MINIMUM-AGE WORKERS : Some After-School Jobs Offer More Than Jst Fries and $4.25 an Hour : Some After-School Jobs Offer More Than Just Fries and $4.25 an Hour

It’s 3 p.m. on a weekday and the after-school exodus has begun.

High school students swarm to do what comes naturally: They head for the beaches, the playgrounds and the eatery hangouts. They escape into the leisure of teen-age chitchat and play.

But not all of them.

There’s another exodus--one also involving thousands of high school students--that’s changing the employment landscape of Orange County.

These are the students who work after school. Most of them are examples of how the American work ethic has filtered down to the pre-adult level as never before.

Tamim Azizadah of Anaheim’s Savanna High School is one such worker.

But Tamim isn’t the usual after-school employee. He doesn’t serve burgers, stack dishes, box groceries, clip hedges, pump gas or take atickets.

He works instead in the softly lit, high-tech ambiance of a third-floor complex in the Anaheim Civic Center. For 2 hours each late afternoon, he sits before a bank of computer screens, monitoring and creating complicated graphs and designs.

Tamim is a computer operator for the city’s traffic management center, a part-time entry-level job he has held since October.

And as a teen-ager he gets paid handsomely--much higher than the state-mandated minimum of $4.25 an hour. His wage: $9.21 an hour, the city’s going rate for that post.

“He’s a real bright kid and a whiz at computers,” says his city supervisor, Jon Ringler.

But unlike many other job-commuting students, Tamim--a sophomore and honors student at Savanna--can’t drive himself to work.

At 15, he’s too young to have a driver license.

Granted, Tamim isn’t typical of the local teen-age job market.

The vast majority of students still work in the traditional fields such as fast food, child care, supermarkets, movie houses, automotive shops and theme parks. And they are still paid at or close to the basic rates, usually from the $4.25 minimum to about $5.50.

But young Tamim does signify a small but growing sub-trend, especially in Orange County: More high school students are working in higher paying, higher status jobs that are a far cry from the more familiar, lower-image entry-level jobs.

Consider some others:

Mindi Pace, 17, of Marina High, who earns $9.50 to $11.50 an hour as a nursing-facility aide for a major countywide registry, Health Professionals Inc.

Dorinda Putt, 18, of Dana Hills High, who makes up to $9 an hour as a teller in Security Pacific Bank’s Laguna Niguel branch.

Brad Romoff, 18, of Tustin High, who’s a $7.85-per-hour assistant chef at the posh Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Center.

Todd Robey, 17, of Edison High, who was a $9-per-hour city lifeguard last summer in Huntington Beach, and who will be earning $6 an hour as a swimming instructor this summer for the Camp Frasier day camp in Laguna Hills.

All have moved up from the traditional low-paid fast-food or retail clerk circuit--jobs they regard as being on the lower rungs.

“I like what I’m doing now--it’s more challenging, and gives me more responsibilities and people-involvement,” explains Todd, who worked once as a counter clerk for a quick-service sandwich shop.

“No, I wouldn’t want to go back” to fast-food operations, he says. “I wouldn’t feel right. It would be like a step down.”

There are more high school students working than ever before in Orange County.

While the state Employment Development Department doesn’t provide data on actual high school student totals, the EDD says more than 100,000 workers in Orange County’s 16- to 19-year-old labor force are employed during seasonal peaks.

“It’s a safe guess that well over half of the (high school) seniors countywide are working, or have worked, while in school,” says Ralph Welsh, career center director at Tustin High.

This same estimate is voiced by job-training specialists at other high schools, and it is similar to a 1982 nationwide study conducted by the federally affiliated National Center for Education Statistics, which found that 70% of high school seniors were working or had worked.

There’s another--and more sweepingly obvious--reason for the growing high school work force: The youth job market has never been better in Orange County.

For 2 years, the county’s overall unemployment rate has been under 4%, and the rate in recent months has hovered at or just under 3%.

And major expansions in numerous fields, including high-tech complexes, financial offices, health-care services and big hotels, as well as the retail centers and food establishments, have meant even more openings for entry-level workers.

Yet hundreds of jobs are going begging, especially the low-paid, low-status ones that have traditionally been filled by teen-agers.

Consider the case of McDonald’s. To woo more young workers, the fast-food chain has in some areas lowered its employee age limit to 15 1/2 and raised its counter-crew pay to $4.50-$5, while at the same time hiring more senior citizens to help meet the employee shortage.

Even the huge theme parks have felt the hiring pinch. At Disneyland each year, hundreds of Orange County high school students are needed to help fill 4,000 jobs--once an easy enough goal. But today, the Anaheim park reports, it is unable to fill 30% of those jobs from the regular market.

Why such a dramatic shortfall?

A nationwide demographic paradox--the so-called “baby bust” phenomenon--is a crucial reason. Even as the demand for teen-age workers increases in Orange County and other high-employment regions, the teen-age population has declined, the result of the low birth rates of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A case in point: From 1980 to 1988 in Orange County, the population in the 15- to 19-year-old bracket fell from 186,160 to 159,600--or from 9.6% to 7.1% of the county’s overall population.

But the “baby bust” trend doesn’t explain it all. Job specialists say another reason, in Orange County at least, is a youth market that’s now more competitive and diverse.

The county’s expanding high-tech employers are “turning more to the youth market,” says Charles Johnston, career center director at Corona del Mar High. “They know our kids are smarter and more capable, and that they’ve grown up in the technological age. We’re talking about students who are truly computer-literate.”

The Capistrano-Laguna Beach Regional Occupational Program, a training program for high school students in south Orange County, reflects this. More than 60% of that program’s incoming job requests are now for computer operators and medical/dental office personnel.

For many students, it’s no longer a case of whether they can find work, says Dick Watts, career education director for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

“Today, they are being wooed as never before, and more students are finding they can be pickier,” says Watts, who’s also an official with the nonprofit Youth Employment Service program.

Such a hiring bonanza has its spoiling effect.

“This kind of market is too easy for some students. It’s too much of a good thing, and they aren’t very serious about work--particularly in staying with a job,” says Margy Plum, Coastline Regional Occupational Program’s representative at Marina High in Huntington Beach.

But Plum and most other job specialists interviewed say they believe that today’s teen-age work force is overall a higher-caliber lot.

“They aren’t just better educated and better prepared,” says Dana Hills High career counselor Linda Deckert. “They are better team players, more concerned and more dedicated. They are, on the whole, simply more mature.”

Dorinda Putt, the 18-year-old senior at Dana Hills High, is certainly a vivacious and energetic student.

She has to be. She puts in a full schedule at the school in Dana Point--classes from 8:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., including accounting, government and composition.

Then she drives straight to a Security Pacific Bank branch in a Laguna Niguel shopping complex, where she works at least 2 hours each afternoon as a $9-per-hour bank teller.

Then on weekends, she works as a $4.25-per-hour hostess for a large restaurant in a shopping complex across from the bank.

Why such a tough schedule? “I have a car to support,” she says laughingly, “and I treated myself to a Mexican cruise last summer.”

But it isn’t just having spending money. Like many other student workers, she’s also saving up for college, where she plans to major in--of course--banking and finance.

And, like many more students, Putt is an example of upward job mobility.

Her first part-time job, at 16, was as a “scoop and serve” clerk at a Dana Point ice creamery. Indeed, most of her friends were doing pretty much the same work at pizza parlors, supermarkets and theme parks.

“Sure, you meet a lot of neat people in these kinds of jobs,” says Putt of the traditional lower-status service jobs. “But to me, these jobs are sort of a dead end.”

A year ago, she got a “far more interesting job” as the hostess at the Laguna Niguel restaurant. And her biggest break--the job with Security Pacific--came last June.

Putt, who had taken finance classes at Dana Hills High under the Capistrano-Laguna Beach Regional Occupational Program, first worked 6 weeks for class credit as a bank intern. Then she was hired as a regular part-time teller under Security Pacific’s expanded program for employing students for peak business periods.

“You feel more independent but also more responsible about things,” says Putt of her current part-time jobs. “Believe me, you grow up--a lot faster!”

Mindi Pace couldn’t agree more.

The 17-year-old Marina High senior is also a “graduate” of the traditional job circuit. She has been a free-lance baby sitter, discount store cashier and fast-food (fried chicken) counter clerk.

And Mindi has also had training for a new field--last year as a nursing aide in Marina High classes provided under the Coastline Regional Occupational Program.

Now she works weekends as a certified nursing assistant for the Health Professionals Inc. registry. Her placements have included mostly nursing homes for the elderly. Her hourly pay is $9.50 for day shifts, up to $11.50 at nights.

“I have this deal with my parents--as long as I keep my grades up, I can work.”

Obviously, Mindi, like many other working students, disagrees with those critics who fear part-time jobs can undercut academic performance and make students more materialistic.

“I don’t think so. My grades are still up there. And I think working--especially on a job like this one--makes you a better, a fuller person,” says Mindi, who projects a natural warmth and cheerfulness. “You learn a lot more about caring, and about one-on-one relations.”

Then Mindi, who will major in nursing in college, adds: “It’s a tremendous boost to anyone’s career plans. It’s giving me a real head start on my future.”

But many adult customers and co-workers find it hard to believe that students that young are holding higher-status jobs, and not manning burger-and-fries counters or sweeping floors.

Someone like the slender and soft-spoken Tamim Azizadah, in particular, draws the most astonished comments.

It’s easy to see why.

When the Savanna High student first joined the city of Anaheim work force last summer, he was a $4.25-an-hour intern, placed under a federal program coordinated by the Private Industry Council of Orange County.

He was then only 14.

Now 15 and on the city’s regular part-time payroll, he’s still the city’s youngest technical employee.

“It’s a hands-on, dream-come-true job. It’s exciting, but now I’m doing it for real,” says Tamim, a computer and video-game devotee, who helps design basic graphics for city traffic control studies.

But outside his city computer den, “when people ask me what my job is, they say a kid like me must still be in school--meaning college.”

When Tamim explains, yes, he’s a sophomore all right --but in high school --the reactions are usually predictable.

“They give me a sort of double take, and their jaws kind of drop,” says Tamim with a shy grin. “They don’t really believe it.”