Students ease board access
Using an internet grant to create a national model MILFORD A new youth-powered Pike County-based organization called School Board 2.0 has a bold plan for the upcoming year: to bring meetings and important work sessions of the Delaware Valley School District to Pike County residents real-time in the comfort of their own home. All that one needs to get involved is a computer and access to the Internet. Delaware Valley students, members of the Pike County Youth Coalition, won grant funding from Mobilize.org at the organization’s Democracy 2.0 grant summit last year in Philadelphia. Mobilize.org is a grassroots advocacy organization of “Millennials” dedicated to providing young people the tools that they need to make sure that their voices are heard in policy making forums at all levels of government, from school board to Congress. The Democracy 2.0 grant conference was designed to identify and bring together local groups from all across the country that best embody the civic drive and desire to improve government that young people have, and financially support the best groups’ programs, such as School Board 2.0. The program, totally conceptualized, proposed, and initiated in July by DV students and coalition alumni, is using existing “Web 2.0” tools to provide a live video stream, interactive live blog, and scanned documents online at all school board meetings and important work sessions. User-generated questions can be collected with these technologies to bring residents’ concerns directly to the school board, and interactive polls tracking viewers’ opinions on board actions will also serve as a way for people to engage and have input in school board meetings from the comfort of their own home. All content from school board meetings, including the video, live blog, and all important documents introduced at sessions, will be archived online at http://dvsbonline.com/, serving as a useful tool for school district residents when they need to conduct research on past activities. The technology will be run at meetings by Delaware Valley High School students for a small stipend, and will last for 12 months. “Our goal when we proposed School Board 2.0 was simple: we wanted to unite our skills using new technologies and our interest in the school board’s activities to empower our community to engage and get informed,” said Alex Lotorto, a Delaware Valley High School graduate who was part of the original grant seeking team. “We wanted to get involved, and through School Board 2.0, we get to do that and empower an entire community to do the same.” “We are so happy that School Board 2.0 is working to bring the kind of transparency needed in our local governments all across the country,” said Maya Enista, CEO of Mobilize.org, the organization funding the project in partnership with the Pike County Youth Coalition. “This entirely youth-powered initiative also speaks to the increased level of civic engagement of the Millennial Generation which, more than any other demographic, wants to be involved in substantive policymaking at every level, from Congress to school board.” In addition to serving local needs, School Board 2.0 is also meant to work as a model for school boards and local governments nationwide as a way to provide greater transparency and empower communities to become more engaged in policymaking in their areas. Editor’s note: Coalition members, DV alumni Nick Troiano and Kathryn Braisted are also correspondents for the Pike County Courier