In San Antonio, young people are often talked about as the future, but we are also living in the present, and decisions being made right now are shaping our lives in real time.
School districts across San Antonio are facing declining enrollment, campus closures, budget cuts, and a rising fear tied to immigration enforcement that are limiting opportunities and destabilizing student success.
At the same time, national data from CIRCLE at Tufts University, shows only 40% of young people nationally feel prepared to participate in civic or political life. Not because we do not care, but because too few of us have been given the tools, support, or invitation to lead.
Through the UP Leaders of Tomorrow fellowship, we, as 20 youth leaders from across San Antonio, spent months identifying the issues shaping our communities, analyzing root causes, and developing real, actionable solutions.
Our work directly aligns with UP Partnership’s Future Ready Plan and its Systems Support focus area, which calls for growing public investments in youth aged 0-24 through strategic public sector partnerships. By centering youth voice in policy and advocacy efforts, we aim to help build a comprehensive advocacy agenda capable of unlocking an additional $330 million in public funding to Bexar County by 2030, ensuring we young people have the resources, support systems, and opportunities needed to be more economically mobile.
What follows are not wish lists. They are policy recommendations meant for school board members, as well as city and county leaders, grounded in our lived experience, local data, and urgency — ready to be acted on now.
1. Support youth mental health through creative expression
The City of San Antonio’s 2024 Teen Mental Health Survey identified school itself as a top mental health stressor for teens. At the same time, across San Antonio’s school districts, elective courses in the areas of arts, wellness, and creative expression, are among the first to be cut when budgets tighten.
These courses are not extras. For many students, they are the only spaces in the school day where they can breathe, create, and build a sense of self. When youth don’t feel grounded within their own lives, they find ways to cope that can negatively impact them. Pulling the programs that provide that grounding only deepens the crisis.
We call on local school boards to develop solutions that will continue to allow funding for elective courses focused on creative expression, arts, and wellness. As districts make difficult decisions about restructuring, this is a chance to reimagine education in a way that supports, not strains, student wellbeing.
2. Bring college & career access into every neighborhood
For many students, college and career planning resources feel out of reach. San Antonio has valuable assets like cafécollege, but access remains a barrier for students juggling transportation challenges, jobs, and family responsibilities.
We call on local leaders to create college & career readiness centers across San Antonio and Bexar County in partnership with school districts. This could look like launching a pilot program establishing centers in at least three high-need communities, using existing schools or underused community spaces.
With school closures leaving buildings empty across our city, communities are losing anchors. But these spaces were built to serve students, and they still can. Bringing college and career planning directly into neighborhoods, where students can get help with applications, financial aid, and future planning without adding another commute, not only makes college feel real and achievable but also transforms closed campuses into reinvested community spaces rather than abandoned ones. Overall, we ask to be included in future conversations about the reimagining of cafécollege as referenced from a Council Consideration Request from Councilwoman Ivalis Meza Gonzalez (D8).
3. Ensure every student knows their rights
Immigration enforcement activity across San Antonio has contributed to rising absenteeism, mid-year withdrawals, and students staying home out of fear. Entire families are making decisions based on uncertainty about what their rights actually are, and it is affecting school attendance, student mental health, and community stability in real time.
“Know Your Rights” education should not be optional or left to chance. We call on school districts to implement annual Know Your Rights training for all middle and high school students, delivered in partnership with community organizations and integrated into existing student support programming, just as reproductive health education and other essential curricula are already required.
This is not a political recommendation. It is an equity-centered one that doesn’t just inform students; it empowers entire families and communities.
All of the above recommendations face the same obstacle: youth are rarely in the rooms where these decisions are made. And when we are, it is often symbolic or tokenizing.
Having a seat at the table is only meaningful if that seat comes with influence. We must give students a more formal role in decision-making spaces, so we are calling for two structural changes.
First, youth advisory bodies, such as school board Student Advisory Councils, must be designed as authentic structures for shared governance, not symbolic engagement. That means granting students formal decision-making power in processes such as superintendent searches, budgeting, and policy development.
Second, school districts, in partnership with the city, should implement at least one meaningful civic engagement initiative per school year such as voter registration drives, youth forums, or civic education programming, so that participation becomes a practice, not an exception.
If youth aren’t at the forefront of these decisions, the policies that follow will not reflect us. That is not a future San Antonio can afford.
The solutions are ready, the urgency is real, and the path forward is clear. The question now is whether the adults in those rooms are willing to share genuine power, not just offer a chair.
