What would you do if you received a notice that you could no longer live in your home and had two weeks to pack up and move out? What if that notice was accompanied by a two-week notice that you would lose your job? Or consider another possibility? What if you had two weeks to move, and those two weeks were when you were studying for your final examinations to earn your high school diploma?

Without other options, I would turn to family to see if I could find temporary housing, though the idea is in the range of fantasy for me. I’ve never had to plan a move in just two weeks.

The short notice is the reality for 270 students aged 16-24 in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. They were living and learning at Cascades Job Corps. The center provided free education and vocational training for low-income youth. Without warning, the Trump administration has ordered the shutdown of all Job Corps centers nationwide. All Students have been ordered to leave. All staff will be out of work by the end of the month. The initial order for all students to leave by Friday, June 6, was extended to June 13 - one more week to determine where to go and what comes next.

According to Kendra Watson, director of Cascades Job Corps, 55 students have nowhere to go. Some of them came to the center after leaving dangerous home situations.

Technically, the centers' staff have been ordered to stop work, but dedicated staff continue to try to find places for the students to go. They also had to secure vouchers so students could take planned GED tests through the local school district. Some students have made trips to the Department of Social and Health Services to apply for food stamps. The community has offered some support, but the suddenness of the closure and the impact of 55 youth and young adults suddenly homeless are beyond the resources of the small town.

Moving will mean that some students will miss their opportunity to take their GED tests. Many are forced to return to their families in other states, and it is uncertain whether or not they will miss their opportunity to earn their high school diploma.

Job Corps is a program that was begun in 1964 under the administration of Lyndon Johnson. It was a program based on earlier job programs directed at older youth and young adults to give them the training in academics and life skills to become productive members of society. The program is not inexpensive. Providing housing, food, GED classes, and job training costs money. It is, however, an investment in the future. The program is a fraction of the cost of maintaining prisons. While not all job corps members would end up in prison, many have credited the program with keeping them from dealing drugs and engaging in other criminal behavior.

Making changes and adjusting programs is not the aim of this administration, however. The goal seems to be to shut down government programs. Across the US, between 30,000 and 40,000 students will be displaced by the program next week. The Department of Labor has called the closures a “phased pause in operations.” The Job Corps Transparency, released by the administration in April, projected a $213 million deficit this year, with an average graduation rate for students at 38.6%. Like many other numbers and figures cited by the administration, the numbers appear fictional. They are not based on actual operating budgets or educational records. A lawsuit was filed on Tuesday by Job Corps contractors to block the closure of the program, which is making its way through the courts, but that process is too slow for the 55 students who will be homeless in Skagit County next Friday. It is too slow for the tens of thousands of other students nationwide who have depended on the program for assistance with launching their lives.

Governance involves more than deconstruction. Since the inauguration, the administration has demonstrated that it does not require knowledge or skill to destroy programs. Coming up with solutions requires much more than destruction, however. Real people are affected by the destruction. The Job Corps was created to address a real problem. Too many students were dropping out of high school. They were on the streets without skills and access to vocational training. The answer was a program that is far from perfect. There have been expenses that were higher than projected. There have been students who failed in the program. Some young adults reached the maximum age for the program and had to leave without a GED certificate and without job prospects. Closing the program does not address any of those problems.

Once the program has been shut down, the cost of restarting any program becomes very high quickly. Buildings that are not maintained deteriorate. The students performed much of the building maintenance in the Job Corps camps. The administration has not announced any plan for the campuses that have served the program. Many of them are located in beautiful, remote settings with unique structures that do not have other uses. Staff who are laid off are forced to seek other employment. The cost of recruiting and training new staff will exceed the money a temporary closure could save.

Inhuman cruelty on a massive scale, without any plan to address the problems the program was designed to address, is beyond irresponsible. It represents governmental officials' failure to perform their duties. Whatever degree of failure that was a part of the Job Corps program pales in comparison to the massive failures of the current administration to perform the work of governance.

The budget bill that is currently stalled in the US Senate does not provide any meaningful programs for US citizens. Tax cuts for the rich do not address the needs of the people. The proposal is to fund those tax cuts with increased borrowing. Like the closing of Job Corps camps, the administration plans to pass on as many problems as possible to future administrations while enriching a few people at the top. It is not government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Let us pray that it has not perished from this earth.