Mat-Su Career & Technical High School_33,000sf Addition Ribbon Cutting.

3!

Oh! I have a son who is— has just transferred back from 2 other schools in the lower 48. He's finishing his engineering degree at UAA. He is using his welding skills from Colony High School to build a tiny house on wheels to live in. He's going to park it in the hangar where he does aviation work, and his little house on wheels is going to be made with skills that he'll learn from the CTE program, including fixing the engine because he got small engine certification while he was here.

That's what this school is about. Hats off and special thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Tom Bishop. They donated a Starcraft plane. It'll be the first plane that we'll reskin and rebuild in the transportation lab.

And so I want to give a shout out. I'm seeing probably this tallest student over here. Luke. Wave, Luke. This school last year won the trifecta in every single state science competition in the Northwest.

So—. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] The governor and I greatly appreciated the invitation to be here today, and he cites this school as a shining star of success in education more than any other school in Alaska. So congratulations.

Congratulations on that. It's a great time to be alive in Mat-Su, and it is a great time to be a mayor in the Mat-Su because these events do not happen in a vacuum. As I hear about people welding, it brings me back to when I went to high school. I went to high school in Cordova, and got a welding certificate there because there was a thing called a pipeline just getting ready to start. And so I think about that when I hear people getting their certificates, be they in welding.

We didn't have these opportunities. I look at this and I think, uh, Matsu gets it.