Short-staffed school districts are hiring students to serve lunch
As the nation's labor crunch hits public education, some school districts are hiring their own students to serve lunch and answer phones.
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.
Saniyya Boykin fills dessert cones for a student celebration. Courtesy Heather WebbBoykin 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.
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