Monday, April 21, 2025
In June of last year, I stood in front of a packed house at City Hall to celebrate the long-awaited arrival of the Jobs for America’s Graduates program (JAG) in Decatur County. Launched in 2006, the program provides intensive job readiness and self-sufficiency programming for high school students and recent graduates, and has proven to be so impactful that it has now expanded to 250 schools with an anticipated 10,000 students statewide.
Less than a year after launching in Decatur County, JAG has served 99 students across Greensburg High School, and North and South Decatur High Schools, providing them with 124 hours of employability skills training, 43 employer engagement opportunities. This week, Greensburg students will be representing Indiana in the Financial Literacy competition at the National JAG Conference in Indianapolis. Greensburg Schools Superintendent Tom Hunter has described JAG as ‘the most impactful program we have added at Greensburg High School in the past 25 years”, and it has already proved popular enough to warrant several additional programs.
Regrettably, despite its undisputed success, the future of JAG in Indiana is in jeopardy. The current Indiana state budget does not include funding for JAG, reversing 12 years of precedence, nor does it account for the other key funding streams that have been leveraged to expand this critical work- including $16 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Family (TANF) and $2 million in Pre-Employment Transition Service (Pre-ETS) funding. It is essential that JAG remain fully funded as a line item in the state budget and that it retains its focus on positive workforce outcomes.
JAG is an in-school workforce preparation program that provides opportunities for success to students who have experienced challenging life experiences or could otherwise benefit from dedicated support. Though a national model, Indiana’s JAG implementation is the best in the nation and is delivered locally by nonprofit workforce development boards, leveraging their network of employer, education and community partners to connect to real-world experiences.
Students in JAG learn a host of in-demand employability skills and are given a proven bridge to sustainable work opportunities, post-secondary education, and/or military service. The JAG graduation rate of 96.6% in 2024 was higher than the overall state high school graduation rate of 90.2%, and those who graduated earned $20.4 million in scholarships. Moreover, JAG statewide registered more than 2,000 engagements with employers in 2024 and a direct job placement rate of 55.2%, making it a premier generator of talent to meet the needs of employers.
JAG is more than an education program. It is an essential multifaceted experience that directly supplies, expands and sustains the workforces in our region and state. It also succeeds at promoting self-sufficiency and reducing the need for public supports, creating a long-term return-on-investment for taxpayers.
We cannot afford to deny students such a powerful opportunity and ignore the impact of a workforce program that works, especially as our region focuses on supplying our employers with enough skilled talent to ensure a robust economy for years to come.
###
