The entrance sign for the Wild Center is seen on Feb. 2 in Tupper Lake. (Enterprise photo — Chris Gaige)

TUPPER LAKE — The Wild Center’s AmeriCorps Program faces an uncertain future.

State officials informed the museum on Monday that its current AmeriCorps for School-Community Partnership Program, along with all of New York’s AmeriCorps programs, was suspended following the termination of federal program contracts.

Wild Center Deputy Director Hillarie Logan-Dechene said that the suspension amounts to about $72,000 of a tentative fund loss that would have kept the program going through August, as it was originally scheduled to run until. The Wild Center’s AmeriCorps program has eight members who are impacted by the program’s pause, which freezes stipends and benefits.

“All of the programs are still in suspension mode,” she said. “Everyone’s insurance has to stop, their pay has to stop — they cannot do anything, which leaves the members in a very precarious position because they don’t have any money, they don’t have insurance, they don’t have any anything, so we’re hoping that we can resolve this very soon.”

New York, along with 23 other states — all of which have Democratic governors — and the District of Columbia, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in a Maryland U.S. District Court seeking to stop the funding cuts. The complaint states that the AmeriCorps cuts violate the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers principle, as well as the Administrative Procedures Act — which governs how federal agencies can act.

“The Administration’s abrupt decision to dismantle AmeriCorps flouts Congress’s creation of AmeriCorps and assignment of agency duties; usurps Congress’s power of the purse and thereby violates the Constitution’s separation of powers,” it states in part.

The U.S. District Court had not yet addressed the complaint as of press time Thursday evening, but New York state Commission on National Community Service officials and counsel told Logan-Dechene in a Thursday morning call that they expected the court to respond to the states’ filing soon.

Until then, Logan-Dechene said the program is in suspension. U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, D-NY, released a statement opposing the cuts.

“AmeriCorps is one of the world’s greatest service programs, and one of the best bang for your buck federal investments in addressing community needs and in the future of our country,” he said. “But across New York hundreds of AmeriCorps community service participants were just egregiously fired and had their funding ripped away halting their critical work, helping the communities they serve.”

Logan-Dechene said AmeriCorps can be thought of as a domestic version of the Peace Corps. She said its members have to apply first, and come from all walks of life. Members generally serve for a year and are assigned a variety of community tasks.

“It’s really a wonderful way for people to give back to the United States of America,” she said.

Logan-Dechene said it’s essentially a volunteer program, with funding and a stipend covering the bare basics.

“Most people who apply for AmeriCorps … just decided to give one year so they can do this service and also gain leadership skills, because you go through a rigorous training program to be an AmeriCorps member,” she said. “They do get a stipend for food and a living allowance so they can survive,” she said. “But it is well below the federal minimum wage.”

The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 per hour.

Much of the now-suspended funding went toward member training, which was required before they could lead various community programs.

In some instances, these were general requirements, such as CPR. In other instances, they were more specialized, such as water and wilderness safety certifications for canoe trips they led.

It was the only AmeriCorps program in the Adirondacks and greater North Country region, according to Logan-Dechene.

“The Wild Center was lucky enough to be the only program in the Adirondacks, and in the North Country,” she said. “For us to get an AmeriCorps program two years ago was a huge feather in the cap for the North Country.”

Even though the grant was through the Wild Center, Logan-Dechene said the program helped the broader Tupper Lake and Tri-Lakes communities.

“They were deployed out into the community to bring service to the community and their skills as educators to the community — that’s how they were really, really helping,” she said. “So it’s a huge loss, not just to the Wild Center, but to the community.”

Partner organizations included the Tupper Lake Public Library, Tupper Arts, the Tupper Lake Central School District and the Town of Tupper Lake Recreation Department. Logan-Dechene added that while the Wild Center’s staff regularly partners with these organizations, having the AmeriCorps members bolstered the museum’s impact, given their small staff size.

“We work with them on a regular, ongoing basis as community partners, so it was a natural extension of the Wild Center’s normal activities. Our regular staff work with those organizations. It was just having the AmeriCorps members allowed us to do so much more than what we can do with our small staff.”

Logan-Dechene said museum officials let the members know of the suspension Monday evening.

“It’s super sad,” she said. “There’s been a lot of tears around here in the last couple of days.”

She said that if the program is not ultimately reinstated, the museum was exploring ways to offer assistance to its members and potentially find other roles for them in the time that they would have been in the AmeriCorps.

“We don’t have the money just sitting in a pot, unfortunately,” she said. “But, we’re going to see what we can do.”

In a statement announcing the suspension, the Wild Center said the eight members had logged a combined 8,400 hours as part of the community program. These projects included TLCSD classroom visits, basketball lessons with the Tupper Lake recreation program, launching book clubs at the Tupper Lake Public Library and leading more than 200 public science-based programs at the Wild Center.

This is an ongoing story and will be updated as the program’s suspension is either made permanent or reversed.