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Wheeling High Hopes To Help Lure Amazon

(CBS) -- Chicago is in the hunt for Amazon's second headquarters and the 50,000 jobs that it would bring.

A suburban high school thinks it can help provide highly trained workers if the "HQ2" lands here.

CBS 2's Marissa Bailey reports.

Ah, the sights and sounds of school at Wheeling High in the northwest suburbs, where the curriculum includes a fourth "R" besides reading, writing, and `rithmatic.

Robots.

"They can't get enough. We have to kick them out at the end of the day because they want to stay here so late," says Tom Steinbach, engineering and manufacturing teacher.

Wheeling High just doubled the size of its manufacturing and engineering lab. It specifically cites Amazon and its massive use of robots as a reason.

Johnny O'Grady knows this isn't all fun and games. He believes robots are his future.

"It's going to be a career," he says. "You're learning how to run machines that million-dollar companies run."

Some of Matthew Mills' work will help astronauts move around safely aboard the International Space Station.

He says if someone had told him when he was a middle-school student he'd be making parts for NASA, "I wouldn't have believed it."

Amazon is expected to announce the location of its second headquarters later this year.

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