JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – After multiple closures due to renovations and staffing issues last summer, Jacksonville’s Department of Parks and Recreation said it has worked diligently to ensure there are more swimming pools open to the public this summer.
Daryl Joseph, Director of Parks and Recreation, said during a joint Jacksonville City Council and Duval County School Board meeting on Monday that the department is taking an untraditional approach to recruitment this year by bringing the information straight to the students.
“We started in October, the recruiting, the marketing, a lot of the schools actually have job fairs. We’re at each one of those job fairs. We were at World of Nations this weekend pushing those lifeguards. We’re gonna be everywhere we feel like students are,” Joseph said.
On Saturday, Joseph met with a youth group that said pay increases and easy access to the application and training information are important to attract a younger audience.
“They told me our flyer is too busy, too many words. They said put a QR code on it, and we’ll take it from there and apply for the job,” he said. “So many times we think as adults, we don’t think like teenagers. We have to change our mindset, that’s why I want to meet with the actual individuals we’re trying to hire.”
The city said lifeguard pay starts at $15 an hour and the minimum age requirement to become a lifeguard is 15.
At the beginning of last summer, 16 out of 34 city pools were closed and nearly a third of city pool lifeguard positions were open, with 114 vacancies.
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said getting pools back open would be a priority when she took over as mayor last July.
“Those are the things that frustrate people, when they see that you can’t open public swimming pools but you can look at doing all these other things. That seems to be a relatively small thing to be able to do for people in this community in the summer,” Deegan said last year.
For more information about training dates and locations, please visit the Parks, Recreation, and Community Services page.
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