Though for a while Job Corps' status was tenuous, it appears the program has escaped major funding cuts in Congress this session.
That is a relief for Clearfield Job Corps Center Director John Crosby."It hasn't been real bad," he said. "I guess we just have to demonstrate to the senator that the Job Corps program is worthwhile."
The senator is Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., who is chairwoman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee and a harsh critic of the Job Corps program. A month ago she held three days of hearings in which a parade of witnesses came before her committee testifying of disorganization, drugs, violence and waste.
Kassebaum wants to eliminate, through stringent cuts and reorganization if necessary, what she perceives as severe problems in Job Corps.
"It was rather ironic," Crosby said. "I myself testified before the committee last October (when Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill., was chairman) and 99 percent of the testimony was very positive.
"(Kassebaum) brought people in to say they had had bad experiences, (but) somebody can go anyplace and find something bad about an organization. Essentially that's what they were searching for in this last round of hearings."
Kassebaum has cited figures from the Congressional General Accounting Office that say $100 million, 10 percent of Job Corps' total budget, is wasted on youths who drop out of the program.
"As if we're supposed to identify them," Crosby said. "When a kid walks through the door we don't know if he's going to stay two or three years or two or three days."
Crosby added that there will always be a high dropout rate due to the very nature of Job Corps. The program was conceived during Lyndon Johnson's administration to help poverty-level youths ages 16-24 - a group that typically hasn't seen stellar behavioral role models - get away from often oppressive environments of drugs and crime and into neutral territory.
"For some reason people think we should have prep school kids in the program," Crosby said. "They're getting away from the mission. The center provides a support system."
A student of the Clearfield center who completes the program stays anywhere from nine months to three years, after which he or she goes to work or gets more education. Crosby proudly points to fifty graduates of the Clearfield center who are currently going to college full-time, most of them at Salt Lake Community College.
Clearfield Job Corps is in a good position to escape whatever federal funding cuts might loom in the future. The center was ranked 46th out of the 110 centers nationwide in a recent government efficiency rating, which measures factors such as math and reading scores and average length of stay.
Lower-rated centers would probably be slated for reduction or closure before Clearfield.
"We're good," Crosby said. "We're a highly disciplined center."
Congress has cut $10 million Job Corps had earmarked to build four new centers, which is a manageable reduction. The program might have to tighten its belt a little more, but Crosby is optimistic.
"If the Congress goes the way it intends to go, we will probably take a cut just because so many programs are being cut," he said. "But it probably won't be fatal . . . We could limp through on a 10 percent cut, but anything else would be cutting services."
Clearfield's Job Corps center is the third-largest in the country, with a $28 million yearly budget and 1,400 students from an 11-state area and many foreign countries currently enrolled.
"The beauty of Clearfield is the diversity of kids we have here," Crosby said. "They come from the Sudan, Russia, Central and South America, Indian reservations, inner cities, even Bosnia."