What Does Democracy Look Like?
The students of Everett Middle School in the Mission District of San Francisco, Calif., are 80 percent nonwhite. But in school elections, they elected a majority-white student government. Principal Lena Van Haren initially refused to release the election results. “We’re not saying this didn’t count,” she said, but she might do something other than just let the winners take office and the losers not — something to make matters “more equal,” something that would “help students make positive change.” The school held a meeting with parents to find “ways to give voice to unrepresented kids,” a parent wrote in a newspaper column. (AC/KTVU Oakland, San Francisco Chronicle) ...The kids are represented by the people they elected.Original Publication Date: 25 October 2015
This story is in True’s book collections, in Volume 22.
This story is in True’s book collections, in Volume 22.
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