Twenty-nine employees will lose jobs, according to Sneed, who said he hopes they can secure new ones by the September.
The Massachusetts Career Development Institute on Wilbraham Avenue in Springfield
SPRINGFIELD — After four decades as the city’s best-known job training center, the Massachusetts Career Development Institute plans to close in September.
Citing declining declining public funding and competition from other providers, the Wilbraham Avenue-based agency will shut down vocational training classes in June and English language classes by September, said Timothy L. Sneed, executive director.
Twenty-nine employees will lose jobs, according to Sneed, who said he hopes they can secure new ones by the September shutdown.
“The good news is that no one in our community will be without the services as our core programming, such as nurses aide training, is available in the community college system or the vocational education system,” he said.
“Much of the funding that used to come to MCDI is now going to vocational schools and the community colleges,” he added.
If the taxpayer-financed agency is a victim of changing times, it also suffered its share of self-inflicted wounds.
During the 1990s, the school was known as a patronage haven for the politically connected; by 2003, the agency was center stage in a federal corruption investigation focusing on then-executive director Gerald A. Phillips.
Phillips, who earned $111,000-a-year and also served as a member of the municipal Police Commission, was convicted on four fraud counts and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison. Three other employees were also convicted in the long-running federal probe.