Learning to Face Work and Layoffs : Unemployment: Cuts in state funds set back hopes of independence for a crew of groundskeepers.

State budget cuts mean more than just numbers on a page to George Schwenk, one of eight people with mental disabilities who began working with the grounds maintenance crew at Pierce College this summer, only to be laid off a month later.

For Schwenk, 38, the budget-triggered layoff was a setback in his quest for an independent adult life, a quest that began more than seven years ago when he left home to participate in a state-funded work training program.

Schwenk was one of the most recent victims of a wave of state budget cuts that hit Pierce College, beginning last spring and continuing through the summer.

“We were sad,” Schwenk said Wednesday, reflecting on his and his fellow workers’ reaction to losing their full-time jobs.

Since then, he has been trying to keep busy--walking, riding his bike and wandering in a shopping mall, imagining what it would be like to work there.

Even with the training program’s assistance, finding new work “takes time” for those with disabilities, Schwenk said. “You have to be honest with yourself. You don’t want to get into a job you can’t handle and have to leave.”

The day after the men and women stopped working at Pierce, their thorough raking, sweeping and trash pickup were already missed, said Bernardine Pregerson, a microbiology instructor.

“It’s very demoralizing on campus now to see the filth,” she said.

The uncertainty introduced by the budget undulations put Schwenk and other clients of Work Training Programs Inc. of Chatsworth on an emotional roller coaster. The agency, funded by the state Department of Rehabilitation and the Department of Developmental Services, guides participants through a progression of training, working and living situations aimed at achieving independence from their families and from government support.

A year ago, eight clients of the Chatsworth agency were hired by Pierce under a 20-week contract, which campus officials said was renewed in February. Then they were told in April that their contract would be canceled in 30 days, as part of an effort to make up a nearly $1-million deficit faced by the Los Angeles Community College District, which administers Pierce and eight other community colleges.

In June, the college district Board of Trustees approved another 20-week contract. Two of the original group of eight, who quit lower-paying jobs to return to Pierce, were joined by Schwenk and five other new workers, said Gail Peters, manager of Work Training Programs.

But days before they were to start in July, Peters received a call from Pierce College President Dan Means saying the financial picture had changed again: $1.2 million had been sliced from the Pierce College budget by the district, partly because state lottery revenues were lower than expected.

“The timing was terrible,” Means said. “We had to let them go again, which I was sorry to see. . . . The cuts were just so large; it was a big hunk of money. And we had to protect the educational programs.”

The crew had done such a good job and the college felt so responsible for giving them false hope that the Pierce College Foundation agreed to support the program for a month, at a cost of about $5,700, Means said.

College administrators suggested that the workers could continue helping out their maintenance crews as unpaid volunteers until they found other jobs.

Peters rejected that as inappropriate, but she took the blame for misleading college administrators into thinking that was an option by mentioning volunteer programs her agency coordinates for other, less-skilled workers.

“It’s not normal for an able-bodied, hard-working adult to go to work some place for no pay and our program is developed around normalization with a capital N,” she said.

Schwenk is involved in the segment of the program for the most independent participants. He lives in a Canoga Park apartment with another program client. Like others among the Work Training Programs clients, he cannot read, but in the past has managed to work in areas such as maintenance, factory assembly and gardening.

Program instructors emphasize saving for unexpected unemployment, which Peters said is common. All eight of the men and women laid off from Pierce also receive Social Security disability payments of up to $630 a month.

None of the eight has a new job yet, Peters said. She is optimistic, however, that she will be able to find employment for all of them within a month.

“This group here is a group that could handle any kind of job,” she said.