(Radio Iowa) – A federal judge has temporarily blocked the closure of Job Corps Centers around the country, including the residential training centers in Denison and Ottumwa. U-S Labor Department officials recently said the centers cost too much to operate, had a poor graduation rate and students were told to move out by this Thursday. Governor Kim Reynolds says state officials are examining options.

“I’ve got four agencies that are working with both of these areas to see if there’s some way that we can incorporate the students into some of our existing programs,” Reynolds says, “and we just have to see what that looks like.” The federal program has provided free education, vocational training and housing to young adults since 1964. Reynolds says the judge’s ruling gives officials a little bit of extra time to figure things out for the dozens of low-income 16 to 24 year olds who were counting on their Job Corps enrollment in Denison and Ottumwa.

“We’ll walk through what the impact of that looks like, what we need to do to make sure that we’re serving those individuals that are relying on that and move forward,” Reynolds said. “…We’ve been focused on any of the kids that were in the foster (care) system to make sure we have a home for them, to make sure if they were counting on that for housing that we have some place for them to go…It sounds like they can stay in the interim…We’re working through all of that.”

Republican legislators who represent Denison and Ottumwa in the Iowa House say the programs were very successful in helping Iowa kids graduate and land a job. Reynolds says there may be a better way to run lots of federal programs, including this one. “I’m not opposed to that at all. In fact we should do it more frequently than we are and it doesn’t mean that you throw it out or you discontinue the program, but it means that you look at it, you look what it’s doing, you look at the results — the outcomes, the metrics,” she said, “and then you look at the way we’re utilizing some of the technology, the way we’re utilizing (vocational rehabilitation) programs — all of that and just see if there’s maybe a better fit (and) that we could get the results that we’re looking for.”

The president and C-E-O of the National Job Corps Association says the students they serve are often overcoming significant personal and economic challenges and Job Corps gives them the ability to gain the skills they need to build meaningful careers. The U-S Secretary of Labor says the average salary for graduates this past year was under 17-thousand dollars and the centers were not achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve.