A new program for Sonoma County juniors and seniors wants to offer them the opportunity to explore potential careers and gain valuable work experience while earning college credit.
CTE Foundation is taking student applications through Oct. 20 for its Path to Purpose initiative. developed with the Sonoma County Office of Education (SCOE), it aims to provide equitable access to internships for students, regardless of which high school they attend. It is designed to bridge the gap between education and the workforce, offering students a chance to explore career pathways, build employable skills and make informed choices about their futures.
“The highest-quality career-connected learning experience is an internship, where a student can get on site, can work with an employer,” said Brandon Jewell, director of student experience at the foundation.
A goal is to open such opportunities to students throughout the county.
“Access to internships historically has been inequitable, because a student’s access was really determined on where they went to school,” Jewell said. “Some high schools in the county have wonderful programs… but right down the street, you go to another high school, and they might not have any of that, or very little.”
To address this disparity, the CTE Foundation and SCOE began collaborating with employers, youth-serving organizations and educators a year ago to design a countywide internship program. The result is a program aiming to have partnerships with 42 organizations with over 100 employees, offering as many as 86 internship spots.
These opportunities span a range of industries, including health care, education, construction, environmental organizations and nonprofits.
“We are partnered with the county of Sonoma as their official internship program,” Jewell said about the largest local employer and the first to sign onto the program.
The application process is designed to be accessible and supportive. Rather than applying for specific positions, students complete an application that asks about their skills, interests, career goals and schedules.
“We meet with them, and then we dive deeper into that, and we even talk about logistics, like transportation,” Jewell said.
For employers, the program has been designed to deal with logistical challenges and newer legal wrinkles involving youth in the workplace.
“At the center of everything that we do is making sure that students are having an incredible experience. To do that, the first thing is we have to make sure they’re safe. And when they’re safe, everything else happens in a really nice way,” said Eli Weinzveg, executive director of the CTE Foundation since June.
For example, California’s Assembly Bill 506, which took effect in 2022, requires background checks and fingerprinting for adults working with youth, and that has left a number of organizations struggling to navigate the new legal landscape.
The Path to Purpose program, however, has taken proactive steps to make compliance easier for employers and ensure students’ safety. One of those is to get approval from the state Department of Justice to have the foundation designated as the custodian of background checks and fingerprinting records, and to provide employers training on the responsibilities of those mandated to report abuse, as required by the law.
“So not only are we educating students and what it looks like to work in the workforce, but now we’re educating employers on what it means to work with young people in this day and age,” said Weinzveg.
Ananda Sweet, CEO of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber, said in a statement, “Sonoma County’s future depends on the strength of its workforce. Path to Purpose creates a bridge between our local businesses and the next generation of talent — giving employers an easy, meaningful way to mentor students while building the pipeline of skilled workers our community needs.”
Jewell explained how this approach reduces barriers for employers.
“With CTE Foundation being the custodian of record for all Path of Purpose, you can be an employer and you can take three interns from three different districts and not have to get fingerprinted three times,” Jewell said. “So that was one of those key things that we once we realized there’s a hurdle here that would make it challenging for employers.”
Internships will begin in the spring semester, with placements finalized by the end of November. Each internship requires a minimum of 40 hours, which qualifies students for early college credit through Santa Rosa Junior College’s Career Education Department.
“We want to give students a leg up on their future if they do decide to go to some postsecondary. … Plus just being a part of the SRJC’s program gives them an instructor, who acts a little bit like a coach, helping them build learning goals,” Jewell said.
Founded in 2012, CTE Foundation has spent $18 million on various efforts to build up the next generation of workers. That includes the North Bay Construction Corps, a program now run by North Coast Builders Exchange that links dozens of students across local counties with builders to learn what’s needed to be ready for the contractors to hire and train them.
Several long-time foundation partners have stepped up to make Path to Purpose possible this year, including SCOE, the Peter E. Haas Jr. Family Fund and Harbor Freight Tools for Schools. The organization is looking for other backing to take the program into the years ahead.
Jeff Quackenbush joined North Bay Business Journal in May 1999. He covers primarily wine, construction and real estate. Reach him at jeff@nbbj.news or 707-521-4256.