Mark Gail/THE WASHINGTON POST - Alicia Heredia danced and sung "No Bullies" at the District's "One City Summer Fun" at the Banneker Recreation Center. To help provide alternatives for unemployed youths, the city developed a new initiative called “One City Summer Fun,” is a new initiative to help provide alternatives for the city’s unemployed youths.
Mekayell Lucas expected to return to her Southeast home after her freshman year at Shaw University in North Carolina to spend this summer like the last: working with elementary school children through the District’s summer jobs program.
But when the 19-year-old tried to sign up in March, the program was already full. For more than two months, she has sought summer work — including jobs at CVS and Target — because she said she needs the income.
“I won’t be able to buy clothes and shoes that I need, or help my mom with bills,” Lucas said. “I think that’s not fair.”
Lucas is one of about 8,000 young D.C. residents now searching for something to do this summer after a $322 million budget shortfall led officials to dramatically scale back the city’s troubled Summer Youth Employment Program.
The program, which pays 14- to 21-year-olds to work in government agencies and local businesses, has for the first time capped the number of participants. This summer, it will employ 12,000 people, down from more than 20,000 in each of the previous two years, when the program had no cap.
And on top of the summer jobs cuts, the city has 5,600 fewer summer-school slots and 1,500 fewer spaces in programs through the D.C. Children and Youth Investment Trust, a public-private organization that offers grants to nonprofits serving youths.
With fewer opportunities for young people to earn money this summer, city advocates are working to fill the gaps and trying to understand why the District hasn’t done more to promote alternatives for job-seekers left empty-handed.
“Many of us are scrambling to see what we can come up with for kids who are not going to have this [employment] opportunity,” said Lori Kaplan, director of the Latin American Youth Center. “It’s going to be tough.”
‘A job ought to be a job’
The cuts are the latest in a string of setbacks for a popular D.C. summer rite of passage — including million-dollar overruns — and raise concerns over keeping city youngsters busy this season.
Since the program began in 1979, under then-Mayor Marion Barry, it has grown exponentially in popularity and cost; participants can now earn up to $1,000 for part-time work, and many parents have come to rely on it as a way to keep kids doing something productive.
In 2008, after then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty pushed to give a job to any young person who wanted one, more than 21,000 participants enrolled, overwhelming the government’s ability to keep track of them. Youths were repeatedly sent to the wrong workplace, or weren’t paid, or were paid for doing little, if anything. More than 200 participants didn’t meet the city residency requirement, and the program ran $30 million over budget.
Last year, 20,000 people enrolled at a cost of more than $20 million. Youth-advocacy organizations complained that the program was failing to teach good skills and habits because some of the jobs entailed collecting a paycheck for sitting silently in a classroom.
This year, Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s administration scaled back the program to rein in its cost. Only 12,000 participants were accepted this summer, and for the first time employers were allowed to interview and screen applicants. The city has also been running mandatory orientation sessions in the past few weeks, teaching participants to be on time and to behave professionally. Participants have been told that they will be fired if they break the program’s rules.
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