Statement of Wendy Palazzo
Urban/Rural Technology Opportunities
February 10, 2000

Let me just say for those that may not be real sure of what that is and talk a little bit about that. And then I’ll head you over to Greg to give examples of what’s happening. Basically, we’ve got kind of a (INAUDIBLE) that we’re talking about.

We also link to the community technical college in Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota, etc. This started several years ago in Minneapolis in (INAUDIBLE) when their crime rate was very high and they had a lot murders, etc., and it wasn’t exactly (INAUDIBLE). The city was looking at what can we do to revitalize, to get these crime rates down, and so forth. And they actually talked to me in a former position when I worked indirectly for Jane and for (INAUDIBLE).

And they were asking me, "If we bring in a manufacturing company, what do you think?" "Sounds good to me. I’m placing ‘em right and left. I don’t have to worry about those folks. They can get back in the game with a minimum training. Go for it!" They did. They got the (INAUDIBLE).

What they didn’t get were the local people employed. And the reason they didn’t is they weren’t trained. They went and they got our Minneapolis schools, you know, ready to go. And so then they applied (INAUDIBLE) grant, Early Opportunities Rural grant from the Department of Labor. And they were successful in getting that funding -- $1.5 million over five years. We’re currently in the third year. Last year they also got an extra $600,000 for that one year, and that got into information technology (an extra amount to manufacturing technology and biotechnology).

From that, we looked at, "O.k. Where is (INAUDIBLE) looking at the data." We looked at the (INAUDIBLE) data, their target industries, the Citizen’s League, (INAUDIBLE), and also information from the Hubert Humphrey Institute and really (INAUDIBLE) where do we want to deal with this. One of them was machining. Some of the others are right there dead center in the information technology area itself. (INAUDIBLE) couple of kids that are fully certified as Microsoft computer engineers. So we are in-line with that, and that’s what we’re working toward. We’re working with businesses.

We have six different schools involved – North and South High School, Franklin and Folwell Middle School, the Indian OIC, and Minnesota Transitory School. The reason why they were selected is because they’re (INAUDIBLE). So … and that was the … seemed to be the most critical need.

Of frustration to me, personally, on occasion is that North High School has a very promising program there that I would love to help with. I do (INAUDIBLE). We’ll go ahead and include ‘em, but they can use a leg up, too. So there are other areas in that school that we’re getting kind of a spotty application by having the funding applied to just one area of the district. There are eight high schools, for example, in this city – 104 schools in the district. So, some are getting a little more leg up than others are. That’s why we were putting the technology into this district.

Some of the benefits that these students have had a result of this is they were able to go on internships. They went to NSP for IT mentoring last week for the (INAUDIBLE) State kind of seminar. They were able to go over and see technology in action at Governor Ventura’s meeting in October where they got to vote with the keypad using interactive device over the Internet, etc.

They’ve had some wonderful opportunities where they’ve saw this in place and being used by the community. Maybe I should … (INAUDIBLE). We are (INAUDIBLE), and we also have others that we (INAUDIBLE) in career planning. I think I’m (INAUDIBLE) if you want to move on.

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