U-S Education Secretary Arne Duncan praised the toughness and resiliency of Wisconsin workers during a stop in Milwaukee Thursday. "There are a lot of folks in this state and other states that have done the right thing, worked hard, gotten up every morning and through no fault of their own, don't have a job today," said Duncan. "What you see here though, is you see huge resilience. Adults who could give up, could quit, and they've come back and worked hard, and we want to more than meet them halfway."
Duncan was in Wisconsin to announce 7 million dollars in federal grants for worker retraining programs. "We want this money to hit the streets October 1st," said Duncan. "We didn't want to wait a year to think about it and talk about it. We wanted to get money out on the street now. There are lots of really innovative partnerships that are going on around the country, and we want those to go to scale."
Governor Jim Doyle says Wisconsin educators will be the first to apply for new federal grants that will help unemployed workers train for new careers. Doyle and Duncan held a joint press conference at Milwaukee Area Technical College . "They're tough, they're resilient,: Duncan said of Wisconsin's thousands of displaced workers. "I just think technical colleges like this one are going to play a huge role in helping folks get back on their feet, help the country, help the economy get back on its feet, and that's why we chose to make the announcement here, that we want to put real money behind this effort to help folks retool and retrain and get the education to start those second careers."
AUDIO: Duncan Q&A with reporters
