Dundee Township Park District will have limited hiring

For another year, the Dundee Township Park District is not an option for teens who are looking for their first summer jobs.

Without having a job fair for the third year, many of the park district’s 180 jobs at its swimming pools and day camps will be filled with many teens who held them last year.

“For us, rehiring someone is good because we don’t have to spend much time retraining them,” said Helen Schumate, the park district’s director of marketing. “But it may be a tough summer to find a job for many people.”

The park district is Dundee Township’s largest employer; it operates swimming pools in Sleepy Hollow and another inside the Route 68 recreation center. It also operates the Dolphin Cove Aquatic Center, along Route 25 in Carpentersville.

The swimming pools and Dolphin Cove provide a total of 150 jobs, Schumate said.

The park district also operates day camps at Randall Oaks Park and other locations throughout the park district. The day camps provide 30 jobs.

Teens can take their chances and call the park district at (847) 551-4300 or go to its website at dtpd.org and apply for a job.

However, with many of the those positions filled, teens can also turn to the villages of East and West Dundee for summer work, but they will only provide a handful of positions.

“We’ll hire four people this summer,” West Dundee Village Manager Joseph Cavallaro said. “Three of the jobs have already been filled with college students who worked for us last year. We still have to fill the fourth position.”

Teens hired by West Dundee are assigned to the public works department and are paid $9 an hour.

“They’ll pull weeds and plant and water flowers,” Cavallaro said. “They usually start in May and work until August.”

He echoed Schumate’s statements about the advantages of rehiring students because they know procedures and policies, and supervisors know they are good workers.

East Dundee officials do not have that luxury because they have not hired high school and college students for three years, Village Administrator Bob Skurla said.

This year, though, the village will hire three teens to work for the water and sewer department. They will be paid $12 an hour, Skurla said.

“We’ll advertise for the positions and then begin taking applications,” he said.

For more information, call the West Dundee village hall at (847) 551-3800, or the East Dundee village hall at (847) 426-2822.