Young Citizens and School Boards

Sunday's Ann Arbor News had the Young Citizen of the Year Award. There was also a "Where have they gone?" article that was focused on what previous young citizens have done.

To my surprise, two of them (out of eleven!) have found their ways onto local school boards.

Jeremy Keeney, 2005 Young Citizen, has been elected to the Lincoln School Board, running "because he felt unprepared by his curriculum to compete at U-M, and wants to improve it - something he said the board is doing, "one subject at a time.''

Kent Sparks, 2007 Young Citizen, has been elected to the Whitmore Lake School Board, "I'm not joking around here, I'm serious. I want to make a difference in my community and my school district,'' he said. He's studying secondary education at the University of Michigan and plans to go into educational administration. "The current system leaves so many students behind,'' he said. "Someone needs to shake things up, make a difference, educate every student.''

One follow-up that was slightly less surprising to me: A third Young Citizen, Michael Johnson (1998), went to Willow Run High School and is now a 5th-grade teacher in Ann Arbor. "It's all about building positive relationships,'' he said.