Manteca Unified is offering what could be the ideal summer jobs for high school and college students with ties to the school district.
Fifty-six paid summer intern jobs are available in various departments ranging from information technology and purchasing to nutritional services.
The deadline to apply is this Friday through Ed-Join. It is the same applications service used by the district for all employees. Applicants are restricted to current Manteca Unified high school students or college students that graduated from Manteca Unified.
Internships of two, four, and six weeks are available.
“It is a way to get exposure to possible careers in education,” noted Deputy Superintendent Roger Goatcher.
The internships are not “make work” jobs either. And they can even lead to being hired by the district once internships are completed.
Last summer, as an example, the interns assigned to IT were part of the team that helped update software and handle other issues with the 24,000 electronic devices issued to students districtwide. One of those interns ended up being the first summer intern to be hired fulltime by the district. He was hired as a Digital Support Technician at Sequoia School.
The district was able to help get necessary IT work done that would have had to be contracted out while students learned employable skills that helped them start building a resume.
Senior Director of Secondary Education Clara Schmiedt noted the internships are designed to allow students “to test the waters in career paths that they might think they may be interested in pursuing.”
To that end, potential interns go through the same application, interview and hiring process that any other district employee would. They are interviewed by mentors who make the hiring decisions.
“They also gain soft skills about the need to be to work on time, appropriate dress, and such,” Goatcher added.
Interns attend weekly luncheons that provide them exposure via supervisors serving as guest speakers to other departments within the district they are not interning with.
“We want to give interns the best overview of what the district has to offer and hopefully ‘home grow’ our future workforce,” Schmiedt noted.
To that end, Manteca Unified is thinking both in long-term fulltime employment to perhaps steer students into teaching and support careers to help address pending teacher shortage as well as filling part-time jobs.
A number of part-time jobs that are difficult to fill such as specific instructional aide positions require a certain level of college education. By exposing students through internships to possible MUSD positions that they could hold during their time going to college it may help Manteca Unified meet an ongoing need that has been difficult to fill.
Other jobs are a challenge to fill that don’t have specific education requirements as they may involve working only three to four hours a day. Such jobs, however, may dovetail well with a student attending Delta College or Modesto Junior College as an example.
Intern positions available include clerical, database, facility planning, IT help desk, networking, nutrition, software support, teaching, and warehouse.
There were 449 applicants for 65 positions last summer.
Questions can be sent to intern@musd.net.