It turns out there is
a connection of the Troup County Kia plant to education,
but it’s not to the K-12 schools.
The Karen Kennedy
GeorgiaTrend article,
LaGrange/Troupe County: The Kia Effect,
devotes one paragraph to K-12 schools and ten paragraphs
to
![](http://assets.mediaspanonline.com/prod/2807937/20090714-CEC_Photo250.jpg)
West Georgia Tech,
the local technical college.
Here are the last three of those paragraphs:
The center “will educate a person to work in an advanced manufacturing
plant,” Gilley says, just the kind of plants that are coming to Troup
County over the next year or so. Using industry-standard equipment,
students will be educated to meet the manufacturing community’s
workforce needs.
In fact, the manufacturing community already is calling on the
center. DaeLim, a supplier to Kia and Hyundai (the latter has a plant
nearby in Alabama), expressed interest in students doing prototyping of
plastic parts once the center, which opened June 1, is up and running.
“We’ve left a good platform on which to build. We have good faculty,
good staff. I think we have good community relations,” Gilley says of
his time at West Georgia. Then he looks to the future and what he’ll
miss most about his job. “We offer programs that allow people to get
better paying jobs. I’ll miss having the power to make decisions that
change people’s lives.”
Hm, so the locals think the technical college has more to do with
industry than the K-12 schools.
An article by Jeff Bishop in Times-Herald.com,
Partnerships may develop between CEC, new hospitals,
notes the connection between high schools and industry is through
West Georgia Tech.
Hm, maybe
Wiregrass Technical College
could be important….
-jsq