The Missoulian

by Judy Martz

As students on Montana’s three Job Corps campuses watched the recent floodwaters rise around their communities, they saw an opportunity to put their career preparation to work helping their neighbors.

From the Anaconda Job Corps Center, 37 students and seven staff members volunteered their services to flood response and recovery. The students, enrolled in the center’s heavy equipment mechanics, maintenance, bricklaying and painting programs, helped fill 5,000 sandbags to support other local responders.

The Trapper Creek Job Corps Center sent 16 welding-student volunteers and one staff member to fill 1,200 sandbags and help shore up a levee in Sula, efforts that one resident said “makes us feel a little bit more secure.”

When the Arlee community called for volunteers during June 8 flooding, nine students and two staff members from the Kicking Horse Job Corps Center answered the call. They spent seven hours filling sandbags, distributing 5,000 sandbags to the Arlee Volunteer Fire Department and 10,000 more to the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes’ Fire Control Department.

All three centers also sent student and staff volunteers to Arizona to help stop the large fires that spread across that state. Jeremy Tate, 18, of Deer Lodge, an equipment repair trainee at Kicking Horse Job Corps Center, was one of the volunteer respondents working in Arizona.

The incident was “out of control, so dry and hot:’ Tate said, adding that he saw “some houses go down, and it was pretty intense building a fire line, maintaining the fire line and seeing people running around being evacuated from their homes.”

This display of volunteerism and community support in a time of crisis is further proof that Job Corps is a valuable investment – particularly in Montana, where three operating centers have produced more than 4,800 working alumni scattered throughout the state.

Job Corps gives students, who may have few other opportunities, the chance to learn the necessary job skills they are using now to help their neighbors and others across the country. The hands-on training Job Corps provides to out-of-school, out-of-work youth gives them the tools they need to be successful and financially independent.

Montanans are fortunate that Sen. Max Baucus, Sen. Jon Tester and Rep. Denny Rehberg have long supported Job Corps as an important investment in training at-risk youth for well-paying private-sector jobs. The centers annually generate $50 million in economic activity for local businesses, directly and indirectly supporting more than 600 Montana jobs.

Across our state, one of five Montana youth drops out of high school, which can cost Montana taxpayers and the Montana economy as much as $1.5 billion a year, according to studies. The Job Corps program is one of the most cost-effective ways to help Montana taxpayers recover these costs. It helps dropouts to complete high school, start careers, become working citizens and – as they have proven again recently – give back to others. 

Judy Martz is a former governor of Montana.