Teenagers Put Their New Skills to Work

After a summer of sometimes backbreaking work to improve Millikan Middle School, a group of student laborers was looking only for cold sodas and good food Thursday.

So they had a barbecue to help celebrate their work as part of the school’s Summer Youth Employment Training Program. It was a welcome break from their days pouring concrete to make benches, a fish pond and a grill.

“They have developed a myriad of different skills out of this program that hopefully they can take with them for entry-level jobs after school,” said Floyd Jones, Millikan’s wood-shop teacher and the coordinator for the six-week program for at-risk and low-income youth.

“The concrete work is just good hard work,” Jones said. “It’s just something that is going to test their mettle.”

The celebration marked the end of the fifth year Millikan has participated in the federally funded program. This year’s group of 25 students received $5.75 an hour to work 30 hours each week.

In all, the LAUSD coordinated activities for about 10,000 students, ages 14 to 18, who participated in similar programs, said Olivia Cueva-Fernandez, the program’s coordinator for the school district.

At Millikan, students used the opportunity to improve the school’s appearance. Besides the outdoor projects, students worked indoors at constructing display cabinets, cleaning rooms and affixing wood paneling to walls and counters.

“We have high expectations,” said Rami Vardi, 14, who put his computer expertise to work when rewiring the computer room. “It’s got to be perfect. It’s a hard job, but we got it done.”

Although the work was often challenging, the students reveled in their accomplishments.

“It was hard work but we had fun doing it,” said Tony Lopez, 15, who did some of the paneling work. “It’s taught us that we can accomplish anything we want if we stick to it.”