Video: A Summer Job Program for Students is Cut This Year

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – A state program that has provided summer jobs for high school and college students for more than two decades is cut this year.

This would have been the 22nd year for the Mississippi Department of Transportation Summer Youth Program in Columbus.

The program provided summer jobs to hundreds of sixteen to twenty-four year old workers.

This year, the city didn’t get the thirty-five thousand dollar grant from the Mississippi Department of Transportation.

Budget cuts at the state level are to blame.

“To be able to see how some programs that I hear are being cut, that helps people, and those are the programs that we’re cutting and I don’t think people that makes those decisions understand the true outcome of how it helps students and how it helps people in communities,” says Columbus program director, George Irby.

The summer job program has also been cut in other cities in the area.