Newgate Education Center

Newgate School is a post-secondary non-profit vocational-technical school for residents of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota and the surrounding area. Newgate provides tuition-free automotive vocational training and technical career placement opportunities for low income adults. It offers professional automotive technical certification in three areas: Auto-body Repair, Auto mechanics and Detailing. Graduates are qualified to work as career apprentices in the auto services industry. Newgate’s practical, hands-on approach to teaching technical skills is highly successful with students who struggle in traditional educational settings or for whom English is a second language.[1] In 1981, Newgate pioneered the concept of using the sales of car donations as the single funding source for the school, thereby eliminating the dependence on tax-based government funding for support. Newgate began its Wheels for Women Program in 1996. Donated cars are repaired by the students and provided at no cost to single moms referred by social service agencies like the Jeremiah Program or Lutheran Social Services. Newgate provides approximately 50 cars per year through the Wheels program. In 2004, with bonds financed by the City of Minneapolis, the school constructed a new modern training facility and expanded its Auto Mechanics Training program.

Newgate School
Address
2900 East Hennepin Avenue

Minneapolis
,
MN
55413
Information
School typenon-profit, vocational-technical
Phone612 378-0177
Websitenewgateschool.org

History

Newgate School was created in the early 1970s in partnership with the University of Minnesota. In 1975 it was incorporated as a separate non-profit school. In 1979, assisted by the Northwest Area Foundation, Newgate purchased a mechanics garage at 90 North Dale St in St Paul and established the Auto Body Training Center, serving young adults who had dropped out of school. Twelve years later, Newgate purchased its current property at 2900 East Hennepin Minneapolis, MN 55413. Ron Severson, the school founder and director expressed the school’s admission policy: "If you don't have a high school diploma, some places won't take you as a student. We don't care about that. We're looking at ability and attitude.”[2] Newgate also welcomed Hmong Americans, immigrants for whom the Twin Cities was becoming one of the top two settlement areas in the US.[3] Now all of Newgate’s cash-flow financing – educational materials, building operations and supplies, marketing and staff salaries – is provided by the sale of donated vehicles, many of which are repaired by the students in training.

References
  1. Article by: NEAL ST. ANTHONY, Star Tribune, Sept 3, 2009 “Clunkers Still Being Born Again at Newgate”
  2. Article by Toni Randolph, Minnesota Public Radio November 23, 2005 “Cars for coursework”
  3. "Top 50 Metropolitan Areas by Hmong Population." The Hmong Culture Center. Data compiled by Mark Pfeifer. accessed 29 January 2006

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