Children Pay a High Price to Earn a Wage

Sometimes the real world does not wait for the magic of 18 or 21.

Sometimes it sneaks in early, taps a kid on the shoulder and starts issuing demands.

And then a 15-year-old boy stakes out a spot among grown men and waits on a corner for work. A 12-year-old spends her evenings and weekends selling clothes at a swap meet.

These are the youngest members of the American labor force, pushed into the work world by economic necessity. In many cases, they are the only barrier to their families sliding headlong into poverty.

It is difficult to say just how many kids work because of need. Studies are few. But teachers and counselors throughout the San Fernando Valley tell of kids who teeter-totter daily between the workaday world of adults and their lives as students.

“Their families are not making it,” said Maxine Cunningham, a teacher at Monroe High School in North Hills. “Parents need the help.”

So do kids. Poverty saves its toughest blows for those under 18. Children make up 27% of the population, but 40% of the poor. In the Valley, 15.8% of all children live in poverty.

The money kids earn--often at work that violates child labor laws--buys groceries, pays the rent and helps their families survive.

“They’re working because they need to . . . and they work mega-hours,” said Johanna Spira, a teacher at Canoga Park High School. “It’s not uncommon to see them working 30 hours a week.”

Teachers see them in school, nodding off in the middle of class, missing assignments, falling behind. Some enroll in continuation or night schools, where the schedule is more flexible. And when balancing everything becomes too hard, some leave school--part of the “fallout” of recent hard times, said Spira, who has worked at Canoga High for eight years. “I see more of that than I’ve seen in the past.”

Growing up under such circumstances makes adolescence a different journey, one that is forcing some parents, schools and youngsters to redefine this time of life. For these kids, the clock speeds ahead and a part of their youth is over, even while they are still in it.

“In my house nobody pays rent except for me,” said Enrique Bonilla, an 18-year-old senior at Grant High School in Van Nuys. “I take care of the rent, my mom takes care of the other bills, then we go half and half with the food.”

Without his help, the family would have to survive on about $800 a month.

Before the sun is up on this Saturday morning, Enrique is at Burger King. He works the cash register, cooks, cleans and after eight hours heads home to his North Hollywood apartment for a second shift, this time as apartment manager.

Before this day is over, he will repair a ceiling fan, help chop down tree branches overhanging the parking lot and clean a resident’s carpet.

Enrique has found room on his shoulders for all the responsibilities he carries--including 16 hours at Burger King on weekends and hours more at the apartment building. He has made room for swim team practice, computers and, finally, a girlfriend, who is willing to go with him to clean and paint apartments because he has so little free time.

Man of the House

There are times when responsibilities collide and he must decide which to tend to first. In the winter when it rained, he chose work.

“A couple times I had to miss school,” he said. “We had a lot of leaks in the building. I could’ve come, but the people were overflowing with water, so I had to take care of them.”

This kind of responsibility is not new to him; Enrique has been playing the role of man of the house since he was a 7-year-old in El Salvador. That was the year his father left Sonsonate and came to the United States in search of work. For half a year, there was support. Then there was nothing.

“As time went on, he kind of forgot about us,” Enrique said.

At the age of 10 he sold newspapers in El Salvador, to help buy food for himself and his brother. When he came to America at 13, his first job was working construction with an uncle. “The first thing I did was give [the money] to my mother,” he said.

At 15, he became a day laborer standing on a Van Nuys street among men waiting for work. He found it, spending the summer hauling, tearing down fences and cleaning out a warehouse.

But this, he said, will not be his destiny. He is looking forward to graduation, starting his own carpet-cleaning business and saving enough money so that his mother--who cleans houses and works in a factory--can have a vacation.

“That’s my prosperity,” he said, nodding toward a rickety, black van. “That’s what will get me out of Burger King.”

Teachers say the kids who work are often filling in for absent parents.

“The comment I hear most often is, ‘I’m going to help my mom, I need to help my mom,’ ” said Gary Jimenez of Overcoming Obstacles, a program that teaches life management and entrepreneurial skills to youngsters.

“That’s a very common trend that we see. . . . They’re doing it for the good of the family, but I think they’re compromising the basic things that kids need to grow, for development emotionally, physically, educationally.”

Recognizing that many kids need to work, schools have tried to make it easier for them to be both student and employee.

Through the school district’s Work Experience program, working students can receive credit for the hours they spend on the job and are allowed to leave school early each day to work. During once-a-week classes, they learn about benefits, budgeting, work ethics and conflict resolution--things they need to know about to be successful workers.

“They’re working everywhere,” said Cunningham. “They’re sales people, working in automotives. They’re at Fedco, they’re at McDonald’s. You name it.

“Our main goal is to make sure they keep coming to school.”

Many kids do. At Grant High School, several work 30 hours a week and manage average, or even above-average, grades, said Alan Ringer, the Work Experience teacher. But 30 hours a week was too much for 18-year-old Joanne Alvarez. She would oversleep and miss first period, and her grades dropped in each class.

But she could not leave her job.

As a housekeeper, Joanne’s mother receives no benefits. As a bagger at Ralphs, Joanne earns almost $6 an hour plus benefits.

“Sometimes I don’t even want to work,” Joanne said, sitting in the Career Center at Grant High School, “but I don’t want to leave that job because they have all the benefits.”

So Joanne talked to her boss and cut her time to 20 hours.

Working to Survive

For now, Colin Smith, who is legally blind, works only a few hours a week at the West Valley Occupational Center detailing cars to help his mom, who is raising him and his brother. The family survives on his mother’s salary of about $20,000.

“I just wish I could do more,” Colin said.

“I eat the most food at the house,” said the senior at Van Nuys’ Birmingham High. “I was tired of seeing [my mother] struggle trying to make ends meet by herself.”

Not every student is able to cut back or limit hours. And most are not enrolled in Work Experience, so there is no one monitoring them.

One survey by the local office of the U.S. Department of Labor found that 52% of students worked without the required permits. And some worked long hours or in occupations prohibited by law for their age group. The kind of work that Enrique did as a day laborer and a construction worker is prohibited by law.

In California, “the public seems to be schizophrenic in terms of child labor law,” said Jose Millan, interim state labor commissioner. “I don’t think you will find anyone who says minors who work should be unprotected, but that’s where the unanimity stops.”

Outside Washington and Sacramento, there is tolerance of the measures families and kids must take just to make it.

On high school campuses, students who do not qualify for the Work Experience program sometimes devise other ways to leave school early each day. They may sign up for off-campus vocational courses or other activities and never show up. Instead, they head straight to work.

“We could put a stop to it, but the reality is they need to do this to survive,” one Work Experience teacher said.

Ed Moreno, executive director of the social service agency El Centro de Amistad in Canoga Park, says the decisions these kids make are driven by need and are not necessarily wrong.

“They’re not saying no to a diploma, they’re just saying, ‘I’ve got to work.’ . . . They can get their diploma and skills later,” he said.

These are the students who fill up the adult school rosters and the classes of vocational and occupational centers.

“There is nothing sacred about K-12,” Moreno said.

Inside the bungalows of tiny Aliso High, a continuation school in Reseda, Lorena Medina was trying to learn all the things she missed.

On this day, the leadership class was restless, passing notes and chattering until the teacher had to remind them that they are leaders. Medina, 19, was mostly quiet, speaking only to offer a suggestion for a community-service project.

“My friends tell me I need to loosen up, but I don’t know how,” she said outside class. “I don’t know what it’s like to be a teenager.”

Medina started her first job at the age of 12, and in the years that followed few things have been more important to her.

First one then both parents became ill and the children worked to hold the household together. At 12 she worked at a swap meet, then selling clothes in a mall. A string of mostly low-wage jobs followed, and always she handed her earnings over to her parents. Work filled her evenings and her weekends, and eventually it took her away from school for days at a time. Then it took her away, completely.

At Sutter Junior High School in Canoga Park, she was a good student and took honors classes, but by the time she entered Cleveland High in Reseda, she was working two jobs and had no time for school. She was 15 when she left.

“I was so tired,” she said. “I didn’t even care.”

Things are better at home now. Her father is healthy and working again, but now it is Medina who is sick. She has ulcers and other medical problems and is under a doctor’s care.

Yet there is no bitterness when she talks about those years. Mostly she is curious about the things she missed, and at Aliso High, she can satisfy her curiosity.

“She is a survivor,” said her counselor, Sharon Simon.

At the beginning of the school year, Medina was all student, doing everything asked of her and more. She finished assignments, then tutored her friends. She stayed afterward to help teachers. She brought in enchiladas and baked goods to share.

Medina dreams of attending culinary school. She’s on track to finish school by June but is in no hurry to leave early.

“I want to go to the prom and grad night,” she said. “It all sounds so interesting. I want to live like a teenager for at least a year.”

But by spring, Medina’s dreams seemed to be unraveling. She began working full time in March to earn money for college, she said.

She returned to work against her doctor’s orders, and since then her medical condition has worsened. There have been frequent trips to the hospital and costly ulcer medications. One prescription alone costs $398 for a one-month supply. Although she receives Medi-Cal, the program will not pay for certain prescriptions.

So, in a cruel twist, Medina must work to cover some of her health-care expenses.

Once again, work has come between Medina and her education. She has been away from school for stretches at a time, and her teachers worry that--as close as she is to reaching her goal--she might not graduate.

Already, Medina’s hopes of attending the prom have died. She bought her dress and shoes and had chosen a date. Then the prom was canceled for lack of participation.

But graduation, she declares, will be different. She’ll finish the course work, and on June 20 she’ll be there with other Aliso High School students, accepting a diploma.

“If there’s one thing I’m going to do this year, it’s graduate,” she said. “I may have missed my prom and all that, but graduation? Never.”

Wednesday: Skyrocketing poverty is taxing an already thin system of social services in the Valley.

* RELATED STORIES: B1, B12