Growing up in a couple different Cleveland neighborhoods, high school student Morgan Overby has noticed a lot that she wants to change, she said, from inequity between inner-city and suburban schools to neighborhood safety.
Overby, a student at the Cleveland School of Architecture and Design, wants to get into local politics, but the path there isn’t clear to many young people, she said.
“It’s easy to think those roles aren’t made for you,” she said. “In reality, they can be changed so that they can be.”
Overby is part of a new program called the Junior Mayor’s Association, hosted by Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration. City officials behind the program — including Community Engagement Specialist Jaden Baxter and Chief of Education Michele Pomerantz — said they want to get high school students’ perspectives on some of the city’s most pressing issues. They want to encourage young people to engage with local government and teach them leadership skills along the way.
“We want to bring them all together to say, ‘How can we work together to make a better Cleveland?’” Pomerantz said.
About 40 Cleveland students from nearly 10 high schools, both public and private, are meeting after school every other week through mid-May. They formed small groups focused on different topics from public safety to economic development. During the last two sessions, each group will present their solutions to the different city officials in charge of their topic areas. The city doesn’t have a formal process in place for implementing their ideas.
“They really exceeded our expectations in every way just because of their participation and their involvement in their community,” Baxter said. “They’re such energetic students.”
Skepticism and hope
Antonio Figueroa, a student at Lincoln West School of Science and Health, is focusing on public health. He wants to make sure young people in the city have access to health care, he said. He’d also like to see more grocery stores on the East Side, where he lives.
Figueroa looks toward politics with both skepticism and hope. He’s frustrated with challenges facing his generation such as rising housing costs, but he looks forward to a time when his generation can take up political offices. He joined the Junior Mayor’s Association to learn more about how government works, he said.
“We can actually help our new generation, the one that’s going to be our younger generation,” Figueroa said. “We can actually help them instead of putting them in poverty like our generation is right now.”
Heather Tuck-Macalla works as a community college and career center coordinator at Lincoln West. She encouraged her students to join the Junior Mayor’s Association because it’s an opportunity for them to speak up. She hopes the experience will help her students feel inspired to make a difference in their community, she said.
“In the Clark-Fulton neighborhood, I think a lot of people feel like maybe the neighborhood’s been forgotten a little bit,” Tuck-Macalla said. “I told my students, ‘This is your opportunity to speak up, use your voice, advocate for your community, our school, the neighborhood.”
