Astoria city leaders will hold community meeting to discuss issues as local Job Corps center prepares to close
ASTORIA, Ore. — An estimated 20 students at the Tongue Point Job Corps Center in Astoria and 18 staff members and their families could lose their housing by the end of the week.
The center is due to shut down at the end of June s the Trump Administration looks to eliminate the nationwide Job Corps program that provides training for low-income youth. But student dormitories at Tongue Point as well as employee housing will close Friday as the center transitions toward that closure.
Now, community leaders in Clatsop County are scrambling to respond.
Tongue Point currently serves more than 300 students and employs around 165 staff members. The students set to be impacted by the Friday transition are those who do not have stable housing to return to when the dormitories close.
Elected officials say they have contacted legislators and federal representatives to put pressure on the Trump administration to keep Tongue Point open. But they are also considering ways they can provide more immediate help to staff and students — specifically, housing — as the Friday deadline looms.
The Astoria City Council plans to hold a community meeting at 6 p.m. on Wednesday to discuss the issues facing Tongue Point.
“The callous, abrupt and inhumane loss of housing to these young students and the families that live at Tongue Point … is a puzzle that needs to be solved quickly,” Mayor Sean Fitzpatrick told KMUN.
“It is my sincere hope that the community leaves (the meeting) with a better understanding of the impact that the closure of Job Corps will have on our community, and what they might be able to do to help mitigate the impacts of the inexplicable closing of Tongue Point Job Corps,” he added.
An ongoing, fluid issue
Others in the community are already looking for ways to help.
Paul Davidson, the pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Astoria, sent out a call for help, asking people to respond if they had housing or other resources to offer.
“While many of these students are able to return to their pre-Job Corps homes, there are many that are unable because it would put them in danger or their pre-Job Corps home no longer exists,” he wrote in a recent email to community members.
Bill Van Nostran, a retired Presbyterian pastor and board member for the lower-income housing project the Copeland Commons in downtown Astoria, is part of the same pastors group as Davidson. They are also exploring where a temporary shelter could be established, possibly at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds or the Astoria Armory.
“I’m not trying to make this political,” Van Nostran said. “I’m just trying to get the word out. …I think it would behoove all of us, as neighbors and friends, to embrace these students who have nothing and no opportunity.”
Clatsop County Manager Don Bohn told KMUN that the county is talking with governmental and nonprofit partners to come up with a strategy to address the issues facing Tongue Point students and employees.
He said they are still trying to understand who all will need assistance.
“We’re working through some contingencies and looking at different options and different vacancies to help with the housing issue — that just seems to be the priority issue coming out of the gate,” he said, adding, “This is ongoing and it’s very fluid, as you can imagine.”
Management and Training Corporation, the contractor that oversees Tongue Point as well as more than a dozen other centers, is working closely with city, state and federal officials, according to Emily Lawhead, a spokesperson for the company.
“Right now, our team is helping our students and staff develop a plan to find employment, other training programs, housing and transportation, among others,” she told KMUN in an email.
They are also providing students with access to counseling services to help with any complex emotions they are feeling in response to the closure.
“We are committed to supporting our students and staff through this difficult time and are working hard to ensure a smooth transition,” Lawhead wrote.
‘It just doesn’t make any sense’
To Nate Bowman the whole situation is shocking.
Bowman is the director of welding optimization and education for Central Welding Supply Company. He works with high schools, community colleges, trade schools and others on welding training and has been involved with Tongue Point students and instructors for around five years.
“It didn’t enter my mind that a trade school would be something that would get cut, especially given that group — you know, that base of the party — is a lot of blue collar people or people that work in manufacturing,” Bowman said.
He thinks of what President Donald Trump said on the campaign trail and during his first months in office about the need to onshore American manufacturing and support skilled tradespeople.
“Like you would think that in order to have people to fill your jobs, you’re going to have to train them,” Bowman said. “They’re going to have to come from someplace … It just doesn’t make any sense why you would cut a program like this.”
“Yet they’re closing down one of the biggest networks of trade schools in the country,” he added. “And this is U.S.-funded. Job Corps is such a great bridge between maybe not having a pathway and finding a career.”
Bowman feels a lot of kinship with the Tongue Point students. He started out in an inner city high school welding program with similar classmates and teachers.
“I’ve been able to find a lot of success in the industry, coming out of a program like that,” he said. “Getting that training early on, that’s such an important thing.”
He also wonders what will happen to the Tongue Point instructors — like welding instructor Scotty Symonds.
“Scotty has lunch with the (welding) students in the chow hall every day… sits at the table with them,” Bowman said. “I just think about him and the other staff there. Like, where are they going to work? … What’s that staff going to do after this is gone?”
The National Job Corps Association filed a lawsuit on behalf of all Job Corps operators against the Department of Labor on Tuesday to block the closure of the Job Corps program. In the suit and motion for a temporary restraining order, they claim eliminating the program is illegal, violating federal law as well as the Department of Labor’s own regulations, and that the action is “fundamentally irrational.”
“Shuttering Job Corps will have disastrous, irreparable consequences,” the lawsuit states, “including displacing tens of thousands of vulnerable young people, destroying companies that have long operated Job Corps centers in reliance on the government’s support for the program, and forcing mass layoffs of workers who support the program.”