Owensboro Innovation Academy hosts civics panel

OWENSBORO, Ky. (WEHT) — At Owensboro Innovation Academy, around 150 students spoke with local and state elected officials. It’s apart of the school’s mission to help students learn how they can interact and help create change in the community.

OIA is giving students the opportunity to research, learn and pinpoint pressing community issues, and think of policies that can create solutions to those issues.

Students will put it all into a project. The project is an idea that school officials came up with in September.

To help with the process, over a dozen state and local elected officials were apart of a panel rotation. Hundreds of 7th graders sat front row to watch it all come to life.

“Collectively, between the middle school and high school is a project-based school. It’s essential for these projects to have community involvement…to have our elected officials, local business owners, different individuals from the communit, come share their expertise with our students,” says Julie Starnes, OIA’s Community Outreach and Job Placement Coordinator.

School board members, state representatives, and county attorneys were all amongst those ready to answer questions.

A worksheet helped guide students as they gathered knowledge about the decision-making process.

One student says school safety was at the top of her list of concerns.

“There’s been a lot of shootings, a lot of threats…just kind of like our safety and us feeling comfortable at school. It’s just a very tragic moment….specially with, this year. A lot has been going on. I was just very curious about what they do with our community and keeping our school safe,” says Alison Williams, a 7th grader at the academy.

Williams says it’s an opportunity she recognizes most don’t get.

Another student says she recognizes, when it comes to politics, kids are sometimes not interested. She hopes there’s room for more schools like hers in the future.

“…Just sitting down and just reading notes and books and stuff like that, It’s just boring. It doesn’t really help get your mind moving. So, I think having more innovative stuff like that really helps other people think and become greater people later on,” says Sawyer Miekiff, a 7th grader at OIA.

In November, students will present projects centered around policy change to the elected officials who spoke on the four panels.

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