School Bulletin: Muskego increases access to nursing program

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Muskego High School is training the next generation of nurses, but new this year, the students are working in a lab on campus.

"I think a couple legs are broken, but they're mannequins. They are there to fix them," Jim Michlig, the College, Career and Experiential Learning Coordinator, says.

School officials say having the lab space is a game-changer for kids interested in becoming Certified Nursing Aides. The Muskego-Norway School District has partnered with Gateway Technical College for years, but the students would leave their classrooms to take CNA courses at the college.

"It created quite a schedule challenge for them. They would often miss quite a large chunk of their day to go off site to obtain [their certification]," Principal Todd Irvine says. "It really restricted the number of students able to access it. Now being here, it's really opened the doors a ton."

Michlig says typically two to five students would become CNA's in one summer. Now more than a dozen kids are enrolled in the program, and an instructor comes right to their classroom.

The Muskego CNA's are also in high demand. Michlig says community partners like Tudor Oaks Senior Living Community and Lakeview Specialty Hospital and Rehab have asked about student availability.

"When we were started to get kids out there working, we were getting a lot of positive feedback on what our kids were doing," Michlig says.

The high school's CONNECT Academies, an internship program, gives the kids work-based learning credits. It's an experience preparing them for life after school.

"We were getting feedback from our students about how much better prepared they were for careers in nursing and when they went on to their two-year and four-year degrees," Michlig says.