The Pineville Independent School Board heard from Jason Reeves and Diana Mills with Rural Post-secondary Economic Development (RPED) at their September meeting. RPED joined the school and Partners for Rural Impact to provide summer internships for 18 PHS students this summer.

“Pineville Independent had the greatest opportunity to work with RPED, Jason Reeves and Diana Mills, and offer internships to some of our students,” said Jennifer Yankey, Project Director for the Innovative Approaches to Literacy (IAL) grant in Pineville. “We have a few of them here who actually participated in the internship process.”

Yankey said IAL was involved because connecting students with the local economy is one of the grant’s performance measures.

“As Jennifer was saying, we had an opportunity to partner with your district and some of your PRI folks in your building to offer the internship program,” Reeves said.

The program was piloted last year with Barbourville Independent, Pineville was added this year and next year they plan to add internships to Middlesboro students as well.

“We’re taking our show down the highway as you can see,” he said. “We’re very thankful for your support of this program, the staff, the students, your local community. The employers have been wonderful in embracing this idea and working with our students and giving them a chance to see what it’s like in the real world.”

He said a total of 18 interns were paid $10 per hour for 40 hours per week for eight weeks. That made a total of about $60,000 the students earned over the summer.

“It was a benefit to the employers because they had workers this summer, but it’s also a benefit to the local economy because I would say that 90% of that money went back into the local economy,” Reeves said.

Pineville Community Literacy Coordinator Shannon Elliott led the program for IAL. She shared a brief slideshow detailing all of the interns and the work they did over the summer.

She said a lot of work went into matching students with jobs that fit into their planned careers.

“I think we created some relationships, especially for our grant, and the students got a lot of valuable experience,” Elliott said. “I had one student send me a message thanking me for asking her to get involved because she wouldn’t have. Now she knows what she wants to do and she did such a good job this summer they kept her as an employee. It really has made a difference.”

Aleah Obenshain, who interned at the Bell County Public Library in Middlesboro, said the program was a very good opportunity for her.

“I have new connections and it has taught me a lot about the value of money,” she said. “I learned a lot of valuable lessons about how to communicate with workers and have public relationships with people. I really am grateful for the opportunity.”

Elliott said she saw a lot of growth in the students who participated in the program.

“This group did a great job in representing themselves and representing our school,” she said.

Reeves said RPED would be coming back to the board in the next month or two with a MOA to have the program again next summer.