- Some districts say they’ve heard from other districts looking to replicate them.
- Proponents say it can open valuable opportunities that a job flipping burgers after class might not provide.
- Education advocates fear the approach could undermine schools’ mission.
Saniyya Boykin, a senior at Camden High School in Camden, South Carolina, preps food for the following day’s school lunch or cleans kitchen floors for $12.50 an hour while her classmates are in class learning about civics or economics.
After graduating, Boykin intends to go to a historically black college and then culinary school with the goal of opening his own restaurant. “I think this will create chances, like [to learn] the business from the inside,” the speaker said.
Boykin works part-time in the high school kitchen from noon to 3:30 p.m. with a few other kids who are ahead in their coursework. Others are students with disabilities who work as part of their education at Camden High. Some Camden High students are unpaid interns working to fulfill the state’s graduation requirement for career preparedness.
Boykin is one of an increasing number of teenagers who are employed by their own high schools as school districts around the nation struggle to fill cafeteria, gardening, and office jobs that have previously been filled by adults from local neighborhoods.
The recruiting crisis is impacting the staffing demands of educational systems in other areas as well, despite the fact that many schools have started to take unconventional measures to solve an acute teacher shortage made worse by the pandemic. According to statistics released in June by the Institute of Educational Sciences, a research division of the U.S. Department of Education, around a third of schools reported a vacancy in their custodial staff for the upcoming academic year. About 19% of schools stated they had open positions in the kitchen, while 29% said they still had open positions in the transportation department.
For other districts, children have taken on the role of a labor lifeline, one that supporters, including some of the students themselves, claim might lead to chances that might not be possible with a job flipping burgers after school. Administrators running these initiatives report hearing about them from other districts with a lack of personnel who want to copy them. Nevertheless, some proponents of education worry that the strategy could not support students’ needs for career development and threatens to undermine the aim of schools.
[embedpost slug=”mexican-ex-attorney-to-stand-trial-in-2014-missing-students-case/”]
