The Durant High School is flying a program that will allow aviation students to build an airplane after an agreement was signed last week with Tango Flight.
Tango Flight is a non-profit educational corporation founded to inspire future engineers, pilots, aviation mechanics and technicians. The company’s curriculum provides classroom learning with real hands-on training. The students apply classroom knowledge to build an FAA-certified airplane.
Durant Schools Superintendent Mark Moring is excited about the program.
“It will take two years to build, but yeah, we’re going to be moving to our new Ag building in February, hopefully, and then we’re going to take the rest of this year and the summer to refurbish the old Ag building into a shop where they can build the airplane.”
Moring said the school can keep the airplane or sell it and use the proceeds to buy another airplane kit. He said other schools in the state that have this program include Ada and Sapulpa.
“I’m super excited that we can have the facilities to do it,” Moring said. “If it wasn’t for our taxpayers passing a bond issue for a new Ag facility, we wouldn’t have it. So, it’s kind of a snowball affect. Our Ag students are benefiting from that but our aviation students are also benefiting from us increasing and improving our Ag facility for them.”
According to Moring, the school’s partnership with Tango Flight is more than just about the building of the airplane.
“Anybody that is excited about flying needs to know the ins and outs of that as well because there’s so many careers not just behind the stick of the airplane,” Moring said. “They’ll learn how to build it. They’ll learn about drone aviation. They’ll learn all of that in this class, especially leading up to the third and fourth year.
“The FAA will actually inspect their plane and they’ll rate it if it’s safe to fly or not and if they’ll take me up, I plan on flying in it. I’m hoping we can make it red and blue and put a Lion on the tail.”
Durant High School Principal Cheryl Conditt said the high school started its aviation program four years ago with the goals of providing new opportunities for students to learn marketable skills and earn industry certifi cation.
“During this time, our aviation course offerings have grown,” Conditt said. “Students have had the opportunity to move from this program to enroll in aviation courses concurrently at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and graduate with college credits in and acceptance to the aviation program there.
“While we have achieved our initial goal, we are not content to just maintain the status quo. We keep looking for new options and opportunities for our students and continue to grow and expand our programs.”
According to Conditt, this partnership will provide students with access to real-world manufacturing and technical skills that can equip them for future careers.
“Durant has always excelled in academic standards for our students,” Conditt said. “What we don’t do a very good job of is spreading the news about our great career tech programs that offer marketable technical skills and industry based certifications and the opportunity to apply academic knowledge and skills in real-world workplace situations. Today, we are changing that.”
Dr. Zac Morgan, DHS aviation instructor and secondary STEM director, thanked Moring, Conditt, curriculum director Beth Bean and Dan Weyant and Craig Anthony of Tango Flight.
“When I came to Mrs. Conditt and Mr. Moring, I started the conversation with, ‘I want to do something crazy’ and that’s generally not a great conversation starter,” Morgan said. “Before I finished the presentation, they all looked at me and said, ‘Let’s find a way to get this done.’” According to Morgan, the hands-on training will not just benefit students seeking their pilot certification, but also students who want to become engineers, aviation mechanics, airport and airline managers, air traffic controllers, law enforcement/first responders and those who are enlisting in the military.
“As a flight instructor, there’s nothing like watching somebody take their first flight in a small airplane,” Morgan said Weyant, who is the executive director of Tango Flight, said he greatly appreciated the school district’s trust for the Tango Flight program.
“We have former students now flying in the military, flying regional airlines or are airplane mechanics less than a year out of high school,” Weyant said.
Durant High School aviation student Emma Sherrer said it is an amazing opportunity and she is grateful.
“It’s an incredible opportunity for everyone in Durant and I’m just real excited to be here and do that,” Sherrer said.
Moring said the school district doesn’t just want to provide students with opportunities, but to provide the opportunities to them.
”Opportunities that we as parents didn’t have and it’s just absolutely amazing that we can provide an opportunity to you guys to learn about things you want to do, find out what you don’t want to do,” Moring said. “My motto is, it’s more than graduation. Everybody’s going to walk out of here in four years with a high school diploma, but we need to provide opportunities for our students beyond that.”
