activists will rally outside City Hall in Jersey City today calling for lowering the age required to vote in Board of Education elections in the state from 18 years old to 16. the group pushing for change is vote at 16 which is being advised by musab Ali who was formerly the president of the Jersey City Board of Education Brianna vinozzi caught up with Ali about his journey in leadership at such a young age and what this new fight means to him musub thank you so much for coming in to chat about this obviously School Board elections have been making the headlines in New Jersey nationally is that why you see this as the time because there's momentum behind this movement why now so I mean I got to say this is not a new idea you know in Indonesia and Greece they already have Federal elections where people are 16 and they can vote Tacoma Maryland was the first place in the United States where they did this and that was 10 years ago in 2013 but I've just felt like you know recently school boards had become such a Hot Topic and the fact that we don't give our students agency I think is something that we definitely Overlook so are you and the group that you're working with this group of teenagers looking at places like Maryland I believe California as well has done something similar to see how they've approached it and what do you think will really resonate with people to get them on board because of course I'm sure you hear criticism that 16 year olds aren't necessarily mature enough to be making these decisions yeah well look I think that 16 year olds have so much at stake 16 17 year olds you know they're able to drive they're able to work which means they can get taxed and I think they have the agency right I work with a lot of young people you know I first got I first ran for office when I was 19.

I got elected when I was 20. by the time I was 23 I was the school board president and one of the things that I realized throughout my time there was how much students really knew about what's going on in the schools for a lot of for a lot of reasons you know we'll talk to parents and teachers and taxpayers and ask them what they feel about education but it's so rare that you actually ask students to give feedback on what they feel about what's going on in the schools yeah and what do you hear from the students that you're working with I mean what are the issues that are top of mind for them so I just think there's so many facility issues There's issues around curriculum There's issues around you know the ins and outs of how schools are run and I think the fact that we don't give them a voice in that process is really just doing them a disservice I mean anything that you were to order today on Amazon like you would leave a review right you're constantly asked to like provide feedback but for some reason when it comes to K-12 education the end user we don't ask them what's happening in their District even in my first campaign back in 2016 I remember calling them the Forgotten stakeholders of Education right like everyone else is being asked their opinion on schools but the people who are actually in school are we're not hearing from them yeah I mean and these are students I imagine who have stakes in this across the board whether that be issues like climate or you know we're obviously seeing an uptick in gun violence across the board in the country and then of course book bands curriculum gender Equity issues I mean these students are really faced with a lot do they feel like if they have a vote they'd be able to really make a change here yeah absolutely I mean if you look at Tacoma Maryland for instance the voter turnout rates for 16 and 17 year olds was much higher than any other age group like young people really really care about what's going on I know when I go to schools and I talk to young people and I ask them even how big the budget is in schools like people have no idea how much money is being spent in education yeah and they Wonder like are there better ways to spend this money in Jersey City one of the things we did was we started a participatory budgeting process where we gave each High School ten thousand dollars and we said where do you want to spend this money and you know some people would think oh the first thing kids want are field trips but actually the first things kids ask for were facility upgrades they're like listen some of our bathroom stalls don't work right and these are the things that you know other people should have pointed out to us but some people sometimes just feel like they can't do that where students have that Independence right there's no one hanging this over to them as like a sort of a job or something and so they can be very honest and candid about things that they need to that that they see need to be fixed Mussab Ali is the former Jersey City School Board president thank you so much thank you for having me [Music]