2009 National Ethnic Media Awards Winners

Erika Cebreros, El Mensajero, News Report, May 09, 2008

Editor's note: To help support their families, many Latino students work while attending high school — some even full time. Erika Cebreros, a reporter with El Mensajero in San Francisco, talked to young people about how this impacts their education and their lives. This story was supported through a New America Media education fellowship program.

OAKLAND, Calif. — The only break in Victor Alfonso Ramos' day was his lunch hour, which really was only 40 minutes. The high school senior devoted 15 hours a day to school and work almost every day of the week.

When he finished his school activities at 4:30 p.m. he would go into a public bathroom, comb his mane, change out of his baggy pants into straight cut, black ones, and put on a red shirt with the logo of The Cheese Steak Shop, the restaurant chain where he worked.

Then he would run to work because he started at 5:00 p.m. and he wanted to maintain his "on-time record". What he could not maintain were his grades. After he started working last July, his grade point average went down drastically, the Oakland Life Academy of Health & Bio-Science student acknowledged. He worked about 30 hours a week, spread over five days.

"I would get off work at 10:00 [p.m.] and was too tired to do homework. I fell way behind," admitted the teenager, son of Mexican immigrants, who labors as a cashier and makes "meat and chicken sandwiches" in Alameda.

Victor, like many low-income students, works to help his family. Every day he faces the dilemma of devoting himself solely to his studies or balancing school and work.

A Big Help

While Latinos make up the largest ethnic minority in the country, their income levels are much lower than other groups'. According to Venis E. Mesui, coordinator at Life Academy, 66.1 percent of the students at her school are Latinos and 75 percent of them are from low-income households. Therefore, the financial help that young people like Victor offer their parents is a big relief for the family.

The Permit

Work benefits young people. It validates important values, like the sense of responsibility and how to manage money. But it also harms them, especially when they have long days — that is how State Senator Darrell Steinberg sees it. Senator Steinberg introduced a set of measures last year to lower the state's school dropout rates. There are an estimated 150,000 students who drop out of high school each year without a diploma in their hands.

One of these proposals, SB406, focused on changing the work permit laws.

The current law in California requires every student under the age of 18 (with limited exceptions) who wants to work, to have a permit. The idea behind the work permit is to ensure that minors will not be exploited and also so that their work will not interfere with their studies, explained Kate McGuire, spokesperson for the California Department of Industrial Relations, the section responsible for enforcing this rule.

According to the student's age, the labor laws dictate the number of hours and the schedule they are allowed. Work permits are processed at the student's school. The law does not demand an analysis of the student's academic performance and attendance before granting a work permit. Each school district or school can establish its own rules.

Measure SB406, vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, proposed standardizing the work permit process throughout the state; student grades and attendance would be taken into account. Susana Cooper, Senator Steinberg's consultant who worked on this proposal, felt that "high school students who work more than 20 hours per week start to disconnect from their studies."

Far From Reality

Educators like Carmelita Reyes, principal at Oakland International High School (OIHS), agree with Cooper. "The long workdays that students undertake during the week normally interfere with their academic performance, says Reyes. However, Reyes doesn't think that the proposed bill - SB406 — would deal with the root of the problem, since the students who usually show problems are those who work without a permit.

The majority of these young people, says Reyes, have "terrible work schedules" that cause "chronic school attendance problems." "When they arrive to their first classes they're half asleep. And that's if they come."

One solution to those "terrible schedules", usually night shifts, the principal said, would be for the employers to participate in the educational process. "I really wish the employers who hire students would say 'You know what, it's 10:30 at night and you need to go home to sleep' and not the opposite, 'It's 10:30 and closing isn't until 11:30 at night'." Reyes says ideally, high school students would only work on weekends.

The truth is that ignorance about the process prevails. According to Victor, his employers, who he described as "good bosses," told him that he did not need a work permit because "he was already 17 years old." The initial response of Victor's boss, Masooda Faizi, confirmed Ramos' version of the story. When asked if they required students to have work permits, she responded: "It depends on their age. If they are under 16 years old, we ask them for a work permit, but if they are older than 16, we don't." When told about what the state law says, Masooda immediately reconsidered. She implied that Victor did have a permit.

"At the beginning [when we opened the restaurant], we didn't know if it was required or not and we asked for copies of the work permit and Victor brought it," she added.

Diane Bush, head of the University of California, Berkeley, program Young Workers Project, promoting information and resources about young people who work, mentioned that the majority of the employers who hire students "are not bad people"; but they do not know what the law says.

Richmond, Money Now

Yuliana Soto, 17, has worked since she was 14 to help her family financially. Her father cannot because he is disabled. Soto averages 16 hours per week working at Lucky's supermarket. She is a delivery packer and only works on weekends. In all her jobs, she clarified, she has had a work permit, which she determined was "very easy" to get.

Yuliana, who plans on going to Oxnard Community College in southern California, maintained that it has not been very difficult balancing work and school. But sometimes, she admitted, she would rather go out with her friends instead of working. Her classmate at Richmond High School, Monica Lopez, said that she works a few hours a week in her parents' "lonchera," a Mexican lunch food wagon, in Richmond. Both were excited about their upcoming graduation in June. Yuliana described the situation facing young people who live in the Richmond area. "I know a lot of people who have dropped out of school so they could keep working because they need the money at that moment," she said.

In Richmond, the median income of Latino families, according to the 2006 American Community Survey, is $47,920. That falls below the city's general average of $49,358 per year, and contrasts hugely with that of white families: $81,541. In Oakland, where Victor was born, the annual median family income is $45,552 and that of Latino families is $39,792.

The gap in the average income of Latino families and white families is even greater. The average income of the latter group is $108,117.

Orlando Ramos, principal of Richmond High School, mentioned that the majority of the students leaving school do so because they want to work to help their family. That situation worries him even more "because of how the economy is right now."

Seventy-eight percent of the students at Richmond High School are low-income and around 80 percent of the student body is Latino. Of that group, 40 percent are undocumented, the principal estimated.

Pat on the Back

Victor said he works because he does not want to be "one more burden" for his parents. His mother is a homemaker and his father is a house painter. They are four siblings in all. He is also saving up to go to college where he wants to study journalism or medicine.

He acknowledged that it is not easy to work and study at the same time. When he worked five days a week, his GPA, which used to fluctuate between 3.20 and 3.0, dropped to 2.0.

His parents, Victor remembered, were shocked by the changes in his grades and asked him to stop working; they promised him that they would help him financially. And they did. But when he realized that his father "was struggling to cover expenses" at home, Victor decided to go back to his old job, where they pay him $8 per hour. At school, they also noticed the change. "Everyone would say 'you look dead tired'," the young man said, chuckling as he remembered the comments people would make about how he looked.

He only works three days a week now: Friday, Saturday and Sunday, for a total of 25 hours. Even with that schedule, he acknowledged, it is difficult for him to do his homework. He admits that he still "gets behind a little every now and then." In addition to not having time "for having fun." Work has also engrained values in him, he assured. "I'm more independent now and I'm learning what life is about."

"It's difficult," Victor said about his situation. And he gave himself a little pat on the back explaining that his parents' support is fundamental in continuing to motivate him to get ahead in school and work. "If we don't have somebody's support, what's the point in continuing? You don't feel like doing anything," he concluded.

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