Indiana workforce leaders aim to ‘salvage’ slashed dropout prevention program

Bridgette Edwards is going to college.

The 18-year-old graduated from Cloverdale High School last month despite a “rocky” start. After two years enrolled in career success classes with roots in dropout prevention, she’s gained a “family” of classmates, a “father figure” of a teacher and a vision for her future.

It’s “surreal,” she told the Capital Chronicle.

“Freshman-year me would have never thought that now I’d be going to Indiana State University and going to pursue my dreams,” Edwards said. “I just got an apartment for myself and all that. She definitely would have probably slapped me in the face, like, ‘You’re lying to me; what are you talking about?’”

Edwards is among thousands of Hoosier students participating in the Jobs for America’s Graduates, or JAG, program. After undergoing a massive expansion, Indiana now hosts 250 sites—the nation’s largest network, according to the Department of Workforce Development, or DWD. The agency oversees JAG in Indiana.

But JAG is expected to shrink to 30 or fewer sites by the end of the year.

Within just six months of hitting the 250-site goal, the program’s dedicated state funding was eliminated. Federal dollars shared by other agencies were deemed “unavailable.”

That’s left administrators, parents, teachers and students in the lurch—and trying preserve some remnants.

“This is ending the JAG program as we have come to know it in the state of Indiana,” Indiana Workforce Alliance Chair Tony Waterson said. The organization represents the 12 local workforce development boards that administer JAG in Indiana.

“Now, can it be reinvented? Yes. Will it sustain in some fashion? Most likely, (but) on a much, much reduced scale,” said Waterson, who is also president and CEO of board Southern Indiana Works.

Joining JAG

The model dates back to 1979 in Delaware, but former Gov. Mitch Daniels brought it to Indiana in 2006 to address the state’s “growing dropout crisis,” according to a DWD timeline.

JAG participants often face challenges that make it more likely they won’t complete high school or successfully transition into what lies after graduation. They may be low-income, first-generation, struggling with transportation, lacking workforce experience or marketable skills, and so on, per the national organization’s annual report.

In its first year, the program served 217 students at 12 schools.

It’s educated 45,000 since then. And it was set to serve more.

The expansion, which was fully implemented this year and doubled program sites from 125 to 250, was expected to impact 10,000 students annually.

Participants take elective, for-credit classes taught by specialists who also provide advice and other support. They meet multiple times each week, building close relationships.

“When we first got into our class, … you had your friends, but you didn’t really know everybody. But once we got to the end of the year, everybody was like a family,” Edwards said.

She recalled career association days featuring healthy student debate alongside visits from working professionals and educational institutions.

She’d long harbored dreams of becoming a nurse, but a school resource officer’s presentation prompted a new dream. Now, Edwards will enter college studying criminology and criminal justice, with the goal of becoming a forensic scientist or police officer.

JAG, she said, “made me understand more of what I wanted to be for the rest of my life.” She’s also learned how to manage a credit card, present herself professionally to adults and more.

That’s thanks to specialist Karl Turk, whom she called “a father figure to me.” Edwards’ biological father died when she was 11.

But employees like him are in jeopardy.

There are “close to 300 JAG team members whose budget just went from $27 million to, you know, zero,” Waterson said. Some roles may be retained, but “there’s going to be a loss of jobs.”

“Every JAG specialist is touching, you know, 40 to 60 kids. And so now you’re impacting them and their lives as well,” he added. “… It’s a tough day, you know, tough week, tough month, tough budget cycle.”

Dedicated funding dropped

DWD previously received $8 million per year for JAG via a “dropout prevention” line item in the state’s biennial budget.

Gov. Mike Braun kept that in his version of House Enrolled Act 1001.

House Republicans scrapped DWD’s line item and instead included “dropout prevention” under the lengthy list of ways the Indiana Department of Education, or IDOE, could spend an $86 million “Freedom and Opportunity in Education” fund.

“When JAG funding was eliminated in DWD’s budget, it did not get moved to IDOE,” spokeswoman Courtney Bearsch said in a statement to the Capital Chronicle.

The Senate GOP maintained this in later versions of the budget.

But, with just a week to finalize the legislation, fiscal leaders received a grim revenue forecast—and embarked on major cuts.

“You know, when you’re all of a sudden hit with a budget that says you’re going to have little over a billion less each year, a lot of stuff got caught in the crossfire,” Braun told reporters last week.

The fund was allotted $50 million in the final version. That’s the same amount of money IDOE got for literacy and a similar list of other efforts in the last budget. And, like most agencies, it was hit with a 5% budget cut and directed to withhold additional dollars.

“Due to significant budget constraints, the IDOE will also not be able to utilize state funding to sustain JAG,” DWD Chief Workforce Officer Katie Rounds wrote in a late May program update.

Indiana’s fiscal year–and JAG’s line item funding–ends June 30.

Funding flow set to a trickle

The line item isn’t even the largest source of funding cut from JAG.

A collaboration with the Family and Social Services Administration, or FSSA, was set to direct an additional $23.1 million in federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, dollars to fund the expansion, former Gov. Eric Holcomb announced in August 2023. That goal became reality in December 2024, per DWD.

The agency spent $13.3 million from TANF on JAG in the last program cycle, but FSSA is closing the spigot in August.

Rounds wrote that the TANF money is now “unavailable” for JAG.

That came as a shock to Waterson and his fellow workforce development board leaders.

“It was a question we asked repeatedly as we ramped up from 125 to 250: was the funding secure into the future? … And we were assured that that funding was secured,” he recounted.

To pull off the expansion, workforce development board members met with students, parents, teachers and administrators at middle schools, high schools and higher educational institutions.

“They signed and bought into the idea of it,” Waterson said. “They said, ‘Okay, we trust you.’ We hired staff.”

“We wouldn’t have done all that had we thought that this was even a possibility,” he added.

Students who’d joined in an initial round of the expansion would’ve been entering their second year of JAG come August, while those part of a later round would’ve gotten started at that point.

“We’ve told these these kids that, you know, you’re committing to us for two years when you do this—actually, three years, because there’s a follow-up period,” Waterson continued. “And now we’re saying, ‘Wait, no, we can’t.’”

Another slice of federal funding contributed by FSSA, typically worth $1.5 million annually, also won’t come JAG’s way. The Vocational Rehabilitation Pre-Employment Transition Services dollars supported disabled student participation for at least five years, according to DWD, including $2.2 million in the last program cycle.

“For that money to be available, you have to have … non-federal matching funds,” Waterson explained. “That gets dicey if there’s no state allocation.”

JAG’s only intact source of public funding may be federal legislation that expired five years ago. Initiatives under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act, or WIOA, operate through annual appropriations, according to bipartisan group Center Forward.

But WIOA Youth money also comes with complex requirements — and deep uncertainty about how Congress will fund it going forward.

That leaves private and philanthropic dollars, which added more than $1.2 million to JAG in the last program cycle.

“People are nice about it, right? Like, ‘Oh, here’s some options.’ But we’re not really going to be able to go to a private foundation and ask for $30 million annually for the foreseeable future, right?” Waterson said. “That’s just not something that’s realistic.”

Looking forward

JAG and other efforts hit in last-minute cuts could “be reconstituted,” according to Braun.

“That is going to be part of—on every agency, every program, we’re going to make sure that it’s being run well, (and it) may end up needing more resources if it’s been starved of it,” he said.

But potential aid in the future won’t stave off closures now.

They’ll likely occur in two waves, according to Waterson: most programs that were supposed to begin in August won’t, and most of those that do will shut down after the first semester.

In the meantime, he and other workforce development board leaders are regrouping.

“We are trying to find ways to salvage programming and salvage service to young people, either through alternative partnerships or alternative funding mechanisms,” said Edmond C. O’Neal III, president and CEO of Northeast Indiana Works.

O’Neal’s board is also rethinking how it structures program delivery.

Instead of assuming that one JAG specialist equals one site, he said, “I’d prefer to try to leverage those … people to service as many kids as we can.”

Five specialists, for example, could travel to handle 15 sites, although that introduces logistical challenges.

“It sucks,” Edwards said of JAG’s dim prospects.

“I just don’t think a lot of people are really seeing the good things that come out of it; they just see the academic value,” she added. “Even the students that people may think are quote-unquote ‘a lost cause,’ even those kids, it helps them a lot, getting out of trouble, learning their value of life.”

The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, nonprofit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.