Affordable transportation, increasing youth employment, and creating more diverse community events were some of the topics high school students discussed during the South Coast Safety Partnership’s youth summit on Wednesday.

About 20 high school students from across the county shared challenges they face with more than a dozen county and city leaders and organizations at the summit held at the Faulkner Gallery in the Santa Barbara Public Library

The South Coast Safety Partnership is an initiative under nonprofit CommUnify, focused on preventing youth violence, sponsored by the cities of Carpinteria, Santa Barbara and Goleta, and Santa Barbara County.  

In the past, the program’s summit featured a student panel with local organizations that would ask them questions.

This year, students instead led discussions and asked leaders questions about the challenges they face. The students received six hours of training to prepare, according to Maico Hernandez, coordinator with South Coast Youth Safety Partnership.

San Marcos High School senior Bali Sundaran and Santa Barbara High School senior William Rodriguez asked local elected leaders about creating more safe and affordable public transportation in the county.  

“It’s not well known that free bus passes are provided to students, and it’s a big issue because there are students who live very far away from their schools,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez and his sister regularly take the bus and would have to buy bus passes every week.

“It was really expensive,” he said. 

They were also happy to have been paired with local elected officials as they discussed their roles within Santa Barbara. 

“The youth nowadays don’t know who the elected officials are, what they do or what they stand for,” Sundaran said. 

The two also asked how students can get involved with city government.

Santa Barbara City Councilman Oscar Gutierrez informed them about potential summer internships with the city. Similarly, Santa Barbara City Councilman Eric Friedman pointed them to opportunities with the Parks and Recreation Department. 

Rodriguez told them the city has a responsibility to get the word out to students about these kinds of opportunities.  

Erin Cross, juvenile probation manager, sat at the law enforcement table and was impressed with the students’ questions that also cleared up misconceptions about federal immigration activity. 

“Local law enforcement cannot interfere with federal investigations, and some of them did not know that we cannot legally interfere,” she said. 

Dos Pueblos junior Cixlamina Reveles Ramirez and freshman Braelyn Amari Wood left their small group conversations about racism feeling productive as they advocated for diverse community events. 

“This is the most heard I have felt, because they (community groups) actually participated,” Ramirez said. 

The two say they hope to see real change from their discussion out in the community.

“Once we see that we are being heard, and we are seeing that these problems are being turned into something better for us, I feel like that’s when we’ll realize that we’ve come to a change,” Wood said.

The students had six groups based on discussion topics including mental health, community programming, transportation and law enforcement, education and youth employment.

Patricia Keelean, CEO of CommUnify, was hopeful local leaders would leave the Wednesday event seeing the value to keep supporting the program as it faces funding uncertainty. 

Keelean said as county and city budgets are being workshopped and cities see their own funding challenges, she is worried if funding will still be available to support the program.