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View ProfilesPublished June 19, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. | Updated June 19, 2024 at 10:58 a.m.
The 50 teenagers gathered in the House chamber of the Vermont state capitol building in early June bore little resemblance to the lawmakers who typically occupy the room. That fact wasn't lost on Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, who welcomed the group that Wednesday morning.
"Oftentimes, these seats are filled with people who are your grandparents' age or even older — and it's hard for folks in that generation to understand what it's like to be a young person in 2024," Copeland Hanzas told the students and their teachers. "They didn't have social media. They didn't stare down the figurative barrel of climate change. And they didn't have to do lockdown drills, staring down the potential of a literal barrel."
Copeland Hanzas invited the young people, who hailed from six different schools, to the Statehouse as part of a larger initiative her office is leading: the creation of Vermont's first-ever Civic Health Index, a report that examines how the state is faring when it comes to civic-engagement indicators such as voter registration and turnout, social connectedness, volunteerism, and trust in media and government.
Dozens of states have produced similar reports in partnership with the National Conference on Citizenship, a nonprofit that was chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1953 to strengthen civic life in America. But Vermont is the only one so far that is incorporating quantitative and qualitative data from middle and high school students into its state report, which is expected to be finished by December.
The youth component of the report is a natural extension of the work Copeland Hanzas, a former Democratic legislator from Bradford, has done to increase civic engagement among young people since she took office in 2023. Early in her tenure, she hired Robyn Palmer as the first-ever education and civic engagement coordinator in the Office of the Secretary of State. Palmer has managed a variety of youth-oriented projects, including a new advisory group composed of middle and high school teachers that is helping to design curriculum and compile resources for K-12 educators. Copeland Hanzas regularly visits schools, where she talks to students about the issues their communities are facing and how to address them.
At the Statehouse gathering, she had a similarly pragmatic message.
"Some of the problems that we face are ones that simply a group of passionate neighbors can join together to solve," Copeland Hanzas told the students. "What I want to hear from you today is what are your ideas about how we can engage youth, how we can empower you and your peers to express what you see as the problems ... and how we can engage you in helping to solve them."
Months before the event, the Secretary of State's Office had sent out an online civic-health survey created by the YMCA's Youth and Government project to every school district in the state. Students were asked to respond to a series of questions about how often in the past 12 months they had undertaken specific activities such as doing favors for neighbors; interacting with people from different racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds; and reading, watching or listening to the news. The survey also asked whether teens planned to register to vote when they became eligible. More than 2,500 responded.
At the Statehouse, students were tasked with examining the anonymous survey results and answering questions such as "What in the data is encouraging?" "What is concerning?" and "What is surprising?"
Staff members from UP for Learning, an education nonprofit focused on empowering youths to create positive change in their schools, and the University of Vermont's Center for Rural Studies, which is working with the state to analyze the data, helped manage the discussion.
Michael Moser, state data center coordinator and research project specialist at the Center for Rural Studies, led a small-group conversation about a survey question that asked how often people help their neighbors.
"It looks like about a third of youth said that they never do stuff for their neighbors," Moser said. "What's your take on this?"
One student said people who live in sparsely populated areas would likely have fewer opportunities to help neighbors.
"I think it makes a lot of sense," another student said, "because I feel like youth are very antisocial these days."
In another small group, students discussed a question that asked whether youths had contacted a public official to express their opinion in the past 12 months. Around 93 percent of respondents said no.
"I have a lot more of an idea of how politics work nationwide but me, personally, I don't understand government on a state level," BFA Fairfax junior Izaih Erno told the group. "I don't know who I would even contact."
Later in the morning, students engaged in a "chalk talk," rotating around the room and writing comments about the results of different survey questions on sheets of chart paper. One sheet noted that only 6.4 percent of youths felt very prepared to speak publicly about an issue of concern to them.
"More public speaking classes," one person wrote as a way to improve that statistic.
"Making more spaces for youth to be comfortable doing this," wrote another.
In an interview with Seven Days after the event, Moser said he found the students in attendance to be both eloquent and engaged.
"And I think they are, rightfully so, critical of the systems that are making decisions for them that they are not always enabled to participate in," Moser said.
Ana Lindert-Boyes, a youth program specialist for UP for Learning who attended Twinfield Union School and now studies at Boston University, had a similar impression. When students were asked what local issues concerned them, many mentioned their school budgets, Lindert-Boyes said. But many also said they didn't feel like they had the power to influence them.
Lindert-Boyes said the Statehouse event felt like an example of authentic youth engagement, in which adults were really listening to students' opinions and feelings.
Students seemed to agree.
Magdelina Short, a sophomore at BFA Fairfax, wrote in an email after the event that it was "rewarding to be surrounded by optimistic, like-minded peers."
"Being in the Statehouse chamber where state representatives make important decisions gave a sense of empowerment to the topics being discussed," said Kate Duling, a BFA Fairfax junior.
In the coming months, the Secretary of State's Office and UVM's Center for Rural Studies will convene more gatherings with different groups of Vermonters — new Americans and people of color, for example — to get a better understanding of how certain populations experience civic engagement. They will use that qualitative data, other federal and state data, and the youth survey to paint a picture of Vermont's civic health in six different areas: volunteerism and donating; political engagement; community and social context; cultural access and engagement; media trust and access; and government trust and access.
Once the Civic Health Index is complete, the Secretary of State's Office plans to put together a traveling exhibit with some of its big takeaways that will circulate to libraries, schools and other community organizations. It will also create a conversation guide that will allow people to hold their own discussions about the report.
The hope, said Palmer, of the Secretary of State's Office, is that the report will create a road map for how to improve civic engagement in the state — for both youths and adults.
Disclosure: The Vermont Secretary of State's Office is one of several partners connected with Seven Days' Good Citizen Challenge, a summer civics project for students in grades K-8. Find more information at goodcitizenvt.com.
The original print version of this article was headlined "Youth Movement | Vermont's first civic health report will include input from students"
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