Staff and students from New Tech High School are busy recruiting future freshmen right now. They’re going around to Sioux Falls middle schools telling eighth graders about New Tech and its project-based learning format.
These Patrick Henry eighth graders are calculating their future and New Tech students such as David Jones think they should pick their school.
“I heard about the project-based learning and I really thought that was cool. My mom also wanted me to come here. I really do love the school a lot,” Jones said.
Jones loves playing sports. He studies at New Tech during the day and is an athlete at Lincoln after. He hopes to enter the medical field some day.
“If sports doesn’t work out, it’s definitely going to be a doctor,” Jones said.
He says New Tech will be instrumental in getting him there.
“It actually prepares you very well for the job environment because in the real world you’re going to have to work with people you don’t want to work with. Sometimes at New Tech you’re going to have to work with,” Jones said.
New Tech will welcome about 100 freshman next year. If you’re interested, you can go to two events coming up this month.
“We are a regular high school. So they get to do everything that they would have done at their normal high school. They learn all the same subjects. We do dances. We do all the fun stuff that the regular high school does,” Principal Dolly Ellwein said.
Ellwein says the open houses for prospective students take place on Nov. 8 and 15. If families like what they hear, they can enter a lottery drawing for next year.
“It’s a really great environment out at New Tech. We just come and we promote and let them know that we exist and that they should think about us for next year when they’re going into high school,” Ellwein said.
New Tech is on the campus of Southeast Technical Institute in northwest Sioux Falls. It has 340 students right now. This month’s open houses go from 6-7:30 p.m.
