Fears that offering Job Corps training at Central High School would attract troublemakers to South Salt Lake are unfounded, according to an official of the company that pitched the proposed program to the Granite School District.
The program would provide federally funded vocational, social skills and academic training to youths aged 16 to 21, according to a proposal made to the board in September by the Management & Training Corp. of Ogden.But although the Clearfield and Weber Basin Job Corps centers operated by the company are residential programs, only a daytime program would be available at Central High School under the proposal.
F. Craig Sudbury, vice president of operations for the company, said that the Central High School program would be offered only to students living in the Granite School District.
The most likely candidates for the Job Corps training would be the students already enrolled in the alternative high school program housed at Central, Sudbury said.
A dozen South Salt Lake residents including Mayor Jim Davis attended a recent meeting of the Granite School Board to express their concern about the program, which is being studied by district officials.
"It isn't that we're against rehabilitation," resident Suzanne Black told the board at its Tuesday meeting. "We're concerned who these people are who are being rehabilitated."
Black said she was worried that the district would allow incorrigible youths to move into the district from out of state to attend the school, and then those youths would cause trouble in the community.
Mayor Davis said in an interview outside the meeting that South Salt Lake shares Black's concern and will attempt to keep the program out of the community through enforcing zoning and business ordinances.
He also questioned the effect Job Corps training would have on the city's image, noting that South Salt Lake is already the site of a new county jail and two halfway houses as well as area offices for sewer and social services.
"I don't think we're a community that doesn't want to deal with people with problems," the mayor said.
The South Salt Lake City Council has not taken a formal position on the Job Corps proposal, according to Davis, but he said council members agree it should be kept out of the community.