Short-staffed school districts are hiring students to serve lunch and answer phones

[Jilly_in_VA]

While her peers study civics or economics in class, Saniyya Boykin, a 17-year old senior at Camden High School in Camden, South Carolina, preps food for the next day’s school lunch, or cleans kitchen floors for $12.50 an hour.

“I’m looking to own my own restaurant,” said Boykin, who plans to attend a historically black college after graduation and then culinary school. “I feel like this will open opportunities, like [to learn] the inside of the business.”

Between noon and 3:30 p.m., Boykin works alongside several other students who are ahead in school credits and work part-time to help run the high school kitchen. Some Camden High students are unpaid interns working to meet the state’s career readiness requirement for graduation, and others are students with disabilities who work as part of their curriculum.

Boykin is among a growing handful of teenage students employed by their own high schools as districts across the country struggle to fill landscaping, clerical and cafeteria jobs traditionally held by adults in their communities.

While many schools have begun taking unusual measures to address an acute teacher shortage intensified by the pandemic, the hiring crunch is hitting education systems’ staffing needs in other areas, too. About a third of schools reported a vacancy in custodial staff for the incoming school year, according to June figures from the Institute of Educational Sciences, a research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. About 19% of schools reported vacancies in kitchen staff, and 29% said they hadn’t filled all their transportation positions.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/short-staffed-school-districts-are-hiring-students-serve-lunch-rcna44905

Some of this is good for the kids, some of it....I dunno.

[JanMichael]

1. For the ones that are looking to open a restaurant or landscaping business great.

Kind of sad that it has come down to a necessity for the district though.

[Hugin]

2. I didn't realize it was different...

When I was school aged almost all of us had jobs with either the schools or local municipalities.

[House of Roberts]

3. In my senior year, I would leave school after my

fourth period class, to work a machinist job. It was a program called Diversified Occupation and it gave me three credits toward graduating. What these students are doing sounds similar.

[DBoon]

4. getting a first high school job is hard

This will give these kids the work experience needed for future jobs.

[Diamond_Dog]

5. When my husband taught high school

For a few years he taught Occupational Work Adjustment. It was targeted at kids who were poor students and at risk for dropping out. After 4 classes they went to jobs and got paid - usually at other schools (teacher helper, janitorial assistant, secretarial assistant, etc.) although some had fast food jobs. He taught them how to make a budget, apply for a loan, balance a checkbook, things like that. They got credit towards graduation for it.

[haele]

6. As long as the students aren't missing critical basic credits for the work,

And are getting work experience, pay, and credits - and this isn't used as a placeholder for otherwise failing students just to pad their attendance numbers, while I am sad that they have to do this to fill in critical school services.

As a side, my high school had seniors "jobs" running the student store or the auditorium/sports events ticket office for senior extra credit.

The young lady interviewed seemed to take this as an opportunity, as she already had her college picked and presumably had been accepted.

Haele

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. The Pentagon doesn't do bake sales to buy bombers.