Student Power: Teens in Georgia take on state politicians in fight for
equity

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Esther Schrader | Read the full piece here

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Friend,

Maariya Sheikh is just 16 years old, but every day at school she gets
a lesson in inequality she says the adults around her should heed.

Drawn by a specific academic program, Sheikh chose to attend high
school outside the affluent, majority-white area of Cobb County,
Georgia, where she lives. Her new school is the most racially diverse
in the county. It is also significantly less resourced than her middle
school. Students, many from disadvantaged neighborhoods, see the
difference. Her high school teachers often pay for class materials out
of their own pockets. More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic,
they are short of hand sanitizer.

Now, efforts by local and state lawmakers could entrench that
inequality by gerrymandering school board member districts - in
Cobb County and around the state - to maintain razor-thin white
majorities. 

Sheikh is one of a growing movement of high school students in Georgia
fighting back. Armed with sophisticated organizing techniques and
driven by a legislative onslaught from state lawmakers who seem
determined to undermine Black representation at every level, they are
juggling homework and exams with testimony at school boards and state
legislative sessions, betting that by injecting youth engagement into
politics run by adults, they can change their own world.

"Crazy things are going on in Georgia," Sheikh said.
"But people are beginning to realize how influential student
voices can be. We're hoping that we can start paving the way for
other students to know that they can actually take action about the
issues that affect them."

Students find their voice

A raft of legislation currently on the table in Georgia appears
designed to stifle the voices of a student population that,
particularly in Atlanta's metropolitan area, is undergoing rapid
change. The Cobb County redistricting proposal, which would entrench a
white majority of school board seats in an increasingly diverse
county, is one of more than 85 local redistricting bills that have
been introduced in the current state legislative session. Separately,
conservative state lawmakers have introduced four bills that would
limit how race is discussed in schools around the state. 

READ MORE

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