Employing prisoners to do menial tasks like stamping license plates or picking up trash on the freeway has always been one of the great industrial coups of the American penal system. The Idaho Legislature, seemingly borrowing a page from the prison warden’s playbook, has passed a law allowing schools to hire students as young as 12 years old to work in cafeterias or as janitors as a way of “teaching responsibility.”The new law reportedly has some custodians and lunch ladies worried that the cheap pubescent tweens will put them out of a job.Idaho Republican state Sen. Chuck Winder sponsored the bill and tells Seattle Weekly that it wasn’t meant to put any adults out of work, but that there’s no doubt it will save the schools some money.”Certainly the bill will save the schools some money as it’s less expensive to have a child do the work–some of whom will just earn a meal,” says Winder. “But the intent of the bill is to teach responsibility, give them a job–not to save money.”Under the new law, “a student may be employed by the public schools of the district for a maximum of ten hours per week provided such employment is voluntary and with the consent of the student’s legal guardian.”The influx of new workers is not, however, expected to improve the taste of the meatloaf at all.Follow The Daily Weekly on Facebook and Twitter.
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