Steinbrenner students are being affected by a new change in Profferfish, where work hours are now being accepted for Bright Futures, although, are there more positives or negatives to this adjustment? This change is caused by more kids working and collecting paid hours, so finding time to volunteer has been difficult. 

     “A lot of people don’t have time to do service, and everyone has jobs now-a-days, so it benefits them in two ways, they get money and hours,” said freshman Rahisha Rajmohamed. 

Being able to get paid and collect hours for scholarships is beneficial to all students that currently have a job or are planning on getting one.

     “This helps include [working students] into the scholarship,” said senior Samuel Restrepo. 

To be able to qualify for the Bright Futures scholarship, one of the requirements is to have at least 100 work or volunteer hours, and you’re not allowed to combine them.  The scholarship is based on academic achievements of high schoolers, and if chosen, you could be rewarded with scholarship money. While making the decision to accept work hours, it opens a chance for a hard worker, that could not have completed the volunteer hours, to go to college with scholarships. 

    “I feel like a lot more people will do volunteer hours, because they have already started doing it, so it would be a big change to get a job and do the hours again instead of just continuing the volunteer hours.  This shows that many students have already started with the generic count of volunteer hours, and it would be too difficult to restart,” said Rajmohamed. 

On the other hand, senior Jacqueline Ioannidis said, “I think more people will do work hours because they will need money and it’s a lot easier for people to get the work hours.” 

     However, this change could lead to less available volunteers since some people are starting to choose work hours instead.     

“I do think that there will be less people volunteering, since they won’t need to and could just work, so that could impact [the community] a little bit, but I don’t think it would be that severe,” said Restrepo. 

     But overall, being able to go the work hour route has made many students feel like they have more of an opportunity to gain the Bright Futures scholarship.