Wages up, Employment Down

Unexpected drop of teen workers despite the minimum wage increase in January.

By Derikka McClain-Small

Multiple studies have found that the increase in minimum wage leads to higher unemployment for teens. Due to older workers' lack of income or not, wanting to hire teens with a lack of education in the workplace causes them to not be eligible for the job.

Recently, an increase of $10.30 an hour to $11.15 an hour, effective Jan. 1, brings the goal of increasing the minimum wage by 85 cents to $12.00 an hour by Jan. 2023, a step closer.

“This is currently my third job. I was unemployed for about three months trying to get this job because the paperwork and processing took a very long time period. " Sophomore Makhia Jones said. "I did not change jobs due to any personal reasons, I just wanted a higher pay. I don’t think pay has changed me, but I think I’m more motivated to go to work knowing I am getting paid well for what I do. ”

Increasing the minimum wage has caused some businesses to lay off employees and, as a result, raised unemployment levels. Increasing the minimum wage does not only affect those earning it, it also affects those who were already earning more than the minimum.

With higher minimum wages comes a reduction in employee income costs and a decrease in worker capacity. Low-wage employers, particularly in the restaurant

Senior Lliani Cassiraghi works at Red Racks Thrift Store on Mar. 28. Photo by Derikka McClain-Small.

industry, also have minimum wage costs through small price increases in restaurants.

“When looking for jobs, I found it hard to find one with the ability to work around my personal life, like school and multiple after school activities. Still, having to work those days felt like forever. Then when getting my check, seeing I worked 9 hours and am not feeling like I’m getting paid what I feel I should, getting paid almost 150 weekly. After changing my jobs, I see my new jobs pay $15.30 an hour, which helps me with my busy schedule so I can pick and choose what days’ work best for me. ” Senior Daeriashia Mercer said.

Some businesses cannot afford to pay their workers the increased minimum wage and will be forced to close, lay off staff, or reduce hiring. The wage increases have been shown to make it more difficult for low-skilled workers with little or no work experience to find jobs like teen workers.

“The work wasn’t hard at all; it was a first good job to have. But not getting paid as much anymore is really starting to affect me financially because of paying the things such as gas, car insurance and other needed necessities. Which is why I started looking for other jobs with higher pay so that issue can be resolved, ” junior Nataly Barraza said. With the increase in minimum wage comes both positives and negatives. Teen workers could be pushed out of jobs and businesses could face cuts due to low staff or no staff. Because of business cuts leaving out jobs, not just teens, but older workers looking for a place to get extra money would also not have those chances.

Having a job in high school can be hard for young workers. The working field brings many complications into teens' lives, such as balancing time, relationships, and schoolwork. Prices for necessities increase as well. While an increased paycheck is good, the other financial increases that come along can be straining on some.

"Minimum wage increasing effects those who have little job experience by increasing the appeal to certain jobs, and hopefully increasing applications for jobs. the downside of that could result in under-qualified people applying for jobs, leaving experienced workers to pick up their slack. Along with that, it's frustrating for workers who already know what they are doing and have exelled at their positions to see people getting hired in for more than they did or even more than they get paid right now. " said junior Alex Beynon.

Red Racks worker senior Enrique Miranda checks out items for a customer on Mar. 28. Photo by Derikka McClain-Small.

Charitable Pastries

To raise money for the Special Olympics, two groups banded together to organize a competition between staff.

By Cruz Thapa

During the Adam Sandler themed spirit week Mar. 31 through Feb. 4, the Booster club proposed partnering with Leadership to create a fundraiser for the Special Olympics.

“Booster club was personally in charge of the Special Olympics. When they came to us, our job was to create and host the fundraiser. " Junior Leadership member Lan-Linh Tran said. "The partnership worked well since as Leadership alone, we aren’t allowed to raise money, but the booster club didn’t have the publicity or power to host something schoolwide as we did. ”

After a brief planning period, Leadership had agreed to do a competition to pie staff in the face. Tran began searching for candidates for the competition.

Staff members Luke Young, Dr. Edward Tate, Dr, Rebecca Callaway, and Dr. Jason Callaway accept the results of the fundraiser after seniors Gianna Rizzo and Macy Goetz pie the winner and loser on Feb. 4. Photo by Kahlil Mudd.

"I started asking a selective group of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors [which] teachers they wanted to see get pied in the face. Then I created a list out of the most popular picks and emailed those teachers asking if they would like to participate. Nine teachers responded positively. I could only choose six out of the nine contestants to compete, however. " Tran said. "We also ended up having Dr. Tate participate too. When I was talking to him face-to-face and asked if he would like to compete, he gave a confident ‘Yes…Even though I’m gonna win. Do you think there’ll even be a competition, ’ so we had to have him in. "

The process of asking staff had to be carefully laid out. During the last pie-in-the-face event, the participants were all pied rather than just a few.

“There were a lot of teachers who wanted to be involved with the fundraiser, but were also afraid of being pied in the face. I was told that a while ago we had like three contestants with one winner, but all three of them got pied instead of just the one. Staff didn’t forget that experience. I had to promise most of the teachers that not all of them would get pied, ” Tran Said.

With all of the candidates gathered, the competition finally began during the first lunch of spirit week. Some students coordinated their donations as a group to get their preferred staff member pied.

“On one shift, five to six boys from the football team and N2Sports came up to us. They were talking about how they wanted Dr. Mr. Callaway to get pied in the face and

Dr. Edward Tate and Dr. Jason Callaway pose together after being pied during the winter sports assembly on Feb. 4. Photo by Aunna Davis.

asked me how the whole thing works. " Junior Leadership member Kylia Valenti said. "After telling them that having either the most and least money in your bucket gets you pied, they started dumping money into every bucket that they thought had more than Dr. Mr. Callaway. ”

Once the winter sports assembly came around, precautions had to be taken before the results were announced.

"We were setting up during the assembly since other activities needed a lot of space. We had chairs lined up for the contestants and then we had parchment paper lined on the floor. " Valenti said. "We wanted to leave as little of a mark as possible so the custodians wouldn't have a workload. We had also bought bonnets, goggles, and trash bags for the competitors to stay clean and safe. "

When Dr. Tate and Dr. Jason Callaway were announced as the winner and the loser, respectively, the student section had gone wild with excitement, according to Valenti.

"It took forever to get the freshmen to quiet down after the hype of pieing Dr. Tate and Dr. Callaway in the face. I think that's a good thing though. " Valenti said. "It just seemed like the underclassmen were the ones that were amused the most. I heard students talking about wanting to do another pie-in-theface next year as well. "

Tran and Valenti also recognize that underclassmen donated the most money.

"Not only were they the most amused from the event, they were also the ones that donated the most money, " Tran said.

With all of the fundraiser’s successes, Leadership still feels that improvements are to be made in the next rendition.

“We didn’t have time to print colorful pictures of the teachers’ faces on the donation buckets. I remember some students coming up not knowing who some of the staff was by name. If we had pictures of their faces, students could very easily imagine donating to someone they haven't had in class. " Tran said.

Substituting Substitutes

Due to the pandemic, schools across the state face staff shortages.

By Grace Hicks

Eighty-six districts across Missouri closed their schools in January due to the staff shortages, including nearby Park Hill South High School.

Several state education departments across the nation, including Missouri and Kansas, have lowered the qualifications to be a substitute. At Winnetonka, substitutes no longer need a teaching certificate- they are only required to have graduated high school and have passed a background check.

Even with the benefits of allowing more people to substitute, schools continue to run short on substitutes, so teachers are still substituting for other teachers.

When teachers first started subbing for each other, they were giving up their planning time with little to no pay in return.

Though the teachers substituting now get paid for their time, it was something that they had to bring up to higher-ups.

"We are now paid more to fill in during our planning period than we used to be, " Said English teacher Melissa Camarda, "But we did have to push for it.

Some students believe one issue has come with a reliance on substitutes; their teachers will find substitutes only for them to show up late, if at all.

However, some students also say they are not heavily affected by the teachers' absences. This mindset is a result of Covid19 and having been in full or partial quarantine for the past school year; they learned to be responsible and caught up with their work by themselves.

The virus has desensitized students to the lack of a physically present teacher in their classrooms. Despite this, students feel frustrated that substitutes cannot continue the class' curriculum by themselves. When the teacher returns, they have to catch their students up on the work they did not understand while the teacher was away. This delay can cause students to fall behind the curriculum and cause more stress for both the student and the teacher.

"I don't like how [the substitutes] can't teach...they aren't familiar with the subject that they're teaching, " junior Sarah Mohamed said.

The working environment for staff seems to only get more difficult, yet the pay stays stagnant.

"I think that [the staff shortage will] continue post Covid, " said Camarda, "I also do think that if school districts haven't upped the pay for subs, they need to.

Math teacher Luke Young covers for English teacher Melissa Camarda's English class on Mar. 8. Photo by Grace Hicks.