In San Antonio, younger individuals are typically talked about as the longer term, however we’re additionally dwelling within the current, and selections being made proper now are shaping our lives in actual time.
College districts throughout San Antonio are going through declining enrollment, campus closures, finances cuts, and a rising concern tied to immigration enforcement which can be limiting alternatives and destabilizing pupil success.
On the similar time, nationwide knowledge from CIRCLE at Tufts College, exhibits solely 40% of younger individuals nationally really feel ready to take part in civic or political life. Not as a result of we don’t care, however as a result of too few of us have been given the instruments, help, or invitation to guide.
By way of the UP Leaders of Tomorrow fellowship, we, as 20 youth leaders from throughout San Antonio, spent months figuring out the problems shaping our communities, analyzing root causes, and creating actual, actionable options.
Our work straight aligns with UP Partnership’s Future Prepared Plan and its Methods Assist focus space, which requires rising public investments in youth aged 0-24 by strategic public sector partnerships. By centering youth voice in coverage and advocacy efforts, we intention to assist construct a complete advocacy agenda able to unlocking a further $330 million in public funding to Bexar County by 2030, making certain we younger individuals have the sources, help techniques, and alternatives wanted to be extra economically cell.
What follows aren’t want lists. They’re coverage suggestions meant for college board members, in addition to metropolis and county leaders, grounded in our lived expertise, native knowledge, and urgency — able to be acted on now.
1. Assist youth psychological well being by inventive expression
The Metropolis of San Antonio’s 2024 Teen Psychological Well being Survey recognized college itself as a high psychological well being stressor for teenagers. On the similar time, throughout San Antonio’s college districts, elective programs within the areas of arts, wellness, and inventive expression, are among the many first to be minimize when budgets tighten.
These programs aren’t extras. For a lot of college students, they’re the one areas within the college day the place they will breathe, create, and construct a way of self. When youth don’t really feel grounded inside their very own lives, they discover methods to manage that may negatively influence them. Pulling the applications that present that grounding solely deepens the disaster.
We name on native college boards to develop options that can proceed to permit funding for elective programs centered on inventive expression, arts, and wellness. As districts make troublesome selections about restructuring, this can be a probability to reimagine training in a means that helps, not strains, pupil wellbeing.
2. Carry faculty & profession entry into each neighborhood
For a lot of college students, faculty and profession planning sources really feel out of attain. San Antonio has useful property like cafécollege, however entry stays a barrier for college students juggling transportation challenges, jobs, and household duties.
We name on native leaders to create faculty & profession readiness facilities throughout San Antonio and Bexar County in partnership with college districts. This might appear to be launching a pilot program establishing facilities in no less than three high-need communities, utilizing present colleges or underused group areas.
With college closures leaving buildings empty throughout our metropolis, communities are dropping anchors. However these areas had been constructed to serve college students, they usually nonetheless can. Bringing faculty and profession planning straight into neighborhoods, the place college students can get assist with purposes, monetary support, and future planning with out including one other commute, not solely makes faculty really feel actual and achievable but in addition transforms closed campuses into reinvested group areas somewhat than deserted ones. General, we ask to be included in future conversations concerning the reimagining of cafécollege as referenced from a Council Consideration Request from Councilwoman Ivalis Meza Gonzalez (D8).
3. Guarantee each pupil is aware of their rights
Immigration enforcement exercise throughout San Antonio has contributed to rising absenteeism, mid-year withdrawals, and college students staying house out of concern. Complete households are making selections primarily based on uncertainty about what their rights truly are, and it’s affecting college attendance, pupil psychological well being, and group stability in actual time.
“Know Your Rights” training shouldn’t be optionally available or left to probability. We name on college districts to implement annual Know Your Rights coaching for all center and highschool college students, delivered in partnership with group organizations and built-in into present pupil help programming, simply as reproductive well being training and different important curricula are already required.
This isn’t a political suggestion. It’s an equity-centered one which doesn’t simply inform college students; it empowers total households and communities.
All the above suggestions face the identical impediment: youth are not often within the rooms the place these selections are made. And once we are, it’s typically symbolic or tokenizing.
Having a seat on the desk is simply significant if that seat comes with affect. We should give college students a extra formal position in decision-making areas, so we’re calling for 2 structural modifications.
First, youth advisory our bodies, reminiscent of college board Pupil Advisory Councils, should be designed as genuine buildings for shared governance, not symbolic engagement. Which means granting college students formal decision-making energy in processes reminiscent of superintendent searches, budgeting, and coverage growth.
Second, college districts, in partnership with the town, ought to implement no less than one significant civic engagement initiative per college 12 months reminiscent of voter registration drives, youth boards, or civic training programming, in order that participation turns into a observe, not an exception.
If youth aren’t on the forefront of those selections, the insurance policies that observe is not going to mirror us. That isn’t a future San Antonio can afford.
The options are prepared, the urgency is actual, and the trail ahead is evident. The query now could be whether or not the adults in these rooms are keen to share real energy, not simply supply a chair.
