The Addison County center is one of about 100 across the country that will end operations. In a statement announcing the closures, the U.S. Department of Labor said the programs operated at a $140 million deficit in 2024 and are “no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve.”
That won’t help the 150 at Northlands, which offers hands-on training in building trades, culinary arts, auto body repair and more. The program provides housing, meals and medical care at no cost to students or their families. It caters to low-income young adults ages 16 to 24.
“A lot of our students are unsuccessful in traditional school or need to support their families,” Michael Dooley, the center’s director, told Seven Days.
On Tuesday, a coalition of job corps program providers filed suit against President Donald Trump’s administration, alleging the shutdown was illegal, Bloomberg Law reported.
“Shuttering Job Corps will have disastrous, irreparable consequences, including displacing tens of thousands of vulnerable young people, destroying companies that have long operated Job Corps centers in reliance on the Government’s support for the program, and forcing mass layoffs of workers who support the program,” the complaint said.
The nationwide job corps program has been in operation since the 1960s. The Vergennes center opened in 1979 on the state-owned site of the Weeks School, a former reform school.
Vergennes city manager Ron Redmond said Northlands has been an important part of the community, employing approximately 120 people. Last year, welding students from the program teamed up with a Vermont artist to create a bus stop in town.
Northlands is operated by Education & Training Resources, a Kentucky-based company running job corps centers across the country. Northlands costs around $9 to $10 million to operate each year, according to Dooley. He accused federal officials of twisting and cherry-picking statistics to make the program look unsuccessful. The feds cited 14,913 “serious incidents” at programs across the country in 2023 as one reason for shuttering the program. But Dooley said leadership must report incidents that can include something as minor as a fender-bender on the property or inclement weather.
Most students at Northlands are from Vermont or New York, but at least some are noncitizens, according to Jill Martin Diaz, executive director of the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project.
“These students are already navigating heightened legal vulnerability — and many have no safe home to return to or support network outside of the program,” Martin Diaz said in a statement.
In an Instagram video, U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) expressed frustration with the decision.
“They are hurting the people in the lower and middle classes and they are catering to people at the top,” Balint said.