The School Districts of Florence County and Niagara, along with Northeast Wisconsin Technical College (NWTC), presented at the 2019 National Forum to Advance Rural Education (NREA) hosted in Louisville, Kentucky October 24-26, 2019. The opportunity to present of the Woodland Consortium on a national stage was sponsored by the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance (WiRSA).
District Administrators Ben Niehaus and Nate Burklund, along with K-12 Relations Director for NWTC, Brooke Holbrook, presented on behalf of their respective schools, in addition to speaking of the participation and opportunities provided for the students of Beecher-Dunbar-Pembine and Goodman-Armstrong Creek Schools.
The Woodland Consortium provides post-secondary credit opportunities for the four regional school districts, and adults seeking further education, at the former Hillcrest Elementary School in Aurora, Wisconsin. NWTC assumed ownership of the facility in 2017 after leasing part of the facilities beginning in 2009. Student and adult programming have expanded rapidly since NWTC’s acquisition, with students having the opportunity to earn post-secondary credits and employability certificates in general studies, electro-mechanical engineering, certified nursing assistant, IT, EMT, customer healthcare service and entrepreneurship, along with NWTC welding courses and AWS Certification offered for high school students at Niagara High School.
Students from the four schools collectively earned 358 credits during the 2018-2019 school year, saving those students $53,342 in tuition, in addition to putting them on a pathway to degree or certificate completion sooner to support the growing demands in the workforce. | 
