Blog

As we gear up for fall, we want to share with you some of our favorite moments and wins so far in the earlier seasons of the year. We started off strong with a packed first quarter:

We kicked off our Community Schools Listening Campaign with Statewide Student Advisory Board to offer a platform for Black and marginalized students to express their thoughts and visions for an equitable schooling experience. Another highlight was our Fresno youth engaging in shared leadership with their district on their Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAP).

“Our Fresno youth submitted a formal letter of recommendation earlier this year highlighting how they would like to see student engagement conducted and offered budget recommendations. They also submitted public comment at the district board meeting and finally got a meeting with district staff back in March to share their feedback, testimony, and their critical analysis.”

After we thawed out from the winter, we got to experience a couple of our highlights outside for the second quarter.

We had our annual Statewide Leadership Retreat with 49 Of California’s phenomenal students coming from all 4 regions, and together we spent 2-3 days learning and honing in leadership and campaign skills while building community with one another.

CFJ also launched our first ever youth-driven policy agenda on Youth Power and School Transformation in May. Our student leaders got to flex their legislative advocacy muscles on a visit to the State Capitol to meet with legislators and decision-makers where they shared their experiences as students and ideas to improve our California schools.

3rd quarter was marked, of course, with memorable graduations and celebrations throughout all of our regions.

We got another win in Oakland, after finally securing implementation of Measure QQ (won in 2020) in the district which will allow 16- and 17-year-old students to vote in their upcoming school board elections.

In Long Beach, we celebrated 4 years of transformative work in 5 high schools and the whole LBUSD as we closed out our Professional Learning Network (PLN).

“The way power has shifted in our school [because of PLN], is that me being a student, I’m now able to collaborate with my principal and VP doing what we call admin work–being able to have a voice and take command and charge in an adult-dominated work and that is important to me.” – Indra S., Wilson High School

Gold medals all around to our brilliant and talented youth for all their leadership and commitment to quality education for their generation and beyond. 2024 has been an eventful year so far; stay tuned and join our Justice League so that together, we can strengthen our student leaders with a platform for youth-led democracy.