Tech trail blazers have first graduation

OWENSBORO, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky Commissioner of Education Wayne Lewis told the first graduating class of the Owensboro Innovation Academy that he was proud to stand before the 59 students who blazed the trail to become the first New Tech high school in Kentucky.

Lewis was the commencement speaker for the graduation this month that took place at the RiverPark Center. It was the first graduation of the school that began four years ago. The OIA is a part of the New Tech Network, a 19-year-old network based in Napa, California, with 207 schools in 25 states and Australia. It was the first in Kentucky to be selected as part of the network. The project-based learning school comprises students from the Owensboro Public Schools and Daviess County Public Schools districts, as well as students from Hancock County.

It likely comes as no surprise, Lewis said, that the world economy is changing and jobs that once existed no longer do. He told students about being a child and seeing a full-service attendant at every gas station. Many students have probably never seen that before, because it is not a common job anymore, he said.

"You might say, 'Well that's a long time ago,' but I want to caution you that at the time many of us adults in the room were experiencing these things, very few of us had the foresight to think it's not going to be too much longer that that job is going to exist," he said.

In addition to jobs no longer existing, "we should be even more cognizant of jobs that will soon be no more," Lewis said, and he referenced how Walmart made a recent announcement that it would be investing in more robots in thousands of their retail locations across the country. Those robots would do the job that today are done by people.

He said this doesn't mean that jobs are being replaced, but there will be different types of jobs....