Changing lives, one trade at a time

By Kim Hilsenbeck.

Drive along Highway 21 near the airport in San Marcos and you’ll see what looks like a military base. But the sign on the gate says Gary Job Corps.

What goes on behind those gates?

A tour of the sprawling 80-acre campus reveals a job training site that began when Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) was president. Randolph Goodman, the facility’s community relations director, leads the way.

“The facility sits on a former Air Force Base,” he said.

After the Korean War, Goodman continued, the base was going to turn back into cow pasture.

“The [San Marcos] city fathers went to talk to the favorite son, who also happened to be President of the United States,” he said, referring to LBJ.

With Johnson’s blessing, it became the first Job Corp site in the country.

“This site was named after the first fatality in WWII, and his name was A. Edward Gary,” Goodman explained. “He died on Dec. 7 in Manila [in the Philippines].”

Today, there are 125 locations, four of which are in Texas. All Job Corps sites operate under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Labor.

While the Forestry Department operates some, many others are run by private contractors. The San Marcos site, according to Goodman, is run by Management and Training Corporation out of Centerville, Utah.

The Gary Job Corps student boyd is about 60 percent male, 40 percent female.

Goodman pointed out the various trades taught at Gary Job Corp, including material handling (fork lifts), carpentry and electrical, nursing aide, pharmacy assistant, medical assistant, medical billing and coding, welding … the list goes on. 

As for the rest of the buildings, “It’s like a community; we take care of everything,” he said.

The campus has a dining hall, laundry facilities, a movie theater, an activity center, student dorms, family housing, a library, a medical center, a high school online program and a high school certification program. Students participate in boxing, racquetball, art, basketball and more for recreation.

The facility also offers English Language Learning (ELL) classes. Goodman said students come to Gary Job Corps from other countries, including some that are Spanish-speaking, but also Africa and Southeast Asia.

How does a student get into a Job Corps training program? Is it the last chance someone has before going to jail? 

“In the ’60s, that’s what it kind of was,” Goodman said. “It was an ‘and/or situation’. But in the last 15-20 years, it’s been [for those who are] socially and economically at risk.”

“We’re a results-oriented program,” he continued, “so people do have to go to work.”

Students who opt for Job Corps training must meet the eligibility requirements – typically low-income. They can then decide which program of study is best. The various Job Corps centers across the country offer different trades.

Why the fences around the perimeter? Are students not allowed to leave?

Goodman reiterates what’s on the Job Corps website: the program is voluntary and students may leave at any time.

But walking away from job skills training, room and board, and a chance to have a better life generally means most students stick around. The center’s graduation rate is about 80-85 percent, Goodman said.

During the stop at one of the machinist buildings, everything was in its place.

Standing in a group in the middle of the shop floor, surrounded by a dozen or so machines, are some of the students and instructors in the machinist program.

In the group of young men are eight students in the program –  Jacob, Cory, Jason, Michael, Frank,  Tyler and Matthew. They hail from Corpus Christi, Victoria, San Antonio, Austin, Killeen, Africa, Waco and Cypress.

Instructors Guy Ben-Moshe of Buda and Henry Singleton of Round Rock are both military veterans; Ben-Moshe with the Israeli Army, Singleton with the U.S. Army. Both have been teaching here for about four years.

 The young men, who have been at the facility anywhere from a few weeks to three months, talk about how they ended up here.

 A quiet young man named Matthew said, “I felt like there was nothing at the end of my road, I thought it was just a dead end. No matter what I would do, everything would turn out bad.”

 Though he didn’t want to talk about those things, he said he’s now on a better path and making better decisions.

 Michael said his story is not much different from Matthew’s.

 “I was sitting around at home, out looking for job, but it wasn’t really working out too well,” he said. “I’d already heard about Job Corp from [a friend who came here] and I said, ‘you gotta get up and do something’ and I came here.”

Michael wants to transfer to the TSTC college program where he says he will eventually “work on trains and stuff like that.”

What does he like most about being here?

“You work at your own pace,” he said. “The responsibility is yours to actually progress through here. If you’re not taking the time to actually do what you have to do, you’re not going to get anywhere so you actually have to step up and show that you want this to actually get what you want.”

Cory, whose father was a machinist, has always wanted to follow in those footsteps. He heard about Job Corps through the grapevine and decided to check it out.

What’s next for him?

“I have a five-year goal to be working in Washington at Boeing,” he said.

Ambitious, maybe, but Cory’s chances of success are good. About 90 percent of Job Corps graduates across the country last year found work, enrolled in higher education programs, or enlisted in the military.

The young men used words such as opportunity, chances, change, excellence and leadership to describe Gary Job Corps. They described their instructors as wonderful.

“We probably got the best instructors,” said one young man.

Ben-Moshe explained how Gary Job Corps is a vocational facility.

“[Machining] used to be in all the high schools in America. The budget for this trade, and all trades, has been pushed aside and the money has gone to computers,” he said. “We all can’t be computer geeks.”

He said in the 1970s, 30 percent of Americans worked in manufacturing.

“Today we’re down to 10 percent,” Ben-Moshe said. “Not all of the work went to China and Mexico because it’s cheaper. We did ourselves in by being so smart and went to robotics.”

Only six Job Corps around the country have machine shop trade because it is an expensive endeavor. Machines, particularly those that use computer technology, cost anywhere from $20,000 to nearly a million dollars.

“It costs money to invest in this program, but what we get out of it is the next generation of machinists,” Ben-Moshe said.

The students go through a three-phase course, A, B and C, he said. They begin on the manual machines and work up to the computers.

“‘A’ class is like learner’s permit.  You should know how to read blueprints, use tools, use shop math, know shop safety,” he said.

 The B and C levels, which are more advanced and technical, are taught by instructors like Saysamone Manyseng from Vietnam, who is a Job Corps graduate.

Ben-Moshe talked about the employability of students coming out of Gary Job Corps.

“We have two tracks – hard skills, those are skills you need on the job,” he said.

He explained the soft skills.

“[It’s] the employability – come in uniform, show up every day on time, [when] you’re on the clock your time belongs to the boss not to your cell phone, and no chit-chat.”

He continued, “You learn at your own pace here because some come without structure and until they get on board and start structuring their lives here, they’ll be slower than the other ones who come here and get the work ethic real quick.”

Singleton said transitioning to Gary Job Corps after the military was comfortable.

“[We teach] leadership, dependability, a good work ethic,” Singleton said.

In addition, once he found out all the skills the students learn, he said, “I really thought it was the best thing nobody had heard of.”