Monroe intern program passes torch to area students

By Jim Thompson – the Walton Tribune

City finds future workers in local high schools

Her official title with the City of Monroe is “Manager of Human Resource Development,” but if you talk with Sarah Johnson, you’ll soon learn that at least part of her duties should perhaps carry the title “Manager of Passing the Torch.”

Left: Sarah Johnson; top right, Eli Yeater; bottom right, Eli Yeater.

That’s quite literally how she sees one aspect of her work, which is bringing high-school-age interns into various municipal jobs — from customer service at City Hall to outdoor work with the city’s water and sewer infrastructure — as a means of hopefully inspiring them to one day take on full-time employment with the city.

It’s a job she was handed by Les Russell, the city’s director of human resources, in the wake of previous internship efforts that faltered and eventually sputtered out.

Interestingly, Johnson was an intern with the city — it was then called youth apprenticeship — from 2003 until she left for college the next year. She remembers the work as a lot of filing, making coffee and entering spreadsheet data, across several departments.

“It’s funny how I was here all those years ago, and somehow found my way back here,” Johnson said in a recent interview. “I love that I was given the opportunity to do the intern program, because I think it’s neat when I get to tell these kids, ‘Hey, I did this one upon a time.’ I’ve been 17, walking through the door of this place (Monroe City Hall) that’s a little intimidating when you’re a teenager.”

Since its beginning in August of 2022, the internship program — which recruits from the work-based learning programs in high schools across Walton County — has worked with 14 interns, four of whom have moved into full-time employment with the city.

Under the program, interns are paid $10 per hour for up to 30 hours of work per week, in addition to getting school credit. Currently, the internship program is budgeted for four students each school year. Money for the program comes out of the city’s various departmental budgets.

For Johnson, whose résumé includes work in a Monroe Area High School initiative aimed at helping at-risk youth to graduate, the internship program is a way of helping to ensure that not only the city of Monroe, but other employers, have access to young workers ready to move into serious employment.

“If we, as the adults who are experienced, are not giving them the opportunity, they’re not going to learn,” Johnson said. “They’re not going to be ready for the workforce. I think we have to be on board with getting them there. We can’t complain about what they’re lacking if we’re not giving them the opportunity to learn that stuff.”

In the city government, as elsewhere, Johnson added, “there’s this passing of the torch that has to happen, and it’s our responsibility to grow those people to pass that torch to.”

Johnson was quick to note that soft skills — being on time, being properly dressed, and understanding limits on cellphone use — haven’t been a problem with the city’s interns.

“I would definitely give the credit there to work-based learning coordinators, teachers, parents — everybody that’s involved with them — because we’ve not had any problems so far. They come in and seem to understand this is work,” Johnson said.

‘The books were perfect’

Johnson confessed in a recent interview that in the early days of the internship program, there was some concern among the various government departments that they’d be doing little more than babysitting their interns. Those concerns have apparently evaporated, as departments now are actively interested in when interns can be available to them.

“I have departments that will come to me — typically, the supervisor that last had an intern — and ask, ‘Hey, are we getting an intern this year? Have you started those interviews? What are the options looking like?” Johnson said.

Just one example of the value that interns bring to the city government is found in Rylan Burgess, who started the internship program in high school and is continuing informally today as an unpaid intern while she attends college locally.

Burgess has been working as a “floater,” taking on various roles, and one day recently, Johnson got an email from the city’s wastewater treatment plant manager, who needed help in developing training manuals.

“He said, ‘Hey, I heard that you have an intern that might be able to help me with these book things I need to do,’” said Johnson. She connected the two by email, Johnson recalled, “and the next thing I saw was an email (from the manager to Burgess) saying, ‘Rylan, the books were perfect, thanks for your help’.”

How it works

Getting young people into the city’s internship program is a straightforward process. As Johnson gets recommendations from the work-based learning coordinators in the county’s public and private high schools, she first gets a résumé from the students and then sets up interviews.

“I’m not interviewing them for one specific job,” she explained. “I’m interviewing them just to get to know the kid, to know what they’re interested in — or if they even know what they’re interested in yet — and kind of place them based on my interaction with them.”

There are some limits on internship placements, Johnson said, due to both safety and liability concerns associated with some municipal government work.

Typically, there are two types of students who apply for an internship, Johnson said. In addition to young people who will be continuing their education beyond high school, internship applicants also include students who want to get into the world of work as soon as they get their high school diploma.

The good news for the students looking to move straight into the workplace after high school is, Johnson said, that “there’s a pretty high chance we will have something they’re interested in doing, straight out of high school.”

Johnson candidly admits that, in some instances, students have been placed in internships that were not a good fit. Thankfully, though, through reaching out to other city government departments that might be a better fit, Johnson has been able to place every intern involved with the program.

“We’ve not had to let go of any of our interns,” Johnson said. “I have a good relationship with the department heads, and the supervisors within those departments, and we talk about it, and we work through it.”

Meet the interns

Across a couple of recent days, internship participants who moved into permanent employment with the city shared their stories and their impressions of the internship program.

Makayla Spears, 19, who began her internship in 2024 with the telecommunications division of the Utility Department, in what she then viewed as a first step toward a career in the movie industry, now has a job as a cashier in the city’s finance department, handling an array of customer service duties.

The switch prompted Spears to rethink her career goals, and she is now working toward becoming an accountant.

“Being able to do this job, it made me realize what I wanted to do more (than pursuing a career in the movie industry),” said Spears, who graduated last year form Walnut Grove High School.

The internship, Spears said, provided a great first step into a career.

“It gets your foot in the door for more real-world work,” Spears said.

Now 21 years old, Eli Yeater was one of the first interns in the city’s revamped program. Like Spears, he was assigned to telecommunications, but he has turned that initial experience into a career path.

From his initial work in technical support as the city has switched from cable telecommunications to fiber delivery, Yeater has transitioned into a more substantial role.

“I’ve sort of moved into a network engineering role, where I’m like the ‘man behind the curtain’ keeping devices running and building redundancy” into the city’s telecommunications enterprise, Yeater explained.

Since his high-school days, Yeater has earned a collegiate associate’s degree in emerging technologies, and he also holds nearly a dozen technical certifications.

Yeater is an enthusiastic supporter of the internship program. Without it, he said, “I’d probably still be in school somewhere, maybe working at … something not as professional as this.”

“I feel like I had a great opportunity interning here, and it really started my career off on the right path,” Yeater added.

Asked where he sees himself five or 10 years down the road, Yeater said, “Honestly, I’d probably say still here. I enjoy what I do; I enjoy the people I work with. I have good benefits — like a pension I can keep building on, especially as young as I am.”

“But,” he added, “it’s mainly just enjoying the people you work with. That makes the job.”

Asked what advice he has for young people considering an internship, Yeater suggested they “come in with the right mindset of being able to mature real quickly into a professional environment.”

It was Garrett Stowe’s mother who steered him toward the internship program, which she internship program, which she found out about while Garrett was working at a local grocery store, not his first choice for a place in the working world.

“I always set myself to wanting to work after high school, wanting to have a full-time job after high school, starting my adult life,” Stowe said. But, he added, “I just wanted to do something related to outside work.”

According to Johnson, internship candidates don’t routinely express interest in outdoor work opportunities, so when she saw Stowe’s application, she “was super-excited.”

Stowe now works in the city’s Central Services Department, which includes building and grounds maintenance — or as he puts it, “making sure the city looks right.”

“I really enjoy coming to work every day,” Stowe said. “I like everybody I hang out with, all my coworkers.”

Still, he’s curious about other outdoor work with the city government, suggesting that he might want to get into wastewater operations.

Wherever he may go, Stowe sees himself building a career with the city government. He called the internship program “a really good learning opportunity for kids in high school wanting to try stuff out.”

“I really enjoyed doing it,” he said.

Brady Sorrow, 20, who entered the municipal internship program through Monroe Country Day School four years ago, now works full-time on a city sewer crew, and has his wastewater service license. A typical workday might find him fixing a pipeline, operating a skid steer or an excavator, or any one of numerous other tasks.

A plainspoken young man, Sorrow had previously worked in a scrapyard owned by his father, but clearly wanted a different direction.

“I needed a change of scenery,” he said dryly. “I got tired of looking at scrap metal.”

Sorrow was eager to get through school and into the working world.

“I wanted to get out and work,” he said, “because you know when you go to school it’s just like work, but you don’t get paid.”

Asked if he plans to make a career of working with the city, Sorrow wryly responded, “I don’t have to make one, I’ve already got one started.”

In fact, Sorrow is already helping to train new people starting their jobs.

“You’ve always got to be a role model for people,” he modestly said.

The city’s internship was invaluable as he moved into the world of work, Sorrow added.

“It helps you out a lot … (to) learn how to be in the real world,” he said.

The right stuff

As Johnson was preparing recently to meet the next set of potential interns for the city program, she took some time to take stock of how things are working out.

“I really don’t want to take much credit for this program, because it’s the kids and the departments doing it, it’s not me,” she said. “I just recruit the kids; that’s all I’m actually doing. The rest of it, the credit goes to the kids, and the people supervising them.”

“I am not what makes this intern program work,” Johnson continued. “It works because we get the right kids in the right spots, and we have the right supervisors out there taking it on.”

What Johnson gets to see, and is gratified by, is the growth that she gets to see among the interns.

“They’re kids, they’re coming into a pretty professional workspace for the first time ever, and you don’t know how that’s going to translate from the classroom for a 17-year-old,” she said. “It’s amazing, the growth you see, and how mature they really have become.”

“It’s just a neat thing to watch happen,” Johnson said. “I enjoy it a lot.”

“We’ve had some amazing kids,” Johnson continued. “I think what I’ve learned, and what I know, … (is) there is more motivation there than people see. If you just find the right place for them, you get their attention, you see the motivation, and they just grow. I think if you give them a seat at the table, and you let them be part of the conversation, and you learn about them, they’ll amaze you.”