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President Trump is trying to eliminate a national program that helps low-income young people finish their education and get job skills. It is called Job Corps. It enrolls about 25,000 people a year. When the Department of Labor said it was closing almost a hundred Job Corps centers nationwide to save money, organizations supporting those centers sued. Hanna Merzbach with the Mountain West News Bureau reports from the Job Corps site in Wyoming.
HANNA MERZBACH, BYLINE: Wyoming's Job Corps site is in Riverton, a town of about 10,000. Raul Diaz came here from Denver, where he was homeless.
RAUL DIAZ: Moving house to house, like, at a young age, I was around a lot of gang members within my family and stuff.
MERZBACH: Diaz, a soft-spoken 18-year-old wearing a red Nike sweatshirt, says he doesn't like the way he was living.
DIAZ: The environment you stay in for so long, you kind of pick up those habits, you know?
MERZBACH: So back in February, he applied to Job Corps, a federal program that recently celebrated its 60th anniversary. It was established during President Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty to help low-income young people get careers and become independent.
DIAZ: It really did take a lot out of me to leave, but I got here. And within just a week of being here, I met so many people.
MERZBACH: Students get free room and board while they work on graduating high school and getting job training. Surrounded by his classmates, Diaz says he's working on his high school diploma and learning to weld. Others are preparing for truck driving, construction or petroleum jobs.
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HARRIET HAGEMAN: You have chosen to take the road less traveled.
MERZBACH: Republican Wyoming Congresswoman Harriet Hageman praised graduates in a video earlier this year.
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HAGEMAN: You've chosen a different path that has prepared you for high-paying jobs that are absolutely critical to your community.
MERZBACH: But last month, the U.S. Department of Labor ordered nearly all Job Corps programs to suspend operations. Hageman declined to be interviewed for this story but in a statement said she's trying to steward American tax dollars while balancing the needs of Wyoming citizens. Hageman didn't sign on to a bipartisan letter of support for Job Corps members of the House sent to the Department of Labor this month. The department's attempt to suspend Job Corps has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge, but now President Trump's budget plan would eliminate funding for all 121 Job Corps campuses across the country. The Trump administration cited a multimillion-dollar budget deficit and a national graduation rate of 39% in the prior school year.
JERRI PREJEAN: They just picked numbers to fit their needs.
MERZBACH: Jerri Prejean, a Wyoming Job Corps administrator, says that national average came from the tail end of the pandemic. She says the graduation rate here is 74% and mostly with jobs.
PREJEAN: Every student that comes here that graduates is a success story. They're a success for making the decision to come to Job Corps.
MERZBACH: For now, students like Raul Diaz are in limbo.
DIAZ: I never really had a family back home, but over here, I created a big family for myself.
MERZBACH: On June 17, the federal court will hear the Department of Labor's argument for closing Job Corps sites nationwide. In a statement to NPR, the department said it remains confident our actions are consistent with the law. The National Job Corps Association, which sued to keep them open, says Labor has to work with Congress to shut down sites. However, the court rules, though, President Trump's budget still calls for eliminating the program's approximately $1.8 billion budget. For NPR News, I'm Hanna Merzbach in Riverton, Wyoming.
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