OXNARD : Officials Seek to End Job Program Dispute

Oxnard school officials and representatives of a local jobs agency have agreed to try to resolve a contract dispute that is threatening a job-training program used by about 150 welfare recipients.

After a presentation Wednesday by the Oxnard-based Job Training Policy Council to the Oxnard Union High School District board, school trustees decided to send Supt. Bill Studt and Assistant Supt. Robert Brown to meet with officials from the jobs agency.

School officials and council representatives hope to resolve a dispute about how the jobs council pays the district for a program designed to get people off welfare and into the work force.

Called Greater Avenues in Independence, the program offers adult welfare recipients courses in English as a Second Language, high school equivalency and remedial math and reading. The Oxnard adult school has offered these courses for about seven years.

The federally funded jobs council pays about $83,000 to the Oxnard district each year to run the program. In addition, the district receives county and state funding, but those payments are contingent upon the school district first having a contract with the jobs council, officials said.

School officials became angry when the jobs council proposed this year to change its contract to pay the district only half the $83,000 up front, withholding the rest until the yearlong program is complete.

“I can’t see that we can do business this way,” district trustee Jean B. Daily said at Wednesday’s meeting. “We never have.”

But Roberto De La Selva of the jobs council told the board his agency was only trying to protect itself financially. This year marks the first time the council became responsible for accounting to the federal government on how the GAIN funds are spent.

Withholding a portion of the funds would give the jobs council time to audit how the district spent the first part of that year’s payment, De La Selva said.