In an attempt to save costs, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections is relocating a training facility from the College of Continuing Education to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol Training Center in Oklahoma City.

The Corrections Department also is moving its corrections officer academy from Eastern Oklahoma State College in Wilburton to the training center in Oklahoma City, said Jerry Massie, Department of Corrections spokesman.

“State agencies have had their funding cut,” Massie said, “So we're having to make up somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million to $50 million.”

By consolidating the separate training facilities, the department will save several hundred thousand dollars, he said.

Massie said the Corrections Department uses OU College of Continuing Education classrooms to train employees.

The move will affect the department’s five or six employees who work there, he said.

“They’ll be reassigned either up here [training center] or to other areas,” Massie said.

Massie said he believes the department will be able to adapt to the changes.

OU has provided training successfully for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for a number of years, said Catherine Bishop, vice president of public affairs at OU.

“Upon learning of the department’s intent to move the program, OU officials immediately engaged with Corrections Department officials in efforts to identify ways to continue this important program at OU to the mutual benefit of the department and the University,” Bishop said.

Bishop said discussions with the Department of Corrections are on-going.

Eastern Oklahoma State College in Wilburton provides facilities for the Department of Corrections to train its staff, said Hank Mooney, director of public relations at Eastern Oklahoma State College.

Mooney said the relocation will affect eight or nine department employees who work at the training facility in Wilburton.

“We didn’t know anything about the move until their director showed us a letter from the Department of Corrections,” he said.

Mooney said the move will more greatly affect the town of Wilburton than it will Eastern Oklahoma State College.

“It hurts the community as a whole because we’re a relatively rural town and business that moves away is not good for the community,” Mooney said.

But the college understands the Department of Corrections is having a shortfall of funds and they have to make up for that however they can, he said.

“We don’t particularly want to see them go away,” Mooney said. “We’d just as soon have them stay around for a while."