As further court action looms, advocates for the Job Corp center in Chicopee, Massachusetts say a lot is at stake if federal plans to “pause” and ultimately defund the program go through.
Dozens of young adults and their families were at Elms College Tuesday – celebrating a new graduating class who went through the Westover Job Corps Center.
Around 90 graduates were honored indoors. Outside, local lawmakers spoke of what the program has meant for the region and how it’s under threat.
“At Westover Job Corps, there’s nearly 250 residential students that participate in the Job Corps program that could be left without housing opportunities, without workforce opportunities, without job opportunities, by truly a reckless administration in Washington, DC, that is continuing to unconstitutionally cut essential programs that we have in our country to help people get ahead,” said State Senator Jake Oliveira, whose district includes Chicopee.
Joined by State Representative Shirley Arriaga of Chicopee and Longmeadow Representative Brian Ashe, Oliveira spoke at length about the program hosted at Westover Air Reserve Base. It’s one of three such centers in Massachusetts, serving at least 350 students.
Around a hundred Job Corp Centers have been at the center of a “phased pause” plan announced by the Department of Labor late last month.
Affecting 99 “contractor-operated” centers nationwide and the 25,000 students to use them, the announcement came almost in tandem with President Trump’s budget proposal – looking to eliminate funding for all 121 campuses – totaling $1.7 billion.
It could eliminate about 170 positions at the Westover Job Corp Center and set back hundreds of vulnerable youths trying to earn a high school diploma and job skills, Arriaga says.
“If anyone knows anything about Westover Job Corps or Job Corps overall - their goal is to help young adults get training and the resources so they can start working,” she said. “They want to work. These are individuals who might need an alternative route. Regular school wasn't it for them and this is a lifeline. Taking programs and resources away from folks who want to better themselves is terrible, to say the least.”
A free residential education and job training program for young adults ages 16-24, Job Corps was born out of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.”
However, the DoL says the program operates on a $140 million deficit, with graduation rates as low as 38 percent and with an “Average Total Cost Per Graduate” of over $155,000.
Advocates dispute many of those totals, claiming a bulk of the numbers cited are either outright wrong or cherry-picked figures depressed by the pandemic.
The National Job Corp Association – a group founded in-part by contractors operating Job Corps centers — contends the cost per graduate is closer to $57,000 and that, historically, non-COVID-affected graduation rates are closer to 60 percent.
Representative Ashe tells reporters that his colleagues are all for “cutting the fat” budget-wise if ever a need arises – but he says after years of seeing local youth benefit from the Westover Job Corps Center’s offerings, it looks like federal decisions are being made without much forethought.
“I’ve had the privilege, years ago, when I worked for the sheriff's department, of having young people get introduced to the Westover Job Corps and helping them acclimate and get into the community,” Ashe said. “At a time, right now, where we look at so many industries [that] don't have a backfill of people to start working there, whatever the field is, to cut programs like this is so detrimental, not to their futures, but the future of Western Mass. and the future of our country.”
For the past two weeks, the Labor Department has been barred from terminating Job Corps jobs and removing students from contractor-run centers via a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge.
An injunction hearing was scheduled for Tuesday. Bloomberg Law reports the temporary block was extended for another week, with another hearing scheduled for June 16.
The outlet adds that New York Judge Andrew Carter Jr. was skeptical of arguments made by the Trump administration – that shutting down centers across the country was “different from ending the program entirely—something that only Congress can approve.”
