When Jordan Roosevelt started looking for a summer job, a friend suggested he consider becoming a lifeguard. Roosevelt, a rising sophomore on the swim team at Sunapee Middle High School, said he was drawn by the interactive nature of the job and the potential to help people.
“That just appeals to me,” said Roosevelt, 15, who applied for a position at the indoor pool at Colby-Sawyer College. “It seems like a worthwhile job.”
Roosevelt’s skills and interest are in high demand this summer as Upper Valley pools cope with a scarcity of lifeguards that officials say is the worst in memory.
“We’re definitely feeling the shortage,” said Paul Coates, director Lebanon’s Recreation, Arts and Parks Department. “We don’t normally go this late in the season without having our staff completely confirmed.”
There is excitement going into the swim season: COVID-19 restrictions have largely been lifted, allowing for lessons and pool hours to return to pre-pandemic norms. But the lifeguard conundrum means Upper Valley aquatic facilities are opening later, restricting hours and — in some cases — are unable to offer swimming lessons.
“It’s really a huge, multi-tiered problem,” said Dietre Feeney, director of Bethel’s pool, which is scheduled to open July 5, instead of the last full week of June as it typically does. “We don’t have the young people who are interested in being guards anymore and then if you do have kids who are interested … there aren’t the courses. There aren’t the trainers.”
There’s also more competition — Hartford’s Sherman Manning Pool is reopening after being closed for years — and service industry jobs have seen rising wages. As a result, facilities are raising wages, paying for training classes and making schedules more flexible. They’re expanding recruiting efforts and, in some cases, working with other aquatic managers to find lifeguards.
When Ashley Ellis started as a lifeguard in 2000, it was an enviable job among her peers.
“It was the cool job to have,” said Ellis, who in September became the aquatics director at the Upper Valley Aquatic Center in White River Junction. “Nobody wanted to wait tables, they wanted to be a lifeguard.”
Managers also had a tried-and-true hiring method: They recruited kids around 15 as junior lifeguards who would typically stay until their junior year of college, when they typically would pursue internships more in line with their career goals.
“It just seems like we don’t have the commitment anymore of kids returning for three, four, five years where in the past they’d get certified and then two years later they’d get recertified,” Bethel’s Feeney said. “They just kept coming back because it’s a great local job.”
That was what Elyse Scott did. The 22-year-old became a lifeguard at 15 and worked at the city’s CSB Community Center for about six years. This summer Scott decided to take a job as a counselor at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science’s Nature Camp because it more closely aligns with her field of study. She graduated this spring from Clarkson University with a degree in biology with a focus in environmental science and is heading to Antioch University in the fall to pursue a master’s degree in conservation biology.
“I really liked being able to interact with the community more. As a lifeguard you’re meeting all kinds of people, of all different ages,” said Scott, who took a recertification class at the Upper Valley Aquatic Center this month as part of her job as camp counselor. “It definitely helped me gain confidence talking to people especially since it’s such an important job. It’s a high stakes job and you need to make sure you’re communicating with patrons at the pool.”
During the early days of the pandemic the cycle was disrupted. American Red Cross certification classes were hard to come by, which put the pause on training and made it more challenging for existing lifeguards to get recertified, which they’re required to do every two years.
“I had a very, very veteran staff last year,” said Lebanon pool director Lyndsay Porreca, who has worked on and off as a lifeguard since 2001 when she was 16. “They’re at a phase where they need to do other things.”
Ideally, Fenney would have 10 lifeguards in Bethel. Right now she has eight, including two who are certified to teach swim lessons. There is another who is taking a training class in June.
“I knew going into 2020 I was going to have a rebuilding year and then COVID hit,” Feeney said.
A point of pride for Feeney has been Bethel’s ability to provide swim lessons for all who want them and she worries what will happen if she can’t recruit lifeguards who can also be certified as swim instructors.
“Maybe we’re only going to be open for an open swim scenario each day, but that would make my heart hurt because children need to know how to swim.”
Claremont’s CSB Community Center is facing a similar problem. Currently, there are six guards, including two who only work weekends and one who works early mornings three days a week.
Ivy Condon, coordinator of the community center, regularly sits in the chair too.
“Right now I’m waiting for that next wave to come in … but I don’t have that,” Condon said. “It’s definitely the worst that we’ve seen to the point where we’ve had to limit the number of hours we’re open in the pool.”
Normally, the pool would be open the same hours as the community center: 5:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and weekends 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Currently, they’re open from 5:30 to 11:30 a.m. before closing and reopening from 2:30 to 7 p.m. Monday-Thursday and on weekends the pool closes at 2:30 p.m.
Hartford Parks and Recreation Director Scott Hausler has been recruiting staff for the Sherman Manning Pool, which is scheduled to open June 17 for the first time since 2018. While he has hired eight lifeguards, four of them need to take a certification class before they can work. The starting salary for lifeguards is $15.
“We will wait an see what happens with the training and that will dictate the staffing level that we’ll have,” Hausler said. “It might impact how we manage day-to-day … I just don’t know the answer yet.”
If any of the potential lifeguards fail the course, they will be offered jobs as pool attendants and given a chance to take the test again.
Even then, Hausler has noticed a change in some of his new employees: Their schedules are much more packed than in the past.
“Long gone are the days of students just taking a summer job and spending 40 hours or more working as a lifeguard,” he said. “It’s not a bad thing: Kids need to enjoy their summer and doing things, but we’re having to work with them and maintain a schedule right now in order to make it work.”
Even though aquatic centers throughout the Upper Valley have raised their wages, they’re facing competition from other employers in need of part-time and seasonal workers.
“(We’re) trying to recruit kids who might otherwise try to go work at grocery store or McDonalds,” said Coates, who oversees Lebanon Veterans Memorial Pool, which is scheduled to open June 13.
The starting salary for lifeguards at the pool is $16 an hour and head guards start at $17.50. Prior to the pandemic, the starting salary was between $9 and $10.
“Still even for us it’s a challenge. It’s hard to look at someone and say ‘hey you should work for us for $16 an hour, when you can go somewhere else and make a $18 hour and it’s a less stressful job,” Coates said.
Currently, they have two head lifeguards and need one more, Coates said.
“We’re not super optimistic that this late in the game someone will come out who’s qualified for that,” Coates said.
As of Wednesday, they hired eight lifeguards. Ordinarily, eight would be enough, but all of them are new. If they do not pass their certification classes, Lebanon will continue to work with them to try to pass. If it becomes clear that it will not work out, the city will be out a few hundred dollars for the course.
In order to give the head lifeguards some breaks, the hours at the pool will be reduced. Ordinarily, the pool would be open seven days a week. Now, there will be two yet-to-be-decided days when it will be open only for swim lessons.
“To ask one person to work 70 hours a week is not safe in aquatics. Anytime that safety is involved we’re going to be really thoughtful and methodical about how we create our schedule,” Porreca said.
The Quechee Club, which has lifeguards at Lake Pinneo and an outdoor pool, is about 10 guards short, said Scott Bushway, director of recreation, fitness & aquatics. Pay rates have been raised by $2 an hour: New lifeguards make $14 per hour and head guards now make $15 an hour.
The Hartford Parks and Recreation Department, Quechee Club and UVAC have been considering partnering together to form a pool where they would post available shifts that lifeguards at any of the facilities can pick up. But it’s not without its complications, including facility-specific training.
The Upper Valley Aquatic Center currently has 38 lifeguards, but 17 of them will be leaving to take jobs at outside pools this summer, Ellis said. As a result, people will have to continue to make reservations to use the pools.
“We’re lucky to be on a reservation system where we can control our numbers based on our staffing situation,” Ellis said. “If someone calls out last minute it comes down to myself.”
Last fall, UVAC raised its starting wage from $11 per hour to $14.
Like UVAC, the CSB Community Center typically loses lifeguards each summer to work outside, Condon said.
“I can’t blame them there. Heck, I’d want to be outside too,” she said.
Claremont is unable to offer more competitive wages. When starting rates rose from $8 to $10 per hour last year, it was considered a victory. Recently, she lost a graduating senior to a job at McDonald’s.
“He’s getting paid dollars more than what he’s getting paid here and unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about it,” Condon said.
Kim Lafaso, 51, of Chittenden, recently became certified as a lifeguard at UVAC around 30 years after she was a guard at Northwood Pool in Rutland as a teenager. Lafaso, who works as a paraprofessional for the Rutland school district, decided to take the class again to help out at her school’s summer program, which includes waterfront activities.
“They needed an extra lifeguard and I said sure I’ll try it,” Lafaso said. “It’s definitely a rewarding job other than just the pay. It has more rewards and benefits than just the paycheck.”
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
