health care. In short, affordable training for good jobs.

 

Cynthia Mickelson saw that up close as a member of the Sioux Falls School Board, “That stigma of, ‘Oh you go to trade school you're not going to get paid as well as a four year school,' that's eliminated,” she said.

 

Plus, STC serves as a bridge for residents who do want a four-year degree to take the introductory classes to get them there. It’s not always a smooth transition, but done with intention, it’s a way to make progress toward a bachelor’s degree with the price-tag of a university. It’s too bad that it takes the fundraising power of people like the Mickelsons, rather than the commitment of the state and people of South Dakota, to make it happen.

 

But so be it.

 

Education has always been the pathway to the middle class and beyond. The health of Southeast Technical College helps fulfill our nation's original promise of education.

 

It’s not free, but for hundreds of Sioux Falls residents hoping to improve their station in life, it’s possible.