M.P.
I don't know the going rate but I suggest that you do hire the neighbor girl. You know her and her family. Hiring someone from an ad on a bulletin board is taking a greater risk than hiring your neighbor and her not working out.
Tell her up front that there will be a trial period. Be clear with her what you expect and ask her if she thinks she can do that. Specify the length of the trial period so she doesn't feel like she's left hanging.
If you're up front with her and her family about everything and let her go in a sensitive way there should be no difficulty later. Yes, there may be a bit of awkwardness at first but with an adult attitude that will pass. When you interview her for the position ask her how she would react if she didn't work out. Keep in mind, talk with her about it even, that there are many reasons that it might not. She, herself, might not want to stay.
If you don't know the family, talk with her mother also so that you get an idea of the family's values and how much C.-operation the mother would be if there were to be a problem.
My daughter and her friend babysat one summer for the children of my C.-worker. He talked with me about her maturity and my take on her ability to do the job. Towards the end of the summer they stopped having her and I wondered why. He and I just never talked about it. I didn't see him very often and didn't feel awkward when I did.
This may sound like a lot of work but it's less work than you'd need to do to hire a stranger. And it may be awkward letting a stranger go to. Especially if the stranger turns out to be not so reliable or have not so good friends that you don't know about.
Another idea is to talk with someone at a school in your neighborhood and ask for suggestions on someone to hire. This way you'd have a reference from a reliable school person whose reputation would be on the line. They would not want to recommend someone with difficulties because it would come back on them.
You could also ask the neighbor girl for the name of a teacher as a reference.
I don't know how large a community Granda Hills is. I'm a retired police officer in Portland, Or, a very large city. I would not hire a teen that I didn't know unless they had really good references from someone I trusted, such as a school teacher. I've seen too many teens that looked really good on the outside but who were involved in drugs and with boyfriends to the point that they were not reliable.
My C.-worker and his wife who is a nurse, said that they always hired 12-13 yo girls and in pairs for the summer because they weren't interested in boys yet. This was for when neither parent was at home. Their children were 3 and 8, I think. And by having two for his two kids they could handle the kids better and didn't get bored. This worked well for my daughter.
