Working students often pay price: fatigue, grades

DATE                  11/19/90
NEWSPAPER             THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION               NEWS
EDITION               EVENING
PAGE                  A01
STORY LENGTH          33 INCHES
HEADLINE              Working students often pay price: fatigue, grades
BYLINE/CREDIT         Dan Froomkin:The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS         OC:STUDENTS:EMPLOYMENT:YOUTH:POLLS
 
    For Jake Burns, 17, going to school is only half the story.
     He also works six hours a day, five days a week, at a tire store
  not far from Huntington Beach High School, where he's a senior.
     Teachers often tell Burns he shouldn't work so much, but he
  doesn't listen.
     "I want money," he said.
     Burns gets his money, but it comes with a price: exhaustion. When
  he arrives at school in the morning, he's not exactly in peak shape.
  Sometimes just staying awake is a challenge.
     "When my teachers have a film, it's the worst," Burns said. "I
  fall asleep."
     It's a rare adult who juggles two jobs. But tens of thousands of
  Orange County teen-agers -- perhaps more than half of the area's high
  school students - - are juggling school and work, according to
  experts.
     After a full day of classes, the students go to jobs that
  sometimes take up 30 hours a week or more.
     Teachers and counselors across the county say that after-school
  work has become the No.1 reason children come to school tired,
  unprepared or both.
     If they come to school at all, they fall asleep in class. If they
  stay awake, they're too tired to concentrate. They don't do their
  homework. Their grades drop. And teachers' expectations are lowered.
     "If the kid is out till midnight on the job, the kid goes face
  down on the desk first or second period," said Gregg Munsell, an
  English teacher at Huntington Beach High School.
     "You could be running a tap dance and a juggling act at the same
  time, and they still wouldn't respond," said Flori Ellis, head
  counselor at Rancho Alamitos High School in Garden Grove.
     Often considered by parents to be a productive and healthy way for
  children to spend their time, after-school jobs have reached epidemic
  proportion in Orange County, teachers say.
     And teachers' complaints are backed up by a slew of surveys
  conducted over the past decade, including one extensive study of
  Orange County students. The surveys say that teen-age work is more
  likely to encourage students to cut classes, ignore homework, use
  drugs and pick up bad work habits than to instill the work ethic.
     Across the county and the state, administrators report a big
  upsurge in the number of children working during the last five years.
  Almost 20,000 students from ages 14 to 17 applied for after-school
  work permits in Orange County last year, but administrators say there
  easily could be twice that many actually working.
     Nationally, the US Department of Labor discovered twice as many
  child-labor violations in 1989 as in 1983, and growing concern over
  the issue led to a three-day sweep in May that uncovered 11,000
  child-labor violations, many of them at fast-food restaurants that
  overworked teen-agers.
     The rules about how many hours children can work during the school
  term are a confusing patchwork of federal and state statutes.
  Children under 14 are not allowed to work during the term at all.
  Most students ages 14 and 15 cannot work more than 18 hours a week,
  and on school nights cannot work more than three hours or past 7 p.m.
     For 16- and 17-year olds, the laws prohibit working more than four
  hours on school nights and more than eight hours on other days.
     Most teachers and counselors say working after school in
  moderation -- roughly 10 hours a week or less -- is not a problem at
  all. But much more than that gets to be a problem.
     Some students, such as Armando Gutierez, find that out themselves.
  Gutierez, a senior at Santa Ana High School, worked every day after
  school until about 8 p.m. last year as a file clerk.
     "It took a lot out of me," he said. "I had to quit after a
  semester."
     But others, as they go through school, amass more and more hours.
     David Aleman, a senior at Magnolia High School, works eight hours
  a day -- which is only legal because he's 18.
     He's the manager at a McDonald's from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., and does
  his homework on breaks. The goal is to help his mother pay household
  expenses and to save money for college.
     "I don't come from a rich family," Aleman said. "We have to work
  hard for what we get."
     Even wealthier students say their parents often can't or won't
  shell out for many school-related expenses such as yearbooks and prom
  tickets and, of course, the single-biggest budget-buster -- buying
  and maintaining a car.
     Faced with these pressures, many students feel the decision to
  work is an obvious one, even when they're aware of the toll involved.
     Michelle Velarde, 17, a Huntington Beach senior, works about 20
  hours a week as a waitress so she can afford her 1990 Honda, a phone
  and a social life.
     For Roberto Hernandez, a senior at Santa Ana's Valley High, the
  cost of the college-admission process alone is a good reason to get a
  job.
     "I'm taking three (advanced placement) tests, plus the SAT and the
  achievement tests," Hernandez said. "I can't be just going to my
  parents and asking them for money."
     But Richard Plum, an administrator at the Huntington Beach Union
  High School District, said money is really only part of it.
     "There's a lot of kids that are not motivated by school, and they
  want to get out in the work world," Plum said.
      DeVera Heard, president of the Valley High School PTA, said
  schools should encourage parents to take a harder line on
  after-school work.
     Heard said her son works after school at a specialty food store.
  "We've capped him at 15 hours a week," she said. "We felt that would
  not interfere with his education, but would let him earn enough to
  feel he's accomplished something with his working."
     But Heard said many of her fellow parents aren't informed -- or
  vigilant -- enough to set limits.
     "It is, bottom line, the parents' responsibility," Heard said.
     Over and over, teachers tell stories of trying to change students'
  minds about work and failing.
     "I think first of all that the students maybe don't realize their
  own frailty," counselor Ellis said. "They feel like there's nothing
  that can harm them, so they just go for it."
     When students do realize they're overextended, they don't quit
  their jobs, Ellis said. They drop classes.
     Hernandez, the Valley High student, said many of his classmates
  don't get permits on purpose. Some fully intend to work longer hours
  than they'd be allowed to. Many others don't have legal immigration
  status and therefore have no choice but to find work with employers
  who don't follow the law.
     In fact, said Hernandez, "the employers sometimes go out for those
  kinds of students, because they know they won't tell on them."
     So what's the answer?
     State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig advocates
  stricter child-labor laws and more frequent denial of work permits by
  school adminiistrators.
     Locally, teachers and administrators say Honig's concerns are
  right on target, but they say his solutions are not.
     The decision, they say, has to be left to the parents. But that
  doesn't mean educators feel they have no role at all. Most agree that
  they must do a better job of teaching parents about the toll long
  hours take on their children.
     "A lot of parents think the kid having a job is a good thing,"
  teacher Munsell said. "What they don't realize is a lot of these kids
  are victimized by their employers. There's a lot of pressure and a
  lot of the kids don't know their rights."
     For parents who need their children's income, a lot of these
  arguments go flat. And even among wealthier parents, the argument
  doesn't seem as one-sided as teachers see it.
     "It's a real dilemma for a parent," said Sheila Benecke, a member
  of the Orange County PTA and a Dana Hills mother. "Each succeeding
  generation of parents wants their children to have a better
  lifestyle.
     "But at the same time, as a parent you question how healthy it is
  to give everything to your children."
   SIDEBAR
   Employed OC students fell behind, survey showed
     Many national surveys during the past decade have suggested that
  long hours of after-school work are damaging, including one
  groundbreaking study last decade of 531 high school sophomores and
  juniors in Orange County.
     The Orange County survey, overseen in part by Ellen Greenberger, a
  sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, produced some
  striking results.
     Greenberger reported that for some students, part-time work led to
  falling grades and absenteeism. And the extra money, she reported,
  led some to greater use of alcohol and drugs.
     Greenberger has since become an outspoken opponent of after-school
  work, calling it a major factor in the decline of quality education.
     Furthermore, Greenberger argues, extensive after-school work also
  teaches children bad lessons. The cynicism developed from watching
  unethical business practices encourages students to copy other
  people's homework and cheat in school, she says.
     Noted George Washington University professor Amitai Etzioni makes
  some of the same points, but his major complaint is about the kind of
  work today's students are doing.
     Their jobs, he notes, are not the jobs of folklore that enhance
  self- discipline, teach skills and encourage creativity. Instead, the
  most common teen-age job is working in a fast-food store, where every
  single task is regulated and regimented -- jobs he calls "breeding
  grounds for robots."