Mt. Laguna Selected as Site for Job Corps Center

A second Job Corps center will open in San Diego County, federal officials announced Friday.

The facility to train economically disadvantaged youth will be at a former Air Force communications station on Mt. Laguna in the Cleveland National Forest.

U. S. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole announced the Mt. Laguna site selection along with other new centers for Gadsden, Ala.; Minot, N.D., and Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado) hailed Dole’s choice of the Laguna site, pointing out that, if the facility had been in operation during the recent Cleveland National Forest fire, which burned 4,600 acres in the area, “two strike teams would have been available without delay” to fight the blaze.

The Mt. Laguna Job Corps Center will accommodate 250 to 300 men and women from 16 to 21 years old in residential units, giving them intensive basic educational instruction and skills training in fields in which jobs are available, Dole said.

Mary Silva, Job Corps chief of program management and review, said Friday that it is too early to estimate the cost of redeveloping the isolated Air Force site into housing and classrooms. The existing buildings have been vacant for several years, she said.

Job Corps programs are designed to train participants for jobs in the area for which there is a demand, Silva said. The facility will not open for several years, she added.

The county’s first Job Corps center, located at a former helicopter base in Imperial Beach, opened in 1979 and has trained thousands of Southern California youths in skills such as masonry, bricklaying, culinary arts, welding, business office skills and electronics assembly.

Training at the 107 Job Corps centers nationwide is aimed primarily at youths who are doing poorly in school or who have dropped out without obtaining necessary job skills.

Trainees receive room and board, books, supplies and a small living allowance, part of which is paid after the participant has successfully completed the course. Job Corps members may stay in the program for up to two years, but the average student leaves after eight months.