Job Corps center in Royal to close

Low-performance rating for past 5 years noted by official

The U.S. Department of Labor has officially announced the impending closure of the Ouachita Job Corps program, which has operated for 52 years in the Hot Springs area.

The national director of the Forest Service Job Corps program, Tina Terrell, spoke to employees Thursday morning at the center, which is located in Royal west of Hot Springs, about the process of closing it. She spoke to students Thursday afternoon.

The center was considered for closure in August and placed on the endangered list, primarily due to low attendance and graduation rates. The residential program helps students learn a trade and, if necessary, obtain a high school or GED diploma.

Terrell said closure decisions are based on the Labor Department's complex labor exchange performance measurement system. She said Ouachita center has been rated as a low-performing program for the past five years.

Ouachita center Director Robert G. Fausti has previously said the center struggled to recover from a suspension of enrollment at all Job Corps centers in early 2013. He told The Sentinel-Record in March that the center is a "significant contributor" to the local economy with 85 students enrolled, 50 employees and an overall annual budget of $4.8 million.

"This is something we've been working on for, oh, probably close to a year now," U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said in an interview Wednesday. "I went out and visited the Job Corps and toured it and met the new director that had been put in place and was kind of impressed with some of the progress that they had made out there."

Terrell said Thursday that "this center is closed" from the administration's standpoint. "My job is to implement a decision, which is the center is closed. I don't make the decision. The secretary of labor made the decision."

She said a human resources team will work on-site with employees to assist them with job placement. A liaison will assist Fausti with the process.

"We first have to deal with the students, because that is why we are here," Terrell said. "We have to put a plan together of how we transfer the students. Then we have to deal with the employees because we are going to work to try to help them find other jobs, whether it's other jobs in the Job Corps program or National Forest Service or other federal agencies."

Some employees were frustrated with Terrell's inability to provide them with answers to questions about some of their concerns, such as the time frame for the closure. Terrell said she was unable to answer some questions because the department has not worked out all of the details.

Employees asked why the Cass Job Corps center in Ozark would remain open instead of the Ouachita program. Terrell reportedly said Cass would improve by the end of the year.

"It was very evident to many of the staff that she has never supported Ouachita," one employee said.

Cass and Ouachita are two of only three Job Corps programs in Arkansas. The third is located in Little Rock.

"Obviously I don't like it because I think the folks that work there and the folks at the Forest Service have done a good job with what they've got," Westerman said. "Part of the problem is that they're measured on the number of students that they have, but it's the Department of Labor's responsibility to send them students. So they're going to close down the Job Corps for so-called poor performance because of the number of students that go through and it's the Department of Labor's responsibility to supply those students. It's something the Department of Labor has contracted out to a group in Atlanta."

Fausti said one performance factor was the number of "negative terminations" at Ouachita when the center removed students from the program because of unacceptable behavior, such as criminal activity, drug use or physical threats to other students.

"I think they ought to give them more time to make the improvements that they had already demonstrated they were making," Westerman said. "You know one of the reasons I like this Job Corps is because it trains people for vocational and technical jobs and it's something that I hear employers are needing, so we're taking that out of the equation now."

Terrell recently supervised the closure of the Treasure Lake Job Corps center in Oklahoma. The process took about eight months.

Westerman joined with other members of Arkansas' congressional delegation in April to request that U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez halt further actions to close the Ouachita center.

"I've had meetings. My staff has worked on it. Other members of the delegation have worked on it," Westerman said. "The Department of Labor, just basically, from what I've seen, does what they want to do. They'll go through the motions to make sure they get all the boxes checked off, but I think they knew they were going to close this before they ever had meetings with us.

"We're going to keep working on it, but I think the Department of Labor's made up their mind, and I think they're bent on closing this one and I'm worried about the one at Cass as well."

Employees have vowed to continue searching for a mechanism to keep the center open.

"We are still fighting the fight," an employee said. "We are here for students. Many of us have families here and cannot relocate. It is very heartbreaking that we have made improvement only to be told that we are going to be closed effective July 1."

The Labor Department restructured in 2010 and removed the budgeting and procurement operations from the Office of Job Corps. The operations were placed within separate divisions of the Employment and Training Administration.

The program experienced a budget shortfall of more than $30 million the following year. The enrollment suspension was enacted in 2013 when more than 70 members of Congress from both parties requested explanations for a shortfall of about $61.5 million. Terrell officially began as director the following February.

Information for this article was contributed by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Metro on 07/01/2016

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