Head Start Center Opens at Job Corps

Long Beach Job Corps Center hosted an open house recently to celebrate the opening of its new Long Beach Unified School District Head Start facility. The new Head Start Center will serve the Long Beach community and the Long Beach Job Corps students and graduates. The newest Head Start program, which is now open for enrollment, helps Long Beach Job Corps to provide the tools for a better future for parents and their children. "The need is great in the community we serve," said Head Start director Gwen Mathews. "Thanks to this innovative partnership, Head Start can expand its services to children and help more families." "This is a great partnership," said center director Michelle Allen. "It is a wonderful resource for many Job Corps students who have young children. "We are thrilled with this new facility which affords more people with children an opportunity to enter the workforce." Head Start provides preschool children of low-income families with services to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional and psychological needs. At the same location on Santa Fe Avenue, Job Corps' comprehensive residential career training and education provide low-income youth, ages 16-24, with integrated academic, vocational and social skills training needed to gain independence and pursue long-term careers or higher education. Long Beach Job Corps Center, one of 118 centers in the nation, serves Los Angeles and Orange counties with a campus that is home to more than 300 students plus 40 who commute daily. In addition to high school diploma and drivers education programs, students train for careers in a number of fields, including the culinary arts, hotel management, landscaping and automotive trades, business technologies and health care. Since their inception in 1964, Job Corps has served more than 2 million youth, and Head Start has enrolled more than 21 million children, to break the poverty cycle by enabling economically disadvantaged people to gain independence.