The City of Wilsonville, nestled between Portland and
Salem, boasts a growing population of close to 16,000.
The City employs about 166 people - including one
student who is employed through the local school
district’s Community Transition Program (CTP) – . Megan
Bingold is a Senior Human Resource Analyst with the
City. She also directly supervises the students employed
through the CTP. In this article, she shares some of her
insights and experiences.
Wilsonville’s CTP is part of the statewide Youth
Transition Program (YTP) that links business with the
budding talent of students with disabilities graduating
from Oregon High Schools. YTP is a resource operating in
125 High Schools across Oregon.
OBLN: Megan, what can you tell us about the Community
Transition Program and its partnership with the City of
Wilsonville?
MEGAN BINGOLD: The CTP is a program of the West Linn
/ Wilsonville School District. Anne Burns is our
contact. Anne’s job is to introduce youth in the
community to employers who are looking to aid in the
transition of students that might have some form of
disability. The City has been active in this program
since 1995. Every year we get a student from the high
school who is interested in developing skills in a
business-type environment.
The students carry out a variety of tasks and
projects for me and the Human Resources department. They
also help out other departments like Finance,
Information Technology, Planning and Community Services.
We are an office environment and the students are hired
to support us with tasks like filing, photocopying,
shredding and other office-related duties. This week our
present student employee, Bob, worked on a postcard
announcement for our Community Center – labeling and
posting event announcements. Every Wednesday he does
filing for the Accounts Payable office.
OBLN: Can you tell us how the hiring process works
through the CTP?
MEGAN BINGOLD: Anne knows us well. She knows what we
are looking for in a student and the skill set that we
need. We usually hire the first person she presents to
us, but we do have an interview process. It helps the
students realize that this isn’t just a shoe-in
placement.
Once hired, we are flexible in our scheduling of the
student’s hours and we try to align their tasks with
their interests. Bob now works for three hours in the
afternoon on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Our
previous student worked one hour per day for four days a
week. Each student also comes with different skills and
abilities, so we try to involve them in tasks that
engage their particular skills and interests. For
instance Bob, our current student, is great on
computers. If you show him something once, he picks it
up right away. Something like a scanning project keeps
him happily engaged all afternoon.
Individual students spend either one or two years on
placement with us. If they come to us as a junior, it
will likely be a two-year placement – seniors will be
here only until they graduate.
OBLN: Some students with disabilities need
accommodations to be successful on the job. Can you tell
us about your experiences with that?
MEGAN BINGOLD: Bob doesn’t have any special
accommodation needs, but his predecessor Kerry was deaf.
We had to work hard at the very beginning, especially
with other departments - to let them know that she had a
hearing disability and that since she read lips, it was
important to remember to speak clearly and slowly. Also,
if we couldn’t readily communicate verbally with her, we
got in the habit of writing things out for her.
OBLN: Once you hire the students, is there any
follow-up involvement from the CTP?
MEGAN BINGOLD: Anne checks in on a regular basis. She
is great. At the beginning of his placement, Bob was
having some difficulty alphabetizing files. When I
mentioned it to Anne, she said that she would come in
for an afternoon and train him on that task. She did
that and we moved forward from there! It is great to
have her backup.
OBLN: Do you have any contact with the students after
they leave your employ? Do you have any idea how they
progressed after high school?
MEGAN BINGOLD: When they come back and visit, and
they do, it is amazing to see how much they have grown
up and changed. They have plans now and things are
exciting for them. It has been a big reward for us to
see that. One woman who came through our program a
number of years ago now works in the HR Department of a
neighboring city.
The two most recent graduates went on to college
after they graduated from high school. One of them is
attending the Oregon Institute of Technology. According
to his parents, he originally had no intention of
furthering his education beyond high school. They
attribute his experiences here towards his change of
mind and the confidence that he could tackle college and
move forward. The other student is attending Clackamas
Community College and is volunteering at a hospital.
OBLN: The City of Wilsonville has hired students
through the CTP program for over ten years now. Why?
MEGAN BINGOLD: We value this direct connection with
our community through this involvement with the high
school. We also like the kids. They are great. They are
fun to work with. They provide a different dimension to
our workplace – a kind of energy that you wouldn’t get
normally.
Our workforce has benefited from working with people
with disabilities because it expands our horizons a
little bit. I know that I speak for most of the folks at
City Hall on this. For example, Kerry was the first deaf
person that I had worked with, and now I am a lot more
confident about how to do that effectively, should I
need to in the future. Overall, it is just a great
connection and we are very happy to be involved.
OBLN: We understand that, in addition to being
involved in the CTP, the City of Wilsonville has some
other progressive practices in employing people with
disabilities – particularly its use of the
Employer-At-Injury Program. Could you tell us a little
about that?
MEGAN BINGOLD: The Employer-At-Injury Program (EAIP)
is available through our workers’ compensation carrier.
If an employee gets injured on the job and the doctor
decides that that employee can return to work, but only
on a modified schedule, we can use the program to
accomplish that. The EAIP will reimburse us 50% of the
employee’s gross wages -up to 66 work days in a 24
consecutive month period. They will pay for up to $2500
for necessary worksite modifications and up to $1000 for
any other transitional tools and equipment needed. It
takes me an hour, at the most, to complete the
paperwork. The return on that investment is well worth
it.
OBLN: Studies seem to suggest that the sooner an
injured worker can get back to work, the shorter their
recovery period will be.
MEGAN BINGOLD: That is true. A lot of employers might
take the easy road and just say “Well, we can’t
accommodate you. Just call us when you are ready to come
back.” That can be difficult for the employee who
doesn’t have the sick leave needed to cover that period
and has to go unpaid. Also, that employer has to go out
and find a temp to fill that role – someone who won’t
likely be familiar with the processes and procedures in
their work environment. The EAIP is a much better route
to take.
OBLN: Thanks for that information on the EAIP.
Getting back to the Community Transition Project, would
you like to offer any concluding comments?
MEGAN BINGOLD: I think the CTP gives the students a
different perspective on themselves. High school and
peer pressure can be difficult and stressful. Working
here is a different experience. Working here with
adults, I suspect that they get treated with more
respect than they might get in school. We don’t care if
they are wearing designer jeans or their hair is the
latest style. They learn that if they show up on time
and do their job well, they are just fine – that there
is life beyond high school and that they can make a
place for themselves in the world.
I would definitely encourage other employers to
contact their local high schools to see if they have a
program similar to the Community Transition Program. I
believe that it is beneficial, not only for the
students, but for the workforce. There are benefits all
around and it is a growing experience for everyone
involved. It is so wonderful when the students come back
to visit – wonderful to hear about all the neat and
exciting things they are doing – and to know that their
experiences in your workplace have contributed to that.
Learn more about Oregon’s Employer-at-Injury Program…
