GARY JOB CORPS
Gary Job Corps often hosts a quarterly community meeting to thank its local partners as well as inform them about what is going on at the center. GJC Center Director Norman Turner discussed his recent trip to Washington D.C. for the Job Corps Association Conference as well as the center’s goal of markedly increasing enrollment and the ways in which they planned to achieve that.
Turner said the trip to the nation’s capital was an opportunity to inform elected officials of all the programs and achievements occurring at the center, so that they might keep those in mind when making decisions that could impact the funding that it receives, as it is a federally funded program. “We left them with packets of information about … the local impact of the Gary Job Corps Center to this area as a whole, with having 500 plus staff [and being] contracted to have 1,400 students,” Turner said. “Those are a lot of human beings that pour into our local [community] and then even outside of this area. So my goal during that meeting was just to remind them of the impact that the Gary Job Corps Center has for this area and the areas outside.”
While there, Turner said he was also able to speak with the other center directors.
“We realized pretty quickly that the same things they’re dealing with — we’re dealing with. We’ve seen an uptick in mental health issues on our Job Corps Center. I’m pretty sure our law enforcement friends are very aware of that,” Turner said. “As … our law enforcement friends pivot to manage mental health issues, we too have to pivot to manage those. … We have plenty of CMACs, center mental health consultants, that support our students while they’re there, but we’re not a treatment facility, as I tell my students and anybody we come into contact with; that’s just not who we are. We have those services, but not to the point of something that is really drastic; that is outside of our scope.”
Turner said the center is now ranked number 25 out of the 119 job corps centers.
“And that’s a big deal,” he said.
With that high ranking, the center still needs to increase its student population, which is currently 885; GJC is contracted to have 1,400 students.
“We do not have the bed capacity currently to house 1,400 students on campus. We know that, so we’re going to have to expand into our non-res[idential] opportunities,” Turner said, adding that possibly there would be opportunities to partner with local high school CTE programs. “Our goal right now is, by July, we will be at 1,180 [students]. … If I can get us to 1,180 students by July, we will have essentially filled all the beds that we have. And then we’ll have to get creative, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
Turner said the center recently received a letter informing them of the intent to extend the contract with Equus through Sept. 30.
“Then at that point, the government has to make a decision on, ultimately, what they want to do,” he said.
Turner ended by thanking the community partners for providing his students work-based learning opportunities.
Norman Turner
