NEMO, S.D. – As a teenager 25 years ago, David Goodwin's future appeared bleak.
Goodwin was smart, but for some reason he couldn't find his footing in the Rapid City public school system and had been held back two straight years as a high school freshman.
"I spent my days ditching school and smoking cigarettes with friends at Canyon Lake Park," he recalls. "That's the route I was taking."
Goodwin needed a change, a new path forward, and he found it in 2001 after enrolling in the Boxelder Job Corps Civilian Conservation Center.
The residential education and job training program for low-income youths and young adults is located on a wooded site in the Black Hills near Nemo. The center is one of about 125 Job Corps facilities across the country that are under threat of closure as part of spending reductions proposed by the Trump administration.
After arriving at Boxelder Job Corps, Goodman thrived amid the hands-on, self-paced classroom and trades training programs, rising to become student body president and leaving two years later with a high school diploma and work-ready skills in facility maintenance and computers.
"It completely changed my life," said Goodwin. "There’s no question that Job Corps got me to where I am today."
Goodwin went into the Army and has spent more than 20 years as a computer specialist with the South Dakota National Guard, where he manages the customer support office at Camp Rapid in Rapid City. Now 42, he is married with three children and owns rental properties.
Feds order phaseout of Job Corps sites
On May 29, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that it was pausing operations at 99 contractor-operated Job Corps centers across the country starting June 30.
In the May 29 news release, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said a recent government report showed that the contractor-run programs operated at a $140 million deficit in 2024, did not meet participant graduation or job goals and had seen nearly 15,000 reports of sexual, violent or drug-related incidents on its campuses.
The department said its decision aligned with President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget guidelines to ensure wise use of taxpayer dollars.
“Job Corps was created to help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education, training, and community,” Chavez-DeRemer said in the news release. “However, a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve.”
The Boxelder Job Corps center in Nemo and the similar Pine Ridge Job Corps facility in Chadron, Nebraska, just south of the South Dakota state line, are two of 24 Job Corps sites that are run by the U.S. Forest Service within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Nemo, Chadron sites also in jeopardy
While those 24 locations are not part of the closures ordered by the Labor Department, the latest budget documents from the Labor Department show the Forest Service sites are included in the cuts to program funding.
According to the updated Fiscal Year 2026 Labor Department budget, roughly $1.58 billion of the Job Corps program's $1.76 billion budget will be eliminated, allowing some funding to enact an orderly shutdown of the program. The documents do not separate the funding for contractor-operated programs and those run by the Forest Service.
The remaining funding "supports the managed cessation of services currently delivered through 123 Job Corps centers nationwide, including residential education, career technical training, counseling, career transition services (CTS), and outreach and admissions (OA)," according to the budget document.
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The National Job Corps Association trade group is fighting any Job Corps closures and has pushed back on the claims that contractor-run programs are not meeting graduation, workforce or spending goals. It also said data used to evaluate success were from the COVID-19 era when Job Corps programs across the country faced upheaval.
As with many of the program and position cuts imposed or proposed by the Trump administration, including those made by the Department of Government Efficiency, obtaining complete information has been difficult for the press and public.
A USDA spokesperson who works on the Job Corp program responded to News Watch requests for information and updates in late June with a brief emailed statement.
"The 24 Forest Service Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers (CCC) remain operational," the USDA spokesperson wrote to News Watch. "We’ll share any updates if this changes."
According to The Associated Press, any Job Corps closures are on hold for now.
In early June, after the National Job Corps Association filed a lawsuit, a federal judge imposed a temporary restraining order to cease removing Job Corps students from housing, terminating jobs or otherwise suspending the nationwide program without congressional approval.
On June 26, the judge strengthened that decision by granting a preliminary injunction to stop the Labor Department from shuttering the contractor-run Job Corps sites, according to the AP.
“Once Congress has passed legislation stating that a program like the Job Corps must exist, and set aside funding for that program, the DOL is not free to do as it pleases; it is required to enforce the law as intended by Congress,” Judge Andrew Carter Carter wrote in the ruling.
A Labor Department spokesman told AP, however, that it believes the closures are within the law and that it expects to prevail in any legal challenges to the cuts.
Decades aiding low-income youth and adults
Launched in 1964, Job Corps is designed to provide education and job training to income-qualified youths and young adults who struggled in traditional schools.
The taxpayer-funded program offers tuition-free housing, classroom education, job training, meals and health care for enrollees. The program enrolls about 60,000 students a year and has an annual total cost around $1.8 billion, according to federal budget documents.
According to the USDA, the Boxelder Job Corps facility currently has 79 enrollees aged 16-24, about half of whom are Native American. USDA documents from 2021 showed the facility had an average annual budget ranging from $4.5 million to $6 million in recent years. The current staff consists of roughly 40 employees.
In addition to offering a path toward a high school diploma or GED, the Nemo facility offers training in multiple disciplines, including certified nursing assistant, culinary arts, carpentry, painting, welding, office administration and maintenance.
Due to its location in the Black Hills and connection to the U.S. Forest Service, a major focus is also placed on preparing students for a job as first responders, particularly in the wildfire realm.
In 2024, 24 students earned certification in firefighting and 22 others were certified in wildfire dispatch and camp support. Last year, students provided more than 11,000 hours of wildland fire support on more than 50 locations, according to the USDA.
Construction, catering and other skills
Volunteering and working for pay are also a big part of the Boxelder program as Job Corps seeks to send graduates out with at least $2,000 in savings, according to facility director Bonnie Fuller.
According to the facility's most recent quarterly newsletter, Boxelder Job Corps students in the past three months did construction work at a new gun range outside Rapid City, catering for a Rapid City Elks Club banquet, aided in remodeling at a building at the Black Hills Raptor Center and toted concrete down a rocky path on a project to strengthen a safety gate at a cave near Horse Thief Lake in the national forest.
The facility also maintains partnerships with numerous governmental and business entities. Students can obtain their high school diploma through the Lead-Deadwood School District Career and Technical Campus, which is located on the Boxelder Job Corps site.
"The mission is to take someone from poverty and give them an education and a training in a trade that can lead to a good job and career," Fuller said. "We get the kids that fall through the cracks ... the kids who had a hard home life or had a disability or weren’t successful in a public school setting, and we fill in that gap and give them an education and job skills."
Fuller said Job Corps graduates have gone on to a wide range of successful careers, working in numerous industries across the state, including as an assistant U.S. attorney in South Dakota. She added that one of the Air Force pilots who flew over the July 4, 2020, fireworks celebration attended by President Donald Trump at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial was a Boxelder Job Corps graduate.
Goodwin said the program provided him with education and job training as well as the emotional support and personal accountability he needed to "find who I truly was and excel."
Goodwin said he hopes all Job Corps facilities across the country, including in Nemo and Chadron, will be funded and allowed to continue operating.
"When they identify a kid like me in high school that is not excelling, this should absolutely be offered as an alternative," he said. "For kids who aren’t reaching their potential, they should have this other option."
This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit organization. Read more stories and donate at sdnewswatch.org and sign up for an email to get stories when they're published. Contact Bart Pfankuch at bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org.
