These are groovy times for the mostly jazz, student- and alumni-run WDPS. After 31 years and various homes, most recently at Patterson Career Center, the 6,000-watt station is settling into its new digs this summer at the $35.5 million David H. Ponitz Career Technology Center at Washington Street and Edwin C. Moses Boulevard.
“This facility is so much nicer because it’s designed for us — we’re not taking a broom closet and making a studio,” said Ken Kreitzer, communications team leader for WDPS radio and WDPS-TV, Channel 21. Kreitzer and his crew moved into Ponitz last month, getting a head start in a sprawling, 200,000-square-foot high school like no other in the Dayton area. Designed in nearly every aspect in partnership with Sinclair Community College, the school will house 550 students in programs from allied health to public safety and more when it opens for the first day of school Aug. 17. The idea, school leaders say, is to jump-start students on earning a college degree and learning the skills needed for today’s work force.
“It’s not just state-of-the-art-facilities, it’s a state-of-the-art teaching and learning environment,” said Linnae Clinton, Dayton schools director of career technical and adult education. “This truly is a unique educational setting for students.”
As for WDPS-FM, which airs 9:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, a format change could be on the way, too. All jazz. And to be clear, real jazz, said program director Chris “Hippie” Hartley, a 2004 Patterson graduate.
“We don’t play Kenny G at all,” Hartley said. “That’s something we refuse to play.”
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