YPSILANTI, Mich. — Last week, Ford donated four Mustangs to local schools in Washtenaw County to serve their automotive education programs. Pioneer High School, Huron High School, South & West Washtenaw Consortium, and Washtenaw Community College each took delivery of a Mustang at an event at Gene Butman Ford in Ypsilanti, just a jog down the road from Ann Arbor. Students and teachers were at the event and were able to finally drive away in the cars they’d be using as learning tools.
I didn’t witness any burnouts at the donation event, but there were plenty of smiles accompanied by revving engines. The education Obviously, these donations are a boon for students, serving as hands-on learning resources, which can translate into useful career skills. Having the latest technology is not usually within the school budget, though.
But the schools have good partners. There are over 1,500 schools enrolled in Ford’s ACE program, with vehicle donations going all over the country, including Hawaii. Kenneth Lewis also explained that Tom Butman is part of his program’s accreditation advisory committee, “so he’s always at our schools, always talking to us about things that we can do to make our program better. And so when this opportunity came up, obviously his first thought was us, which is awesome.
I asked Tom if he’d ever recruited technicians from the schools. “Oh yeah,” he replied, beaming, “some of our best,” before recounting the education and career histories of individuals from Butman’s service department.