By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

The Trident One-Stop Career Center’s “Change a Life, Hire a Kid” campaign is well underway. It’s trying to encourage private businesses to change some lives by hiring kids for summer jobs.

Business owners ought to get involved. That kid you hire for a mere $5.15 an hour (the program’s minimum wage) could change your business for the better. Youthful energy and new ideas rejuvenate any business.

And there are too many kids in the tri-county area who risk sinking into oblivion unless adults give them a chance to make something of themselves.

Simeco Robinson was one of those young people. Eight years ago, she was a 17-year-old high school dropout. She was also pregnant out of wedlock. She was well on her way to becoming another sad social statistic, a young single mother bound to a bleak future.

Fortunately, Robinson met Evelyn DeLaine Hart, executive director of Trident One-Stop’s Workforce Investment Board. Hart gave Robinson a helping hand by introducing her to the “Change a Life, Hire a Kid” program.

Pardon my football metaphor, but by introducing Robinson to the program, DeLaine Hart threw the block that opened a hole for Robinson, and Robinson ran for daylight. She scored by getting a job at a restaurant, earning her GED, earning an associate’s degree from Trident Technical College and then earning a bachelor’s from Springfield College. She’s kicking the extra point by pursuing a graduate degree in human services.

During a press conference launching this year’s “Change a Life, Hire a Kid,” Charleston County Councilman Tim Scott said he had been a troubled kid on the verge of flunking out of high school until he was given a job and a chance to square himself away. He added that his insurance business regularly hires young people from the program.

I’d guess that among the kids comprising the Lowcountry’s more than 40% high school dropout rate, a number of them are similar to the kids Simeco Robinson and Tim Scott were.

In 2002, South Carolina had the nation’s worst high school graduation rate, with 47% of the kids dropping out, according to The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank.

But it’s not just the dropouts we need to save. We need to reach at-risk students—kids on the verge of dropping out. Schools need to keep an eye on them. A kid showing little or declining interest in schoolwork is a red flag.

Before those kids drop out, teachers and guidance counselors could invite Trident One-Stop representatives, social workers, literacy experts, employers and business leaders into the schools so they can try to convince those at-risk kids to stay in school.

The first thing, of course, is to listen to the kids and find out their problems. What is it about school that turns them off? What’s going on in their lives? Before we tell them what’s what, let them tell us.

According to a national study released earlier this year by Civic Enterprises, nearly one-third of high school students don’t graduate on time; among blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans, that figure is closer to one-half.

The researchers surveyed more than 450 racially diverse 16- to 24-year-old dropouts in communities throughout the country. Believe it or not, the major reason for dropping out was that classes were boring. The schoolwork seemed pointless, irrelevant.

If that’s the case, then business leaders, employers and employment-skills consultants need to rush into the schools and spice things up. Show the kids why that schoolwork is important. Pull them out of the schoolroom and teach class at the worksite so they can see how they can apply what they’re being taught.

All of us are responsible for those kids. They’re part of our world, and no useful or sane purpose is served by ignoring them. Unless you have enough bucks to escape into your own gated, security-guarded, luxury-filled universe, you’re going to feel the impact of high school dropouts.

You’ll feel it when you go searching for qualified employees and can’t find any. Lots of employers are already suffering that frustration.

So we have to do whatever is necessary to keep our kids in school. Some of us scoffed at Hilary Clinton’s “It takes a village to raise a child” slogan, dismissing it as bleeding-heart babble. But more of us in the business community are beginning to see the truth in that African proverb.

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.

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