Recent announcements regarding Tongue Point Job Corps Center have stirred turmoil among students. Photo by Lukas Prinos.

A hearing on a temporary restraining order is slated for June 17

As a residential advisor at Astoria’s Tongue Point Job Corps Center, Taylor Ford is used to working with students on a daily basis — but not quite two weeks ago, he watched a cloud of uncertainty settle over campus in a way he’d never seen before.

On May 29, the center — which employs roughly 200 staff and hosts more than 300 students annually — received word that it would be one of 99 Job Corps sites across the country slated to close by the end of the month. If carried out, that closure would have an impact locally, leaving an estimated 20 students and 14 staff members and their families without housing.

Initially, students were due to be transitioned off campus by June 6. That changed last week, when a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order blocking the closures nationwide. For now, Job Corps centers are back to normal operations, according to a spokesperson with Management and Training Corporation, the contractor that oversees Tongue Point.

The news comes as a sigh of relief for staff and students, but it’s not the end of the story.

A full hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for June 17. In the meantime, many students have already moved off campus — and others who remain are making plans for what they’ll do if the temporary restraining order doesn’t hold.

In two short weeks, Ford has seen the toll that uncertainty has had. Some students, he said, have come into his office and broken down, overwhelmed by a mix of emotions. One, he said, even sold all their belongings to save up extra money in case they had to leave campus and became homeless.

“A lot of these students don’t entirely know what to do, or know where they’re going to go after this,” Ford said. “And I’ve extended my support, and I’ve tried to direct them places that they can go to, but it’s just really heartbreaking to watch.”

Changing Plans

In some ways, Jose Fish is lucky: unlike many students, he was able to finish his program in the cement trade before Tongue Point found itself on the chopping block.

His next steps, however, could look quite different from how he had envisioned them.

Fish had hoped to start working an on-campus kitchen job at Tongue Point so he could save up enough money to buy a car and move to Seattle for a local cement masons union job. If the center were to close, those plans would go out the window. Now, he’s looking for a job in Astoria and working with Clatsop Community Action to identify housing resources. He’s uncertain exactly what the future holds — but he said moving back home with his family isn’t an option.

“It kind of sucks,” he said. “I can’t really save the money while I wait to hear back on that application.”

Fish came to Tongue Point around nine months ago to escape what he described as a series of dead-end jobs after leaving a position as a timber sales prep technician due to major mental health challenges. The program, he said, has given him a sense of structure, stability and support that he didn’t have before.

“Before, because of my home life, I would just get so stressed that I just couldn’t really deal with it,” Fish said. “But now it’s kind of like that stress is off my back, and I have time to just focus on my work.”

Fish is sticking around, but he’s already watched a couple of friends leave campus, without plans to come back until they get a clearer answer on whether the center will remain open.

“It’s just unfortunate because some people, I know they were planning on leaving, but now they’re staying and they just wanted to ride out the wave and see how far it takes them,” he said. “And some people … they just wanted to make sure that if something fell through with Job Corps that they would have — even if it’s not like the best place that they want to go back to — assured housing.”

Just out of reach

Kainalu Hikalea was on a work base on the Mississippi River when news broke of the center’s impending closure, but he and his peers in the seamanship program had no cell service. He still remembers the flood of texts he received when his group re-entered range, and the frustration that accompanied them.

“The worst part is they promised us about a month to pack up,” he said. “When I landed my plane and got here, that month turned to a week.”

Hikalea had already received his Ordinary Seaman certification, and was about 80% of the way to earning an Able Seaman certification when the closure was announced. All he had left to do was complete testing — but because he was several states away when the most recent class started, he wasn’t able to get it done.

“They called me and about six others back very early from that work base, and because I came a day late, I could not take the (Able Seaman) class,” he said.

Hikalea had been planning on continuing through another six months of engineering courses, but with the uncertainty of the temporary restraining order, he said he’s unsure whether he’ll have another chance to get certified or to continue his studies. At this point, he said he’ll probably move home to Hawaii if the center closes so he can save up enough money to come back to Astoria to get a job and housing.

Losing home

Jena Cole started out in the dental program at Tongue Point just two months ago. It’s not a long time, she said — certainly not long enough to finish her trade — but it’s long enough to feel the impact of a potential closure.

“It’s enough to get settled and get attached and be very disappointed about what’s happening,” Cole said.

Before coming to Tongue Point, Cole was working as an in-home caregiver in southern California. After having to leave her housing situation, she spent a few months in a shelter. While Tongue Point isn’t perfect, she said the stability of having predictable housing, meals and community has helped her get out of “survival mode” and start to make a plan for her future.

Cole’s goal has been to go to community college to study psychology. She’d been planning on enrolling at Clatsop Community College through Job Corps after finishing her program — but if the center closes, she’ll need to pivot. Her plan in the short-term is to live with a friend’s family if she has to move off campus, and from there, potentially start applying for scholarships or FAFSA to find an alternative route to college.

But for Cole, losing Tongue Point would mean more than just losing a stepping stone to an associate’s degree.

It would mean losing a home.

“It kind of outrages me when I hear people saying stuff like, ‘We need to shut down Job Corps because it’s not safe,’” Cole said. “I’ve never not felt safe here. I feel secure. This is my home. And you know, to take that away from us is to take away what is home to a lot of us. And it’s not just a home, it’s like a leap into our future. ”