DeWine tours new Butler Tech aviation school
25 Aug 2026
News
The governor touted the $15M facility: ‘You guys are doing it right.’
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine visited Middletown Regional Airport on Monday, Aug. 24, to see first-hand southwest Ohio’s newest, most innovative aviation career school for high school students.
The stop at Butler Tech’s new $15 million Aviation Center school next to the airport’s airstrip was part of the governor’s promotional tour touting the state’s high rating in a survey that named Ohio the No. 1 state in America for attracting new businesses.
DeWine, who was joined by Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel and former Ohio U.S. Sen. Rob Portman and others in a panel discussion, touted Butler Tech’s newest school and its students as “exactly what the state needs.”
The two-hour stop was part of the governor’s statewide tour of growing companies and career schools dubbed the Heart of Opportunity Tour in a play off of Ohio’s Heart Of It All state tourism and promotional marketing campaign.
The thematic tie-in to Butler Tech reflects the career school system’s aggressive addition of new learning programs and business partnerships, catering to more than 20,000 teenage students and about 20,000 part-time adult learners, including the state’s most modern aviation and aerospace industry school designed to help fill jobs in those booming Ohio industries.
DeWine toured the school’s airplane hangar and chatted up some Butler County high school students learning at the Aviation Center.
“It was pretty exciting to hear their passion and their enthusiasm,” DeWine later told more than 180 county, city, business leaders and area school officials from the county’s 10 public school systems during a panel discussion.
“What we want for our kids … is to find something to get excited about and then give them the opportunity to have the (career skill) tools they need to actually do that job.”
DeWine congratulated Butler Tech and said he and Tressel “talk a lot about Butler Tech as an example of how to do it, and you guys are doing it right.”
Earlier this month, the Aviation Center hosted officials from Ohio’s Chamber of Commerce and dozens of representatives from airports and aviation industries statewide at a conference.
Days before that, state chamber conference, Butler Tech had learned of winning a $2.25 million state grant designed to support the school’s hangar expansion and adult education aviation programming.
Photo Credit: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (right)and Butler Tech Superintendent William Sprankles tour the hangar at Butler Tech Aviation Center at Middletown Regional Airport on Monday, Aug. 24. DeWine was joined by Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel for the visit, part of their Heart of Opportunity Tour, and chatted with high school students at the $15 million aviation and aerospace career learning center. DeWine and Tressel participated in a discussion panel at the school before an audience of county, city, business and local school leaders. Michael D. Clark / Contributed
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