Part-Time Jobs Work for Them, Area Students Say, Despite Report

For 17-year-old Charles Morales, working part time at the Century Theater downtown is a good thing. He works between nine and 27 hours a week, and would work more if if they let him.

He hands 10% to 20% of each paycheck over to his mother to help out with household expenses and spends the rest fixing up his truck.

True, he no longer has time to wrestle on the Ventura High School team. And sometimes he gets home so late from work that he is too tired to do his homework, but he says he knows the importance of school.

“The higher the education, the more you’ll get paid,” he says practically.

Morales sounds like the kind of hard-working teenager most parents and teachers would like to see more of, but a study released Thursday by the National Research Council in Washington questioned conventional beliefs that part-time work for high school students builds character and responsibility in young adults.

Although the report found that moderate part-time work can reap many benefits, it warned that teens working 15 to 20 hours a week or more during the school year can raise the likelihood of drug and alcohol abuse, delinquency and lower educational attainment over the long term.

The national report also concluded that most teenage workers are not struggling minorities trying to assist their families or save for college, but white, middle-class students who spend most of their money on clothes, music, cars or entertainment for themselves.

With few exceptions, Ventura County officials expressed surprise at the report’s findings. But even without local surveys, they said the research council’s results did not jibe with what they see in local classrooms.

“I don’t see that here at our school,” said Jack Loritz, a guidance counselor at Thousand Oaks High School. “Most of the kids that work maintain the grades.”

He said there are some teens who start working, consider it a new adventure and forget about school.

“But after awhile they realize that school is important and they continue on,” he said.

Ventura Unified School Supt. Joseph Spirito also had doubts about the report.

“I would almost say it’s the opposite,” he said. “When I see kids with drugs and alcohol, or getting involved with gangs, either they are not involved with sports, or not working. It’s because they have so much free time that is not used constructively.”

But Cal Remington, the head of Ventura County’s Probation Agency, said the report makes sense. He said that if kids spend more time working, that often means less time spent at home with their families.

“You see a lot of those middle-class kids working at the mall,” he said. “It becomes a home away from home. It pulls them away from family and school, where they need to be concentrating their attention at that age.”

He said teens who are contributing to the household income are one thing, but for many teenagers, the extra cash is spent on alcohol or drugs because it is their money.

“Maybe [work] builds in too much independence too soon,” Remington said.

But Mary French, whose son Jason works at the Century 16 theaters in east Ventura, said she thinks his job helps keep him in line.

“It keeps him busy,” she said. “I believe it keeps him out of trouble, and he has to concentrate on schoolwork.”

Indeed, Jason, 16, says he tries to get his homework done before he goes to work. But if ever he can’t, he will take it to work.

He said he spends some of his paycheck on CDs and stashes the rest in the bank.

Jason said he strongly disagrees with the report’s findings that students who work are more likely to use drugs or alcohol.

“I don’t do that,” he said. “If you’re going to do that [drugs], why even go to school? You might as well quit school, work for money for drugs, and just be a loser, pretty much.”

But no one disagrees that working does give teenagers more independence.

“I have money to buy gas now,” said Charles Morales with a smile. “But I wouldn’t do something like go driving drunk.”

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