Fourteen-year-old Michelle Slowman spends her days after school working at Pelathe Community Resource Center, answering phones and doing other errands.

She likes having spending money from the minimum-wage job, and she enjoys working with people. Her mother, Thelma Whitewater, likes the work skills her daughter has learned.

“It’s helped her set goals for what she wants to do after high school,” Whitewater said. “She wants to go to college and work in computers.”

But Slowman’s job — and jobs for dozens of other Lawrence teens — are about to fall victim to Kansas’ $800 million budget shortfall.

The state will cut its $100,000 funding for the Neighborhood Improvement Youth Employment Act, a program that helps local agencies hire at-risk youths. The goal of the program is to put a few dollars in their pockets and keep them in school. Officials with the five Kansas agencies that receive money from the program were told this month it would end Jan. 17.

Pelathe and Van Go Mobile Arts are the two Lawrence agencies that receive the funding. Pelathe receives $20,000 a year and employs 14 teenagers. Van Go receives $22,500 and employs 80 teens to create public and private artwork in Lawrence on a rotating basis throughout the year.

“These aren’t kids who are buying cars and wardrobes,” said Lynne Green, Van Go’s director. “They use this money to pay the rent.”

George McAtee is director of workforce development programs for the Kansas Department of Human Resources, which oversees the program. When Gov. Bill Graves ordered $78 million in budget cuts last month, McAtee said, most of KDHR’s funds were off-limits because they came from the federal government. That left the youth employment program vulnerable.

“This is one of the few programs we have that gets state funds,” McAtee said. “Unless the Legislature can magically find some money, if you give to one (agency), you’re going to take from another.”

Lawrence Rep. Barbara Ballard, a Democrat, sponsored the legislation that created the program in 1994. She said she was “disappointed” with the cuts but realistic about the state’s budget woes.

“So many of our young people are depending on that program. I’d rather help them before they’re in trouble or in prison,” Ballard said. “On the other hand, they’re cutting everything in the budget. But I was hoping they’d leave it alone.”

Green had a less forgiving view.

“This is $100,000 for the state, and they’re trying to make up how big a shortfall?” she said. “To me it’s unconscionable that they would make up the shortfall on the backs of the indigent and kids.”

Both Pelathe and Van Go are looking for new grants and donations so they can continue employing teen-agers, but they acknowledged it would be difficult to find the money.

“We might be able to squeeze out some funds to keep one or two of them on,” said Bruce Martin, Pelathe’s director. “But it doesn’t look good right now.”

Green said she’ll be aggressive in her fund-raising efforts.

“We’re going to do everything we can,” she said. “Even if I have to go door-to-door in this town, I will. We will go on.”

Slowman, meanwhile, isn’t sure how she’ll spend her free time after Jan. 17.

“I probably won’t be doing anything,” she said. “Just staying home and stuff.”