BETHLEHEM — Some 250 students enrolled in workforce training programs at the Glenmont Job Corps will lose their vocational instruction and, in many cases, their housing, after the Department of Labor announced last week that it would wind down the decades-old antipoverty initiative.
Center director Tracy Battle said he was first informed of the closure in an email late Thursday afternoon. The message came from Adams and Associates, the contractor the Labor Department uses to operate the Glenmont facility and many of the other 99 Job Corps centers around the country. Battle said the missive included a copy of the letter terminating the contract between Adams and the Labor Department and instructed him to begin moving students out of the residential dormitories beginning on Monday.
Battle said 98% of the students at the River Road facility, who range in age from 16 to 24, live on the campus and many of them come from dangerous or impoverished circumstances from across the state. “They pretty much gave us a week to get all of our young people home safe,” Battle said…