Whitehall board hears $1 million question

It isn’t often that people are actually asked to answer a $1 million question, but that’s the scenario the Whitehall school board found itself in last week when Ashley Furniture Industries Chief Executive Officer Todd Wanek asked: “How are you going to transform yourself and your school?”

The offer of a $1 million contribution to the district’s new technology education center was made by Ashley founder Chairman of the Board Ron Wanek with the money coming from the Ronald and Joyce Wanek Foundation. However, the $1 million commitment is “pending finalization of necessary agreements and legal documents,” according to an Ashley spokesperson, who did not respond when asked for specifics regarding the agreements. Among the requests made at last week Monday’s meeting was by Ron Wanek who told board members and district Superintendent Mike Beighley that it needed to push students toward classes that are going to be taught in the center. 

The Whitehall board was asked to adopt a comprehensive plan that requires, among other things, a marketing plan for the programs that will be located in the center, progress reporting and the development of an advisory board. The board will consist of representatives from Ashley, Western Technical College, Chippewa Valley Technical Collage, LabMidwest, at least one educator from another Trempealeau Valley Co-op school and Whitehall school representatives both on and off staff. 

The plan was listed on the agenda for discussion, so the board could not officially adopt it, however they confirmed to Ashley representatives that they would approve it at their next meeting. 

Todd Wanek’s question came after he explained what he believes the future will look like. Wanek said the company is shifting to using more artificial intelligence (AI).

“We have already seen the power of this because we’re using it and we see what it can do to business processes,” Wanek said before noting that the company’s accounts payable is done “almost all through AI.” 

“This is the future of business, how business is going to evolve and how Ashley Furniture is going to evolve.”

Wanek said the company has made worked to stay ahead of the trend, but said the education system needs to adjust too. 

“We’ve made a lot of investments to be able to get there, but what we need is educators and school systems in cooperation to help us on this journey because it’s complicated,” Wanek said. 

Ron Wanek, Todd’s father, said the workforce has changed. Wanek said that when the company started, there were a number of large farm families that would produce “work hard and farm kids” who “understood something about almost everything.”

“It’s a different game and obviously we have to educate and train our employees a lot differently than what we did 50 years ago because they came with a basic knowledge,” Ron Wanek said. “Today, they don’t.” 

That, Wanek said has put the company on a path where they had to work with area schools to grow their workforce. Part of that process was supplying the four schools in the Trempealeau Valley Co-op — consisting of Whitehall, Arcadia, Blair-Taylor and Independence — with a mobile skills lab. Though, he said the results from that were “a little bit disappointing.” 

“Hopefully, this new laboratory that my wife and I are willing to donate $1 million to will be more help and Whitehall will be on the forefront,” Wanek said. 

Wanek used Steve Jobs as an example, saying the cofounder, chairman and CEO of Apple attended one of the few schools that had a quality computer laboratory. That, Wanek said, gave Jobs a leg up on the competition. Whitehall students could have a similar advantage, but the Ashley founder and chairman said the district needs to make students see that. 

“Your job is to make sure people understand why they have to do certain things and why they have to change,” Wanek said. “You have an obligation to make your students understand why they maybe need to take certain different directions in education if they want to have a good lifestyle.”

Beighley provided the Ashley representatives and school board members with the comprehensive plan for the district’s new technology education center. The plan included a mission statement for the center, information about the building itself, the equipment that will be used and the educators. 

The marketing plan highlighted how the district plans to grow the programs and attract students to take classes based in the center. The center will be open not only to students in the TVC, but also to the Eleva-Strum and Osseo-Fairchild districts. That, Beighley said, will impact not just Whitehall’s 740 students, but thousands of students in Trempealeau County schools. 

A key piece that both Beighley and instructor Kristoff Ausderau pointed out was that the center will be open all day and during the summer, which will help minimize scheduling conflicts that have prevented some students from taking classes. The new lab will allow eight-to-12 classes to run at one time, Beighley said. 

“I think that’s transformational,” Beighley said. “That’s truly not allowing a schedule to restrict or control kids.” 

Ausderau said the district is going to use drones and self-driving vehicles to get students interested in classes and, once they’re there, “guess what, you’re going to learn about it as well.” 

He said they are also learning AI, but “we don’t want kids to just use ChatGPT… we want to teach them how to build it.” 

The district has also worked with local technical schools and universities to have more transferable credits, an issue that has hampered students in the past. Ron Wanek said tech schools and universities “don’t want to accept credits when they can resell them.” Wanek credited Beighley and former Ashley executive Jim Dotta for working with the colleges to get around that issue.

Ron Wanek expressed confidence that the $1 million commitment was going to be worthwhile. 

“We feel very confident in Mike’s direction and the board here that that’s going to be well spent,” Wanek said. “But you have to sell, you are an outlier. You are very special in what you are going to be offering your kids.”