Roy Botello This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. The Gleaner: News from The Gleaner

   www.myinky.com/ecp/gleaner_new - [Cached]

   Last Visited: 2/21/2004

   Marie Botello and her husband, Roy, left, have been attending Henderson Community College while raising their four children.
   ...
   Roy Botello is taking classes in industrial engineering and his wife is learning to be a clinical lab technician.
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   Life was going along pretty well for Roy Botello after he left his home in Texas in 1998 for a job with Tyson Foods in Henderson County.
   
   Then, in 2000, the young father left Tyson for a higher-paying position as a job recruiter at Sights Denim Systems Inc. in Henderson. He later was promoted to supervisor and team leader at Sights.
   ...
   But in October 2002 -- one month before his second anniversary with Sights -- Botello and several other supervisors and team leaders were laid off.
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   Botello may not have realized it at the time, but he was part of a major change that's taking place in the U.S. economy.
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   The federal government has recognized Botello -- 29 years old and the father of four -- as a person who needs help to get a new start in life.
   
   The government is paying for his schooling and extending his unemployment benefits through the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistant Reform Act of 2002.
   
   The act was established specifically to assist U.S. manufacturing workers who lost their jobs when production was shifted to foreign countries.
   
   The assistance provides Botello with full tuition, books and supplies to attend Henderson Community College's Industrial Technology Center to gain skills in industrial engineering.
   
   The Henderson center is just one of numerous places offering special training to help workers upgrade their skills.
   
   In Evansville, Ivy Tech State College also is among schools helping jobless workers.
   
   The alternative for Botello, he said, was to have drawn unemployment benefits for awhile and then try to go back to work without a recognized skill.
   
   "I need to get a skill, and any logical person would choose to go back to school," he said. "Getting laid off at Sights was a shock. But the government assistance has softened the blow." Besides his school assistance, Botello said he clears $307 a week in unemployment benefits and receives $300 a month in food stamps to support himself and his wife, Marie; and their children Lia Marie, 1; Lisa Marie, 3; Roy II, 5; and Clarissa Marie, 8. "I went from averaging $490 to $560 a week at Sights," said Botello, a native of Texas.
   
   "We're now making it, however, as me and my wife are frugal," he said.
   ...
   Bart Sights, an official with the company, declined to comment this week on Botello or the layoffs that occurred at the Henderson plant in 2002.