Mayor hires high school kids to shovel snow at schools

I love this story.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/02/12/snow-shovel-wielding-high-school-students-help-dig-out-waterbury-conn-schools/

WATERBURY, Conn. (CBSNewYork) – Parts of Waterbury, Conn. got dumped with 30 inches or more of snow during the blizzard over the weekend.

Schools are still canceled and the city’s Department of Public Works crews have been busy clearing city streets.

So Waterbury Mayor Neil O’Leary came up with a solution to help the city’s 30 schools dig out. He asked the high schoolers to turn out with shovels to pitch in.

“I called the newspaper and we put something in for this morning, asked them to show up at noon hour and I’ve got over 500 kids out there now in the community, shoveling out our 30-plus schools,” O’Leary told WCBS 880 Connecticut Bureau Chief Fran Schneidau. “I never expected 500 kids to show up here today. Actually, we have in excess of 500.”

O’Leary said the large turnout is good for the community and for the teenagers.

“It gives them such a good sense of community and gets them involved,” he told Schneidau.

The effort will continue Wednesday morning, with the students meeting at City Hall.

“All the school buses are going to be here and we’ll get them out to the schools by 9:00. We’ll get a good eight-hour day out of them and we should have quite an impact on the 30 schools tomorrow.

The students are earning $8.25 an hour for their work shoveling out the schools.

Good. Give um something to do.

Thumbs up to the mayor! I had a job shoveling snow as a kid, you earn it. Hard work and you can't put it off until tomorrow.

You just know somebody is going to bitch about child labour.

I would have gone to shovel snow back onto the sidewalks to keep the school closed longer.

It's not child labor. They're all 16 or older.

So they are going to use the school buses eh?

So, what is the difference between a school and a prison anyway?...

...please explain in as clumsy and round about way as possible please...

....sorry

My cynical side expects a union grievance.

New kids are dumb. We'd have figured out that a shoveled out school equals no more snow days.

One kid will shovel while five more lean on their shovels around him and post videos to FB and Youtube.

$8.25 an hour? Not too shabby. A lot of the kids who get BScs are going to feel ripped off after they get out of college.

Well I sure hoped they verified they were not illegal immigrants!

GameboyRMH wrote: $8.25 an hour? Not too shabby. A lot of the kids who get BScs are going to feel ripped off after they get out of college.

That is minimum wage in Illinois. What is it in CT?

Will they get to tell stories in 50 years about how they used to have to shovel snow uphill to get to school?

They had over 500 kids show up!

mtn wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: $8.25 an hour? Not too shabby. A lot of the kids who get BScs are going to feel ripped off after they get out of college.

That is minimum wage in Illinois. What is it in CT?

$8.25 per hour.

aircooled wrote: So, what is the difference between a school and a prison anyway?... ...please explain in as clumsy and round about way as possible please... ....sorry

Luther: High school is a lot like prison: Bad food, high fences; the sex you want, you ain't gettin', the sex you gettin', you don't want. I've seen terrible things.

GREAT idea. Love it.

it would have been funnier if there had only been 400 kids in the school.. and 500 showed up to shovel it out

I'll bet they had a blast doing it, too.

Good move on the mayor's part. Props to him.

I can imagine there will be some dude who's job was to plow snow by himself that gets all up in arms over this.

Even that guy's arms are pretty tired by now.