SAVANNAH, Ga. () – The federal government is temporarily shutting down operations at almost 100 Job Corps centers nationwide, including the Brunswick site that assists students from the Coastal Georgia area.
On Wednesday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the Department of Labor’s attempt to shut down Job Corps centers.
In Brunswick, the news has left more than 200 students and 100 staff members in limbo. Some students even protested the attempted federal move.
spoke with Brunswick’s Job Corps director, Mary Geoghegan, and she said the unexpected news has rattled many on campus.
“We teach them leadership and how to advocate for themselves,” she said. “So, they took that seriously. We’ve been working right alongside them.”
She said more than a dozen students were on track to finish, a milestone that would launch them into the workforce.
“I’ve been thinking about this one young man, he wants to join the military but still needs to complete high school,” Geoghegan shared. “He never had the chance to do that. If we can help him achieve this, he can enter the military. Now he is uncertain about where he will live, but we won’t let him leave without ensuring he has a safe place to go. That’s a promise.”
Over the past week, staff members have been working hard to find support for the students. Job Corps is a government-funded initiative that offers free career training to low-income students aged 16-24. A significant number of participants depend on housing and meals provided by the program as they work towards achieving their goals.
“One of my students said to me, is there any place you can refer me? is there something else like job corps? and I said, no, there really isn’t,” Geoghegan said.
Staff members are in the same boat, and they are unclear what is next.
“It’s about a $19 million economic impact that we’re talking about here, either paying our staff or subcontractors and vendors in the area right,” she said. “So, we have a meeting actually tomorrow with the rapid response team through the workforce system. I’ve also spoken with Sharon Morgan, who’s the executive director of the Coastal Workforce Development board.”
Geoghegan also responded to the Department of Labor’s reasons for the pause: an alarming number of serious incidents, poor student outcomes, and unsustainable costs. She said the center ranks number ten out of more than 100 active locations.
“Looking at Brunswick’s historic over the last two years, we at the average about 12% of all the reporting that we do,” she told . “I don’t think that’s out of line with any other place, in fact, is probably much safer than most places.”
She continued, “the budget has been the same for our center since 2018. we’ve been level funded. right. so, yeah, it’s not that its poor budget management is that we didn’t get any cost to deal with the inflationary cost that has happened.”
The judge has ordered a hearing for later this month.
