Meet the students making youth voices heard in the Grand Valley

At the candidate forum in October 2023, students asked questions of the candidates running for open seats on the D51 School Board of Education. One takeaway at the forum was the idea of creating a student advisory board for the school district, something that each candidate said they would support.

“I think it was huge for us because it showed that all of the candidates really do care,” said Balzer.

Students also brought up a desire for more mental health resources throughout the district and help for housing-insecure students.

As for the school-based health center, it was originally voted down by the school board in March 2023. West Slope Youth Voice took that as a disappointing loss, due to the success of a similar clinic at Central High School.

“There's a school-based health center at Central High School, and that has reduced suicide rates almost completely there,” said Balzer.

The success of the clinic at Central was one of the main reasons for WSYV to publicly support the new health center by speaking at school board meetings.

“Our collective voice truly just impacted the school board to understand where we're coming from,” said Mia De Villegas-Decker, a senior at Palisade High School.

Members said their lobbying in support of the health center contributed to the ultimately unanimous decision to its approval by the board of education in June 2023.

“Ensuring access to quality healthcare, particularly mental health services for students, was a shared priority among the board members,” said Angela Lema of the District 51 Board of Education, in an email to Rocky Mountain PBS.

“Some of us questioned how we could provide excellent care while considering the clinic's location, aiming for optimal accessibility for students and families. We also emphasized maintaining a clear separation from external vendors to prioritize D51's focus on education,” Lema said.

Tangible change, like getting the clinic approved, is a reason why WSYV is important to Balzer. “That really got me pumped about this program because you can truly make life better for the students around you,” he said.

In 2018 Western Colorado Alliance, a local nonprofit, started the youth voter initiative to involve high school students in democracy and pre-register them to vote. That would eventually become West Slope Youth Voice. Students mostly hear about the group by word of mouth and are brought to meetings by friends who are already involved.

“[Mia] asked me over the summer to join […] this seemed like something that I would be interested in doing because I was a little bit out of touch with local politics,” said Palisade High School senior, Ila Graham.

Students attend meetings and talk through problems such as homelessness in Grand Junction, and how to better deal with teacher misconduct.

“The most important thing is understanding that students have a place in politics […] I think it's important for students but also for parents, for teachers, for our elected officials themselves, to understand that these are people that need to be represented,” said Mila Stepan the head intern at WSYV.

The Western Colorado Alliance continues to support West Slope Youth Voice.

“Our official mission statement is that we serve to engage students in our democracy and work with elected officials to get student voices heard,” said Charlotte Allen, the other head intern at the organization. Allen and Stepan are both seniors at Palisade.

What does “getting student voices heard” look like in practice? It’s a lot of conversations with fellow students to see what’s on their minds.

Each year WSYV interviews fellow students to find out what’s important to them, and how they can make a difference.

“Our student survey really highlights a few major things and these often have to do with mental health, feeling safe in schools and healthy food for students,” said Stepan.

The students then take the concerns to elected officials locally, and to the state capitol.

De Villegas-Decker said building relationships with state senators and representatives has been a valuable experience.

“[We’ve had] very high-stake conversations that not many adults think that students care about, and we've taken those conversations and implemented them into our school district, into our local democracy,” she said.

The 22 current members of WSYV are from schools around the Grand Valley. Expanding to areas like Rifle and Montrose is a goal for the coming year.

“Joining West Slope Youth Voice helped me really notice that I could make a difference,” said Stepan.

“I think a lot of that is just the sheer amount of people that I've talked to that have listened to me. I'm 17 and I've spoken to probably more elected officials than most adults,” she said.

Joshua Vorse is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. joshuavorse@rmpbs.org