St. Paul Puts Youth On 'Right Track' With Summer Jobs

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - It's early spring, but there's already a push to line up summer jobs for teenagers.

The city of St. Paul is actively recruiting businesses willing to hire high school students from low-income families who want to gain some work experience.

What's unique is that these young people come with some valuable training beforehand.

It's called Right Track for a good reason. Students who complete the summer jobs tend to return to school with more focus and direction.

"The biggest thing is building confidence, giving young people the chance to see themselves working in a professional setting and being successful at it," director Trenton Henspeter said.

Right Track offers two programs. One is for kids as young as 14 who work for city departments like parks and recreation or at public libraries. The other is for 11th and 12th graders, who are placed at private companies in St. Paul.

Last year Ecolab hired three Right Track students. This year, they signed up for four.

Jamice Obianyo works in community relations for Ecolab and oversees the high school summer workers.

She said she was impressed with the work of a teenager who worked in the company's tax department last summer.

"Our intern was able to develop a database for tracking all of our incoming tax returns and auditing that we do globally, around the world," she said. "He did an excellent job."

Before the students step into their summer jobs, Right Track spends two days training them.

They are taught computer skills but, more importantly, business etiquette: how to dress for the workplace, how to answer company phones, how to write business emails.

"A lot of students are used to the text-style writing," Henspeter said. "Just teaching them how to put together full sentences, and not just write a really quick text-like email.

They're paid between $8 and $14 an hour.

"A lot of our supervisors look at this as a way to prepare future Ecolab employees and give them the skill set and opportunities so they can come work for us one day," Obianyo said.

Right Track has commitments from about 40 companies in St. Paul to provide 114 summer jobs for older teenagers.

But they need about 15 more jobs for students who they've chosen for the program.