The Winfield-Mt. Union Industrial Arts department was the recipient of a major gift from Harbor Freight and Wapello Schools. Trevor Kongable, Industrial Arts teacher at WMU, tells KCII News that each year Harbor Freight chooses 50 teachers across the country to receive $100,000 each in tools for their classrooms. Bill Dunham of Wapello Schools received the gift in 2019. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Harbor Freight chose to gift tool kits to last year’s winners and one school of the winner’s choosing. Dunham chose Kongable at Winfield-Mt. Union.

Once Kongable was chosen, he notified Harbor Freight that he taught 70 students in the district, and the company made sure that each student would get a kit. They are broken down into three categories: welding, carpentry, and woodworking. Kongable tells KCII News what is in each kit and how they will use them, “The welding kit won’t have a welder but, it will be more of a fabrication and layout kit so students can do sheet metal work. The carpentry kit will be more like a building-type kit. You’ll have a speed square, a hammer, pliers, screwdriver, and things like that. The woodworking kit will have a miter box, a plastic box with slots in it, so you can cut different miters with the back saw that’s provided. We’ll use these kits for students that are at home due to COVID quarantine or if we have to go to off-site learning. I will put together Youtube videos with instruction and lessons for the students to do from home.”

The kits were received and put together by students last week. Each kit included $50 worth of materials, making the gift to the district a total of $3,500.