BROOKLYN — The lifeguard shortage is affecting municipalities and private pools throughout Northeast Ohio, and News 5 found even if a facility has enough lifeguards on staff, scheduling can be frustrating, too.
At Brooklyn’s Recreation Center, there are 25 lifeguards on staff, but Jack Abbruzzese, the recreation commissioner for the city of Brooklyn, said staffing the indoor and outdoor pool has been an uphill battle since the pandemic.
“Once COVID-19 hit, we lost a lot of our staff, especially our younger staff. Then once we started to get those staff back, we started facing the challenge of higher pay rates elsewhere, so we tried to keep up with that, as well,” Abbruzzese said. “And just not enough lifeguards in the hiring pool.”
Abbruzzese said, ideally, there needs to be four lifeguards on one shift to have both the indoor and outdoor pools open during the advertised hours. More often than not, a pool will close early due to staffing.
“The issue is, obviously, they’re part-time staff, and they have other commitments and working around their schedules is also a challenge,” Abbruzzese said. “We are doing our best to keep our pools open, as is every other aquatics facility; we are all kind of in the same boat.”
Kaitlyn Lenhardt, 17, has been a lifeguard at the recreation center for two years and said it’s frustrating for everyone when they have to close a pool.
“I love my job,” Lenhardt said. “It just puts us in a place where we are like, ‘what do we do?’ because we have to close down, and we get people upset with us, and we can’t help it."
Karli Verchio is a veteran lifeguard at Brooklyn’s Recreation Center. She has worked as a lifeguard for the past five years and started when she was 16 years old.
“I grew up swimming here," Verchio said. "My whole life, I loved being in the water. I was on the swim team, and I competed for 12 years, and then I ended up coaching here. There was a quite a few of us that all swam together that ended up working here."
Similar to Abbruzzese’s sentiment, Verchio said the tides turned when the pandemic hit.
“When I first started working here, it was almost difficult to be put on the schedule a lot because there were so many of. It was kind of around where when COVID-19 happened, we couldn’t run the lifeguard classes anymore, and then all of the sudden, we just didn’t have lifeguards,” Verchio said. “I think so many kids are now focusing, specifically, on school and sports that they’re not worried as much about working and wanting to get a job.”
Lenhardt said she doesn’t have many peers who have summer jobs.
“A lot of my friends like to just sit home, relax, have their time and have a fun time summer," Lenhardt said. "I look at it as an opportunity to, number one, get money and, number two, a way to be outside and socialize with people."
Abbruzzese said the depleted pool of not only eligible lifeguards but instructors to teach the certification classes could be attributed to people not wanting to get re-certified after the certifications lapsed during the pandemic.
“We are one of the few in the area that’s offering classes right now, so we are doing our best to add more classes and getting more people in, but we only have one or two instructors that are on staff,” Abbruzzese said.
However, he said there seems to be more demand for the certification classes this summer compared to the few previous seasons, and the city said more incentives will be coming in the future to make life-guarding and other seasonal jobs more appealing to people.
If you’d like to become lifeguard certified, you can find a class, register and pay online at www.brooklynrec.com; if you have questions, call Maria McGinty, the aquatics manager, at 216-351-5334.
You have to be 15 and up; if you’re a Brooklyn resident, there is a discount for the class, and if you work for Brooklyn, a portion of the class will be reimbursed after 6-months of work.
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