The children have spoken.
They want role models, since they don’t see many in their neighborhoods.
They want a sense of hope and opportunity.
They want edifying programs, quality education, parental participation (but any successful African-American adults who care and mentor will do).
Several high school students got a chance to voice their concerns and needs Monday during a town hall meeting at Tandy Recreation Center in the Ville.
The meeting began with a panel regarding the possible closing of Sumner High School. Those panelists were replaced by others who then discussed stopping violence in the neighborhoods.
“I think we need more black men and women to come into the schools and mentor us – we need people to look up to,” Sumner High School student Eddie White said during a question and comments segment.
“When we go home, we see the streets; we see those role models making money, but we don’t see the grown people who go to school, work hard and make legal money.”
White said that just as street hustlers grab them young, school teachers and administrators should start in elementary school showing kids that they can go to college.
“By the we time get to be seniors or freshmen, we’ve already been in jail, had problems with the law, smoking weed, drinking and doing all this other stuff, when we should be getting our grades,” White said.
Another teenager said children are usually drawn to vices and gangs because they feel like no one cares about them and they don’t feel accepted.
“You feel accepted by gangs, you feel you have someone to trust and rely on when your parents don’t,” said 16-year-old Jarret Stieft, who said he recently turned his life around after spending time in juvenile detention.
Circuit Court Judge Jimmie Edwards, a panelist at the meeting, laid out three contributing causes of delinquent behavior.
¦ Lack of supervision due to drug addiction, mental illness, incarceration and young parenthood.
¦ Too much idle time.
¦ Lack of economic opportunities and money: children want what other children have and commit crimes to get the money to get them.
Edwards also said youths are more likely to commit crimes and become delinquent between the hours of 3 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., which makes youth programs ideal since most are in service during after-school hours.
Kelvin Adams, superintendent of St. Louis Public Schools, said district-wide after-school programs will begin in the 2009-10 school year and would run until 6 p.m. on weekdays and on Saturdays.
Michael Holmes, executive director of S.L.A.T.E, pled for more youth programs.
“We need the City and State to step up and fund youth programs and employment year-round,” Holmes said.
“Kids have to have an opportunity, and they need a skill because not all of them are going to go to college.”
Irene J. Smith, who is running for mayor of the city of St. Louis in the March primary, said that former St. Louis Mayor Vince Schoemehl started cutting youth programs and current Mayor Francis G. Slay squashed them.
Slay did not make the town hall meeting, sending the message that he was under the weather. Director of Public Safety Charles Bryson sat on the panel in his place.
Maida Coleman, who has announced plans to file for mayor as an independent in the April general election, attended the town hall meeting.
State Rep. T.D. El-Amin and St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom were also panelists.
