Job Corps students, left in limbo, say program makes huge difference in their lives

‘This hurts a lot of people, and overall the economy. Because you have a bunch of people going home without a job, homeless and about to be not beneficial to society or themselves.’ – Unique Weeks

Photos by Tom Rivers: These Job Corps students include from left: Sienna Jack of Rochester, Unique Weeks of Bronx and Austin Show of New Hampshire and later Holley.

SHELBY – On May 29, the federal Department of Labor made an announcement that has threatened 99 Job Corps centers around the country, including the one in Orleans County in Shelby.

The DOL put those centers on “pause,” effectively shutting them down, claiming the centers were not successful – graduation rates were too low and incidents of violence too high.

DOL Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer announced the 99 Job Corps would be suspended by the end of June. She said the centers haven’t been fulfilling their mission.

The DOL said the graduation rate nationwide at the centers is at 38.6 percent, with the average cost per student a year at $80,284. The average cost per graduate is $155,600, according to the DOL.

The National Job Corps Association countered that the DOL skewed the data, using information from 2023 when centers were still impacted by Covid restrictions.

Job Corps is currently operating at about half of its capacity because the DOL hasn’t allowed centers to do their own background checks on students. Since the DOL took over that duty in March, students haven’t been admitted.

The Job Corps graduation is historically closer to 60 percent, not the 38.6 percent from July 1, 2023 – June 30, 2024, the association said. Job Corps said that prior to Covid restrictions in 2020, the average cost per Job Corps graduate was $57,312.

Three Iroquois Job Corps students and two of the center’s leaders spoke with the Orleans Hub recently.

Unique Weeks, 24, is from the Bronx. He recently completed the carpentry program and was planning to do the advanced training program at the Grafton Job Corps in Massachusetts. His younger brother also just started in Job Corps.

Weeks said he will try to find employment as a carpenter now that the advanced training program has been put in limbo.

He was working a “dead-end job” at a 7-11. He arrived at the Iroquois center on a cold day in Feb. 21, 2024. It was snowing.

Weeks learned to appreciate the setting of the Iroquois Job Corps in a wildlife refuge.

“It’s peaceful, it’s quiet,” he said. “It’s very therapeutic for city kids.”

Austin Shaw, 21, has been in the electrical program at Job Corps the past year. The New Hampshire native was living in Holley when he rode his bike to the center for a tour. He has embraced the program, on a path to a career after being homeless and making money stealing copper. He was slated for the advanced training program in Westover, Mass.

Shaw said he is grateful for all the training at Job Corps, which was at no charge to him. The students have access to power tools and other equipment, under the watchful eye of committed instructors.

“This place gave me discipline,” he said. “I was nervous and my life was chaotic. I was homeless and a copper thief.”

He said he will go back to New Hampshire and try to find a job or perhaps join the Navy. “I don’t really know,” he said.

He said the center is safe with very few fights. The incidents cited in the media and the DOL report “make it out to be way worse than it actually is.”

Sienna Jack, 19, of Rochester has been at the Job Corps for four months in the painting program. She said she will return to live with her family.

She said the Job Corps program has a 60-year track record of success.

“This is a free program that’s been around a long, long time,” she said.

Eric Seppala, left, is the center director of the Iroquois Job Corps in Shelby and JT Thomas is the director of operations.

Eric Seppala is director of the Iroquois center. He started as the security manager. He said the center has to “over report” incidents, including fender benders and damaged Chromebooks.

Job Corps has a “zero tolerance” policy for violence. Any incidents and the student misbehaving is out of the program.

The center was scrambling in early June to help students earn as many credentials as possible. Many won’t be able to fully complete their training program, based on the DOL order, but Seppala said they can still earn credentials such as being a flagger at a work or construction site, operating a fork lift, knowing customer relations, and other skills including OSHA credits.

Many students also are working towards earning their high school diplomas.

A lawsuit has paused the Job Corps directive from the DOL until June 25. The DOL ordered the 99 centers to close by June 30. The directive told the centers to send all students home by June 6. Although the lawsuit “paused” that order, Iroquois leaders said many students had already gone home by June 6.

The local Job Corps set up a “transition team” to help students get their paperwork in order, create resumes for job searches, and also to connect many with their Department of Social Services in their home counties. Many of the students were homeless before enrolling in Job Corps.

“We’re trying to give them every tool they need,” said JT Thomas, the director of operations and a 17-year employee at the Job Corps.

Thomas started at the Job Corps as a teacher, helping students with reading and to earn their high school diplomas. He was the academic manager before the operations director.

The following question and answer interview was conducted at the Iroquois Center on June 4:

Question: If you were the reporter what would you be asking about the Job Corps program?

Austin Shaw: I would be asking why are we really closing? What benefit does it provide to close all of this? Because we are giving people, who otherwise have little or no opportunities – people like me who were thriving off of copper theft or people that were in very bad home environments – a free opportunity.

We’re always being told to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, make something of yourself. Well, we came here to do that. Now look what just happened. People can’t do that anymore. And that is the real question. What benefit is there to closing this? Would you rather your tax dollars go somewhere else?

Unique Weeks: I think it will become like the college situation. It was free and now it’s not. People won’t be doing it because they won’t be able to afford it. There are plenty of trade schools that can do it already, but they are somewhat unattainable or they require a certain amount of years done. This one (Job Corps) you can come without your high school and still get a trade done and get your education.

Maybe they don’t want to give that to people for free. Maybe they want people to pay for it. But they are endangering society by that because they are taking away people’s livelihoods and the opportunities to get jobs. There may be more jobs but there is not a lot of people who can take them because they refuse to train them and there are few schools that do this inside of a school.

In 2024, there were more people going into trade schools than any other. This generation, they are calling us the blue-collar generation right now. This hurts a lot of people, and overall the economy. Because you have a bunch of people going home without a job, homeless and about to be not beneficial to society or themselves.

Austin Shaw: They’re back to where they were at the start. Even the wealthy states, and I’m from a wealthy state in New Hampshire, there is that underbelly of people who can’t get out of that. The average trade school there is like $3,000 to $4,000. That’s a substantial amount of money.

Sienna Jack: My biggest comment would be you’re taking away opportunities for people, especially the underprivileged people of color, the young students. You have to look at the homeless population and where do those kids go.

Question: JT, what have you enjoyed about your career here?

JT Thomas: The success of the students. The students come in with pretty much nothing. They tell you their stories. When I was their high school instructor, one of their projects was to write a story about themselves. The obstacles they had to overcome just to get to the center is impressive. My first speech to them is, ‘You guys inspire us to do our jobs.’ They inspire us. They are overcoming everything. They may say Job Corps does it for them, but Job Corps is just an avenue for them to do what they can do. We’re just there to support them. It’s the students that do it.

When they say only 38 or 40 percent graduate, these are kids who are coming from being homeless and from the streets. If you have 10 students come here, and 4 or 5 students get a job making more than I do, and people don’t see that as a success? All these other students would be on the streets still  or on social programs. People would be paying for them. They would either be in jail, homeless or living off of local or state programs.

It’s the students that we are here for.

‘The students come in with pretty much nothing. They are overcoming everything. They may say Job Corps does it for them, but Job Corps is just an avenue for them to do what they can do. We’re just there to support them. It’s the students that do it.’ – JT Thomas

Question: Eric you’ve been here for how long?

Eric Seppala: It’s about 6 ½ years. Before that I worked in a store and before that I had 22 years as a Genesee County deputy sheriff, and as a night supervisor and afternoon supervisor.

Question: Why Job Corps for you?

Eric Seppala: I was familiar with the program. Years ago they had us as law enforcement come out and we’d be here on pay days for students because they were paying them in cash. They would have one of us out here. We would escort the guy who was getting a considerable amount of cash and bring it back for all the students.

I knew what the program was and it’s close to home. When I had a chance to really look into it, I was really interested. It’s the way it changes peoples’ lives, the students. We’ve had them come from literally living under a bridge for four years and they come here and are as rough and as awful as you can be and by the time they leave a year later, they are walking out and they’re stepping into a job making $25 an hour as an apprentice.

Two years later you hear about them getting their journeymen’s papers and they’re making $40 an hour and they’re doing fantastic. Now it’s not every student but our students do do that. Our students leave here and they’re able to go to work and provide a better living for themselves and their family. That’s what this whole program is about.

Question: How did you tell them the news, that the government was viewing this as a failing program?

Eric Seppala: What they did is they played with the numbers. They pulled one year that was a bad year. They talked about there being 500 sexual assaults in one year. Well there’s 125 Job Corps sites, so that’s maybe 4 per center. We don’t have that many. We have very few.

You compare these numbers to where these kids come from and it’s so much safer.

That Transparency Report (from Department of Labor) was a bunch of garbage. The numbers in there were skewed. They did whatever they could to make it look worse.

A significant incident here, if someone knocks over a $5 plastic dispenser for napkins in the dining hall, that is a significant incident because it is government property and we have to report it.

JT Thomas: An adult student who is 18 or 19 they can leave the program, but if they leave without putting a pass in, that is an unauthorized exit and a significant incident report.

Question: Why do you think they (DOL) presented the report like they did? Are they against Job Corps?

Eric Seppala: If you look at the whole thing, with first of all them pausing the students from coming in. They stopped the background checks. They stopped them from coming in, and then the next thing that happened is this Transparency Report. Then the next week there are articles about how bad the Job Corps is.

They shut off our students. Then with every student we lose the cost-per-student goes up because we have the same staff in place.

Question: If Job Corps can continue through a court injunction or by Congress, how hard will it be to restart this program and bring students back?

JT Thomas: Every student going home is filling out a needs report. We’re getting all their contact information. If there is a restart, we have told them we will call them back. We will do that if we are given the opportunity.

Eric Seppala: Unless they get rid of the ban on the background checks, it wouldn’t matter. We would have students for up to a year but there wouldn’t be new students coming.

Question: Do you know how many graduates each year for all the Job Corps?

Eric Seppala: When we’re running almost full our numbers are close to 35,000 to 40,000.

JT Thomas:  Since the inception of Job Corps, there have been over 3 million graduates.

Question: This center would normally graduate how many?

JT Thomas: It depends on our on-board strength because they have been taking some things away. Last year we had about 150 to 160 on the list of students who graduated or who were graduating. It varies with that. We’ve had 200 to 300.

Question: Would you do two graduations a year?

JT Thomas: We used to but we haven’t since Covid.

Eric Seppala: It’s one and it’s in August. It’s open for students who graduated during that previous year and ones who are on center and who are going to. Last year we had 48 or 50 who walked in it. Once they leave here, I understand it’s hard for them to come back especially for our New York City students but they are welcome to come.

Question: Do you know how many Orleans County students you have?

JT Thomas: That varies. We have room for non-residential students. We have about 8 to 10.

Question: And those would be Orleans and Genesee?

JT Thomas: We have Niagara too.

Question: Where do most of the students come from?

Eric Seppala: Rochester is probably our biggest area. The way it’s broken down is Cassadaga (in Chautauqua County) they’ve been given Buffalo. Ours starts in Niagara County. So we have Niagara County, Orleans, Genesee and we go east to Wayne County. We also get students from New Jersey and New York City. We have partners that we work with that are recruiting down in New York City and New Jersey who are coming here for our trades. They try to connect them to a Job Corps with those trades.

Question: Do you feel like this is the end for Job Corps or it will work out?

Eric Seppala: We’re fighting for it.

JT Thomas: I’m optimistic. Schumer has been a supporter. Gillibrand has been a supporter. Tenney has been a supporter. All of our people have been supportive. Our community is supportive.

For our Congress, we just hope they continue the support.

Question: It must have been difficult to see that report, for how Job Corps was presented?

Eric Seppala: I was reading it and after the second paragraph I could tell it was lies and manipulation. The National Job Corps Association has put out a rebuttal to it.

They are trying not to be political because this is a program for everybody. It’s not a Democratic program or a Republican program. We want everybody to support it because it’s a great program.