District Case Study: Paid High-Quality Equitable Sustainable Internships
“I learned a lot of new knowledge and real skills from the nurses, like how to run a blood panel, and how your blood cells and cancer work. Most importantly, I learned that I really do want to become a nurse!”
There’s just nothing that can substitute for actually experiencing what a job feels like. This remark from a student of Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) who interned at a local oncology clinic last summer is similar to many we heard. These opportunities often help students more deeply believe that they can actually acquire and perform these jobs, and can be a motivational support or even accelerator as they continue their academic career.
As we detailed in our previous post, paid high school internships are incredibly valuable to students as well as to internship providers but, unfortunately, there are significant challenges to creating these critical opportunities, especially outside of major urban cities. However, pushing through that complexity by leveraging best practices from other public districts and independent schools can help. What follows is a case study of PVUSD’s health career internships this past summer.
District Context
PVUSD serves nearly 17,000 students from transitional kindergarten through twelfth grade across 36 school sites, in a primarily agricultural region with 85% of students on free or reduced lunch, a high percentage of English language learners, and a significant migrant population, among other related measures and metrics in a historically underserved community. However, there are success stories across the district, with passionate and dedicated students, educators, and administrators committed to expanding possibilities. The Career and Technical Education department serves nearly 4,000 students with inspiring classes across 27 career pathways that combine academics with technical training and a heavy focus on work-based learning experiences, accelerating students toward success in college and career.
The Challenge
While PVUSD has strong, long-term connections throughout the community, including work-based learning opportunities for students, growing a more robust internship program has remained difficult, even with the recent success building out an ongoing partnership with the local government to offer internships within various city departments each summer. Private employers are always concerned about liability and complex financial structures, the value to their organization relative to perceived disruption, or whether they have the bandwidth to spin up an internship program for high school students. However, as Julie Edwards, PVUSD Director of Strategic Educational Options, mentioned in our recent podcast, students shouldn’t have to choose between investing in their future and supporting their families: “In a community like ours where a student would otherwise have to make a choice between a part-time summer job to help support their family or an unpaid internship, access to paid internships is the real gold…It’s our responsibility to make sure that prospective work based learning providers understand the meaning and depth of impact of what they’re going to be providing, and what students can bring to them.”
The Solution
Fortunately for the students and the community, Julie and other educators and administrators weren’t going to accept the status quo. She realized that beyond the burning need, there are ways to build synergy across grants, and so she followed the K16 Collaborative and Golden State Pathways Program’s focus on in-demand industry sectors with roles that pay living wages from the start while also having career growth potential, one of which was health. One grant had funded the development of a new pathway, and another had supported a speaker series with experts from health and biotechnology, which was offered in Spanish with English translation, a district first that had a major impact on families feeling seen, heard, and respected. A third was leveraged to pilot a paid summer internship program, partnering with a local nonprofit as the employer of record, absorbing the liability and all of the administrative overhead (and financial complications), and thereby removing some of the biggest barriers to private partners’ willingness to host student interns.
We were then brought in to support program design and implementation, including everything from the provider and student recruitment (including marketing, application, interview, selection, onboarding, during-internship support, and offboarding), as well as post-program feedback collection, analysis, and alignment on recommendations for next year. Together with PVUSD and the nonprofit partner we worked to build a first draft of both a provider and student handbook to help them make the most of their experience, and also an internal PVUSD playbook on how to run future internships.
The Outcomes
What were the results? For this first year of this health internship push, 8 students worked nearly 900 hours, earning about $2,000 each at $18/hr, competitive with hourly rates at other jobs that would not have been as aligned to their passions. This also wasn’t a burden on providers; every single one was pleased with the experience and interested to host interns again in future summers.
“Our PVUSD student intern was always willing to help where needed. She was respectful and courteous to staff and patients and we enjoyed having her in our office & watching her confidence grow!”
Students were also quite positive in their reflections, including for things they didn’t expect, and strongly recommended this internship program to any other student in the district.
One student shared:
“I learned a lot these past couple of weeks. I got over my fear of speaking to new people, and observed what dentists and dental assistants actually do all day, and it did not look simple! This was an amazing experience.”
Beyond a successful summer internship program, the district also ended up with a playbook to run the program the following summer, as well as a handbook for providers and another for students. This helped streamline the process and get more out of the experience, and served as a helpful artifact to share with potential providers as well as interested students.
So what’s next?
PVUSD is committed to sharing their learnings and best practices with other districts, and their first piece of advice is to: “Sketch out the characteristics of what an ideal internship in your community might look like, and if possible to do a paid internship, figure out how to secure the funding to pay students if the employer isn’t able to.”
PVUSD is working on documenting more case studies, recruiting more providers, iterating the handbooks and overall playbook, and doing anything and everything they can to offer experiences like these to more students in future summers.
As we move forward with supporting PVUSD with the next round of internships, there was one story we heard that still fills us with energy. As Edwards recounts it:
“One student’s father, a migrant farmworker, cried when the student told him they had a summer internship to learn how to be a dentist…it is no easy feat to get these internships in place, but that’s what really matters, that student’s future, and all the other kids like him… This is what brings me to work everyday–to help make these opportunities tangible, visible, and accessible.”
We couldn’t have said it better. This is what brings us to this work every day as well.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss internships or anything else you’re working on.