“Our program combines career-focused experiences with the paycheck families need,” said Partners in Education Executive Director Chelsea Duffy. “It also allows SBCEO to extend case management services to qualified students, connecting them to other community resources.”
The job-readiness program begins with eight weeks of after-school workshops. The activities include building a resumé and cover letter, managing personal finances, practicing interviewing skills, and understanding job etiquette and basic workplace legal protections. Over 70 volunteer career coaches from a range of professions work with the students in small groups so they can practice their interview skills in preparation for job applications. After the eight sessions, students earn a stipend or community service credit toward graduation requirements.
Following training, students are eligible to interview with host employers for placement in a paid internship. SBCEO facilitates the internship placement by managing the human resources and payroll portion of the hiring process. Host employers, in turn, contribute more than half of the wages the interns earn, typically 70 percent. This unique approach to the hiring process makes it much easier for businesses to host student workers for the limited number of hours they can work during the summer or after school during the academic year.
Doug Ford, founder of D.D. Ford Construction and a member of the Partners in Education Board of Directors, is a local intern host employer. “Because the SBCEO has taken care of the work permit process, fingerprinting and payroll, it makes it much easier to hire a student,” he said. He added that his firm has hosted nine interns and that all have been well-equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful on the job.
Zainab, who interned at Banc of California, was excited to work “in a real professional setting,” and she enjoyed learning about banking and finance, interest rates and investing. She values the professional advice she received from the career coaches, and one has remained a mentor. Zainab credits the training sessions with preparing her for working in a formal corporate environment and expanding the career opportunities she will consider when she graduates.
John interned at a local aerospace and defense company, leading to a paid apprenticeship and eventually a full-time job. John says that it was this work experience that inspired him to pursue engineering. I asked him what the company expected of a high school intern. “The personality to train,’’ says John, who considers the job etiquette and interviewing skills he learned in the Partners training program essential to his success. John also referred his younger brother to the program, who recently completed a Partners internship at Cottage Hospital.
Damian, now a student at Santa Barbara City College, interned for the Lompoc Library’s Bookmobile. He was surprised to find he enjoyed working with kids, and the daily interactions with people of all ages improved his social skills. All of the student interns agreed that the Partners training sessions and mock interviews with career coaches helped them learn to communicate better, “especially with adults.” The internship experiences also boosted their confidence in pursuing career opportunities they had not previously considered.
Early exposure to career pathways is intentional. Janelle Willis, SBCEO administrator for Early Care and Education, pointed out that the traditional career preparation model is to do classroom learning first, then try a job in that field. The Partners model reverses that to offer students some career exposure first. This approach creates a range of opportunities across diverse fields, such as education and healthcare. Additionally, gaining experience in a career field can help students narrow their focus in pursuing specific training or college studies.
Doug Ford reports that hosting interns has the added benefit of inspiring his firm’s full-time employees, who take pride in mentoring the teens on job sites. Some employees have already volunteered to be career coaches with the Partners program after working with the interns. Professional networking has had an added benefit, says Molly Schiff, vice president of operations at Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce and a volunteer career coach. Because the students get to work with career coaches from a variety of fields in their training workshops, they start to develop professional networks of their own.
Preparing students for a successful transition from TK-12 to a career is central to our work in school board governance. Seeing the enthusiasm and energy of everyone involved in Santa Barbara’s Partners in Education program makes one wonder — “Could we make this happen in our area, too?” Duffy explained that the program is, with enough community support, simple to replicate. “Begin by connecting with employers and chambers of commerce first,”she advised.