It may be summer break, but 47 De Soto High students could be found in the school throughout June cleaning, painting, moving furniture, removing old flooring and installing the new flooring.
The students were taking part in a summer work study program that has grown every year since it began more than 10 years ago, Principal Jon Roop said.
“The first couple of years it was more or less outside doing mulching, landscaping,” he said. “Then we started bringing them inside to do some projects.”
The students – ranging from incoming freshmen to incoming seniors – didn’t earn course credit but they did earn $11.15 an hour.
“It’s been a good program for the kids,” said John Brown, head wrestling coach and a high school social studies teacher who leads the program. “They learn and they work. That’s the main thing. We do help maintenance out quite a bit.”
Students must apply and then be chosen to be part of the program. The students work 8-11:15 a.m. Monday through Friday in June.
Projects vary each year. One year, the students converted a classroom into an engineering lab, Roop said.
This summer, with help from Brown, paraprofessional Aaron Gamble and shop teacher Charles Lewis, one group of students removed old flooring from a health classroom and four offices and then prepped the areas for new flooring and then installed vinyl plank flooring in the office and carpet in the classroom.
It was the first time incoming junior Bradyn Santonge took part in the work study program. He was on the flooring crew and learned how to use a machine to cut up the old flooring.
“It’s not a bad deal,” Lewis said. “It gives them a little bit of insight into the working world. It lets them see what they want to do and what they don’t want to do.”
Another group of students helped custodians move desks and other furniture out of classrooms so the floors could be waxed.
Incoming freshmen Izzy Brown, Peyton Pinson, Lorallei Lee and incoming senior Cheyenne Boley were part of yet another group of students who did a lot of painting around the school, including painting the health classroom.
Boley, who has spent her last three summers painting with the work study program, said she not only likes making the money, but also making the school look brighter and cleaner.
“It’s nice to see the teachers happy and the students happy after our school’s been freshly painted over the summer,” she said.
A fourth group spent their work study time outside trimming bushes and trees and sprucing up trails outside Vineland and Athena elementary schools.
“It comes as no surprise that these kids work really hard to beautify our school and then they take a lot of pride in it,” Roop said. “It’s neat to see. The kids will want to show you what they did.
“These kids have a mindset like they’re going to take care of their school. They see trash on the floor, and they’re going to pick it up. They brag to their classmates, ‘I painted this classroom over the summer.’”
Roop has a list of projects for future summer work programs.
“The offices we chose this year and the classroom, they definitely needed it,” he said. “There’s a few more spaces where we can get a couple more years out of them. And maybe next summer we will renovate a few more.”
Having the students complete the work is a huge savings for the district, school officials said.
The De Soto Board of Education paid MMCT Contracting Inc. of Hillsboro $8,994.45 for the vinyl plank, carpet and glue and saved $14,795.75 in labor by having students install it, according to board documents.
“Doing this project in-house not only saves the district money but provides a practical and effective learning opportunity for our summer student workers, giving them real world experience for these skills with the guidance of an experienced teacher from the field,” the documents said.