High School Internships Provide Pay and Building Skills

Listen: Amanda Reynaud, Assistant Director, North State Building Industry Foundation and also intern Jeremy Rose, starting his senior year at Pleasant Grove High School.

For the past five years, the North State Building Industry Foundation (www.biaworkforce.com) has coordinated a job-training program with area builders, trade contractors, and school districts that provides hands-on training in key construction skills – concrete work, framing, plumbing, electrical, and heating/air conditioning (HVAC). This year, five major homebuilders are participating – Anthem United, Lennar, Taylor Morrison, K. Hovnanian and USA Properties. Also participating are 17 trade contractors: Black Diamond Electric, Central Valley Painting, Creative Design Interiors, CVC, Deal Mechanical, Eagle Lathe and Plastering, Fenceworks, Fletcher Plumbing. Hutton Lovewell, L&S Framing, Marticus Electric, Production Framing, Rayco Electric, Sommercal Concrete, Timberlake Cabinets, Timberworks, and Villara Building Systems.

This year, 11 high schools in six area school districts are participating: Elk Grove Unified School District: Laguna Creek, Sheldon, Cosumnes Oaks, Monterey Trail, Pleasant Grove, and William Daylor. Placer County Schools: Whitney (Rocklin Unified), Placer (Placer Union HSD), Lincoln (Western Placer Unified), Center (Center Joint HSD), and Oakmont (Roseville Joint Union HSD). Juniors and seniors attend six or seven after-school programs during the school year and then have the opportunity to participate in a paid, full-time, four-week internship program with an area homebuilder or trade contractor to get first-hand training in skills they would need for a career in construction.

Interns are paid $11/hour. A total of 55 interns participated in the four-week session. Since the program began, 283 people, aged 16-24, have gone through the paid skilled-trades internship program. When students graduate from high school, they will have a skill set and can get a job in construction if they want to. This April, of the 57 seniors who participated in last summer’s internship program, 54 were hired by the homebuilding industry.