About 100 staff at Milwaukee Job Corps Center will lose jobs due to federal cuts, state agency says
In a late May announcement, the federal labor department cited poor performance outcomes and high operation costs as reason for its plans to suspend operations at 99 contract-operated Job Corps centers across the U.S., including Milwaukee's, by the end of June.
The Job Corps program dates to 1964. It provides room and board, high school diplomas, specific job skills training, and other employment services for people between the ages of 16 and 24. Participants must qualify as low income and face "barriers to education and employment."
Examples of those who are enrolled in Job Corps include people with a history of homelessness, who dropped out of the K-12 education system or who have been victims of sex trafficking. About 25,000 people are enrolled nationally, federal data show.
Milwaukee's location, 6665 N. 60th St., is operated by contractor Horizon Youth Services. Via email on June 2, President Nolyn Fueller said the program has awarded 1,354 high school diplomas and 2,515 career and technical training completions since opening in 2011.
Layoffs will affect all staff at the Milwaukee location: residential counselors, academic instructors, mental health consultants, security officers, cooks and others, according to a June 2 notification from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.
"The termination of this contract will result in layoffs that are expected to be permanent," the DWD notification says.
A June 3 legal complaint brought by the National Job Corps Association, a trade organization for contractors operating the program, seeks to prevent the federal pause. Among other allegations, the lawsuit filed in New York calls the federal labor department's actions "illegal" and "fundamentally irrational."
Jamie De Jesus has volunteered at the Milwaukee location for the last two years. He believes ending the program could increase the crime rate, put young people in vulnerable situations and make it more difficult for potential future students to get jobs.
'They're making life-changing decisions on people whose life they can never relate to,' De Jesus said of the Trump administration.
De Jesus said he reached out to Milwaukee Area Technical College and Milwaukee County to find some possible solutions.
'Let's revamp what we got and keep these people from being homeless,' De Jesus said, adding of the roughly 120 students that are affected by the closure, 30 could be homeless or have inconsistent housing.
De Jesus said he's reached out to different organizations to help with housing and mental health for the students.
'Money makes the world go round, right? But conversation rules the nation,' De Jesus said. 'If we keep communicating with each other to find out what our needs are, we all have a better chance of survival.'
The federal funding for Job Corps was operational, De Jesus said, and the budget was tight. But the program was trending in the right direction.
'We were working on getting Job Corps more volunteering so they were more active in the community. They were building relationships,' De Jesus said. 'They had a workforce board to find out what companies wanted and companies were even hiring the students from there. It was working.'
Aside from his volunteer work, De Jesus works for the Innovative Educational Solutions Institute, a nonprofit that offers job training to people with financial or physical limitations.
De Jesus said there's two machinist interns and an administrative assistant intern with Innovative Educational Solutions Institute. Like many companies with interns coming to the end of their training, De Jesus said they asked them where they wanted to get lunch.
'Their response hit me ... 'We don't know any place to go eat?'' De Jesus recalled. 'It's about exposure for youths, at this point. Exposing them to as many things as we can whether it be different foods, different areas of employment, different career paths. And just trying to educate them and let them know that they're not forgotten about.'
In explaining its decision to suspend the program, the U.S. Department of Labor pointed to a "first-ever Job Corps Transparency Report" released in April that includes data on graduation rates, operational costs and safety infractions at program sites.
For the Milwaukee location, that data showed an enrollment of 245 students in the 2023 program year, at an average cost per participant of $37,457. Of those students, 73 were considered to have graduated, meaning they either obtained a high school diploma, GED or completed a career technical training program.
In a statement on May 29, U.S. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer cited that report in saying the Job Corps program was "no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve."
The lawsuit seeking to maintain Job Corps alleges the federal government's report on the program "applies a flawed methodology and reflects selective and inaccurate performance measures, costs, and statistics, intended to significantly understate Job Corps' performance and overstate its costs."
In June 3 letter addressed to Chavez-DeRemer, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, called the program pause "misguided" and a "functional cancellation."
She urged the federal government to reverse course.
"Employers in the Milwaukee area value Job Corps graduates as strong, reliable contributors in the workplace, and losing that connection will add to the challenge of filling open jobs," Baldwin's letter said.
The future of Wisconsin's second Job Corps center, in the northcentral town of Laona, is unclear.
The Laona location, Blackwell Job Corps Civilian Conservation Center, is operated by the U.S. Forest Service Job Corps. In a statement on June 3, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the department is reviewing the job corps program and "will determine the status of our 24 centers soon."
"The Trump Administration is looking critically at the way we do business, with the ultimate goal of ensuring the best possible service for our customers, and the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars," the statement added. "We continue to work closely with DOL and Congress to ensure USDA Job Corps facilities continue to prioritize the health and safety of program participants."
Cleo Krejci covers K-12 education and workforce development as a Report For America corps member based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact her at CKrejci@gannett.com or follow her on Twitter @_CleoKrejci. For more information about Report for America, visit jsonline.com/rfa.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Federal actions to pause services at Milwaukee Job Corps center
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