GREENFIELD — City councilors are wondering whether a city internship program, or just a City Council intern position, would be feasible or beneficial for Greenfield students.
At-Large City Councilor Wahab Minhas told the Community Relations Committee on Monday night that he believes developing more internship opportunities would help keep students in Greenfield and set them up for future success.
“This was an idea that was kind of formed by talking to a lot of the youth in Greenfield, and also those who have grown up in Greenfield and have unfortunately left the area. For them, the biggest concerns around being in Greenfield and what makes it hard to stay here are finding housing and finding jobs,” Minhas said. “I can definitely connect with that second one myself. I remember when I was going through the Greenfield public school system, it was really hard to figure out what you can do with your career. A lot of our educators are very dedicated to the students, they want what’s best for them, but, like a lot our resources, it seems like we’re maybe lacking and falling behind other school systems.”
Minhas shared that through a scholarship, he was able to attend Northfield Mount Hermon School, which connected him with an internship at the courthouse.
“For a lot of students who come from a working-class place, their parents aren’t potentially the most well-off, and they can’t just make a call and be like, ‘Hey, get my kid an internship,'” Minhas said.
He said internships can help high school students explore different career paths, and for students who know which career they want to pursue, internships can help them develop skills and gain experience in their chosen field.
“You can get into an internship and you might love that place. You might be like, ‘OK, I don’t like working here, I don’t like being in a cubicle or I don’t like being in a lab, or I don’t like XYZ,’ but it helps you narrow down, and also gets you ready for the workforce and gives you confidence,” Minhas said. “I think Greenfield can kind of step up its game when it comes to that type of thing.”
Committee members said an internship program could take on a lot of different forms. They could create internship opportunities within different city departments, or potentially partner with local businesses and organizations to expand existing opportunities to high school students. Community Relations Committee Chair Sara Brown said one idea is to potentially have a council-specific intern who could help with communications and conveying information on council operations to the public.
“We’re interested in how we can make the work of the City Council and the mayor, and any of the boards, commissions and committees, more accessible to the public,” Brown said.
“We considered having an intern do things like post interviews with the City Council. … There was a push for wanting to make the City Council more accessible and literally having an intern write almost like a newsletter,” member Sarah Bolduc added.
School Committee Chair Stacey Sexton said they, too, are willing to explore the idea, but Sexton wanted councilors to be cognizant that developing a new program takes time and a lot of logistical framework.
“If we are willing to actually figure out a way, nothing is totally impossible in my mind,” Sexton said. “As we’re thinking about internships of any kind, there are going to be some real logistical factors to put into our planning. For instance, any person, whether they’re a city employee already, needs to have a CORI (Criminal Offender Record Information) background check if they’re working with an under-18. … There will be costs associated. No internship program is totally free.”
Sexton said transportation would also be a factor, because not all high school students have their own vehicles and ways to get to internship sites, and the program would need to fit into the school district’s curriculum.
“Anything that we want to do with our kids, our students, it needs to not only be something that helps them explore career options and explore different types of work in different places, but there has to be some academic relevancy,” Sexton added. “Part of what these discussions would need to [consider] is, how does it fit our curriculum, what standards are aligning, and making sure that the internship experience is a positive one — not just temperamentally, not just gaining mentorship from another trusted adult, but that it is actually furthering their learning in some way.”
Sexton said city councilors need to be aware that managing an intern would add to the workload of city employees if they are the ones being tasked with overseeing interns, and that, while interns can eventually learn to understand the role and tasks and provide meaningful contributions, it often takes time. They added that any internships created should not just be about what duties and tasks staff want to pass off to an intern, but about what duties will best educate a student and help them develop professional skills.
“I think more opportunities for our kids is just better, and I want this to be us making sure that we are creating opportunities our students want to have,” Sexton said. “So not just setting up any old internship because it fits our needs, but is this something fundamentally of interest to our students?”
Sexton agreed to bring the idea back to the full School Committee and ask whether the committee would be interested in pursuing the idea and potentially surveying students on what sort of internship opportunities they would want. Likewise, the Community Relations Committee plans to continue discussions and explore the feasibility of the idea.
