2011 Long Island Youth Summit Brings 200 Top High School Students to Work with Experts on Long Island Issues
On March 11, 2011 two hundred high school students from all over Long Island assembled for the 2011 Long Island Youth Summit (LIYS) that took place at Dowling College in Oakdale, NY. The purpose of the Summit was to work with the brightest and most active high school students in order to make them aware of the socio-economic, environmental, and socio-medical issues that are affecting Long Island and to recommend solutions to these issues. In order to participate in the Summit, the students were asked either to write a paper/essay or to create a short video or an art portfolio that would discuss possible solutions to a suburban issue of their choice. The issues that high school students were asked to research included Environment on Long Island: Preservation of Open Space, Protection of Water and Renewable Energy; Housing and Suburban Culture; Transportation; Long Island Economy and Business Environment; Long Island Governance Structure and Civic Activism; Race, Class, and Education on Long Island and Socio-Medical Topics of Bullying in Schools and Social Networking. The 2011 LIYS Selection Committee received submissions from more than 500 students from over 30 high Long Island high schools. Based on the quality of their submitted work, two hundred students were selected as the finalists who, together with their high school teachers, participated in the Summit.
During the day of the Summit finalists and their teachers participated in topic workshops with thirty experts in the areas of business and economics, governance, housing and transportation, environment, socio-medical issues, race and education, and non-profit and civic activism on proposing the solutions to the issues affecting Long Island. After completing their topic workshops, the participants convened for a joint final session and the awards ceremony where they presented their workshop recommendations.
The workshop Environment 2: Renewable Energy was led by Gordian Raacke, Executive Director of Renewable Energy Long Island (RELI). The experts in the workshop included Ashley Hunt-Martorano of RELI, and John Keating, Lee Westerlind, and Thomas E. Ryan of National Grid. The workshop participants recommended: to replace current electricity supply of fossil and nuclear energy with renewable sources of energy while promoting energy efficiency policies; to use a diverse mix of efficiency and renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind, water and ocean power; to include cost of environmental damage from fossil fuels as well as the likely price increase in fossil fuels when comparing costs between conventional power sources and renewable energy; to create a “Pilot Renewable Energy Community” where individuals and families, including those who are skeptical of the benefits of renewable energy, would live in net zero energy consumption homes; to create a TV program about this project showcasing the benefits of energy efficient living.
The Long Island Economy workshop was moderated by Eric Alexander, Executive Director of Vision Long Island (VLI). Mr. Alexander was joined by Ron Roel, President of Roel Resources, and Robert Fonti, President of Vincent James Management Company. Participants in the workshop developed the following recommendations to improve the economy on Long Island: to strengthen existing businesses with government incentives for hiring new employees, for example to provide tax credits for small businesses; to train entrepreneurs to develop realistic business plans to avoid failure in the first year of opening a new business; to support local manufacturing, agriculture and service companies by purchasing locally manufactured goods, locally grown produce, and using local service providers; to develop clusters of business and housing in new downtowns such as the Lighthouse development in Nassau County or Tanger Outlet Mall in Suffolk County; to promote diversity in the workforce by addressing discrimination in various companies and in housing by creating a range of housing options in local communities; to create a Technology Trade School to assist students in the emerging job fields such as green technology installation and management; to connect young people starting from high school to emerging employment sectors beyond the typical legal, medical, and financial service industries; to develop a robust internship program for young people to gain experience in various industries across Long Island.
Students in the Sustainable Community Design workshop focused on sustainable community design and discussed solutions for the shortage of alternative housing choices on Long Island. Brandon Palanker, Director of New Business Development for Renaissance Downtowns, moderated this workshop. Aurash Khawarzad of Project for Public Spaces (PPS), Elissa Ward of VLI and Alexander Latham, President of the ADL III Architecture, joined Mr. Palanker as experts.
Participants in the workshop engaged in learning and hands on design of sustainable communities on Long Island. Using maps of five Long Island downtowns, students created re-designed downtowns that incorporated alternative housing choices for seniors, young people, and single people, pedestrian walkways as well as community parks and recreation spaces. Key recommendations from the workshop included changing zoning regulations to allow for more condominiums, apartments and other forms of alternative housing to be constructed; an increase in the number of high quality rental properties to be constructed on Long Island; creating more concentrated housing clusters in existing downtowns and creating new downtowns near public transit centers; creating alternative housing of high quality in its design and construction so that such projects would architecturally enhance the communities in which these would be constructed.
High school students in the Race, Class, and Education workshop tackled the difficult issues of economic inequality and racial and economic segregation. Currently, Long Island is ranked as the seventh most racially segregated area in the United States. The combination of racial and economic inequality leads to great disparities in the quality of public education and prevent many Long Islanders from reaching their full economic and social potential. Diana Coleman form the Nassau County Equal Opportunity Commission, Louis Medina, Director of the Suffolk County Youth Bureau, and Dr. Nathalia Rogers, Associate Professor of Sociology at Dowling College served as experts for the workshop.
Solutions proposed by the students included creation of magnet schools (i.e. schools specializing in one discipline such as visual design that will accept students from different neighborhoods), consolidation of school districts to increase diversity in schools and to save tax money, re-evaluation of the current state-aid program in order to provide adequate resources for high-need school districts, revision of the policy on commercial taxes that will allow for pooling commercial property taxes and re-distributing it among school districts (tax-based sharing), raising standards of education in Low English Proficiency (LEP) and high-poverty schools and reward teachers with higher salaries if the students in these schools reach these higher standards, and developing a voluntary school exchange program where students from high-need and low-need school districts can visit each other’s schools.
Participants of the workshop on Long Island Governance and Civic Activism focused on the issues of power fragmentation and the impact that young people can make through civic activism. Dr. Susanne Bleiberg Seperson, Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Center for Intergenerational Policy and Practice at Dowling College, the Hon. Steven Flotteron, Councilman in Town of Islip, Warren Tackenberg, President of the Nassau County Village Officials Association, and Carol Meschkow, President of the Concerned Citizens of the Plainview-Old Bethpage Community, served as the workshop experts. On the issue of power fragmentation, students noted that Long Island currently has 905 different power jurisdictions that include towns, villages, school districts, fire districts, water districts, etc. Students recommended a reduction in the number of existing jurisdiction authorities through merging some of these and creating a less fragmented power structure that would allow for a proper representation of local interests without the extreme fragmentation effect. Other recommendations included starting the education about government and activism earlier, and teaching high school students how to network, share common concerns, and build political alliances in order to be able to ask politicians the right questions and organize for social change.
The Socio-Medical Issues: Cyber-Bullying /Social Media workshop was moderated by Dr. Stephen Perret of the North Shore-LIJ Health System. Students in the workshop discussed the fact that the use of social media poses risks, including cyber-bullying and privacy invasion. An important strategy to minimize the negative risks related to social media is to advance the education of site users regarding a site’s privacy policy and potential security risks, and of parents regarding the utility and limitations of social media; we need to think about prevention and urge legislators to act pro-actively, i.e. pass cyber-bullying laws, for example, rather than reactively in response to tragedies that have already occurred. Students discussed the need to legislate aspects of accountability and responsibility of social media companies to make sure that privacy policies are more accessible and understandable; to ensure that reporting abuse on-line is straight forward and user friendly; and to eliminate or penalize websites that permit posting on-line content anonymously as this can foster an environment conducive to cyber-bullying. Participants also suggested that a concept of an “empowered bystander” is among the best tools to prevent on-line victimization. If programs in schools promote and support a culture that does not tolerate cyber-bullying and provides resources to stem these difficulties, students will be better prepared to defend themselves. Students suggested creating school peer support groups that watch for victims of on-line bullying and take charge in alerting families, peers, and the school to provide encouragement and prevent users from “passing along” and participating in cyber-bullying. During the awards ceremony the following students were recognized for submitting winning projects to the 2011 Long Island Youth Summit:
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT OVERALL
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of HOUSING
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of TRANSPORTATION
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of LONG ISLAND ECONOMY
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of ORIGINAL ART
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of ORIGINAL PHOTO ART
2011 LIYS BEST PROJECT in the category of ORIGINAL MOVIE/VIDEO To view original student videos, more pictures, and to find out more about the 2011 Long Island Youth Summit follow these links for Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube: The preparation for the next, 2012 Long Island Summit, has already begun and everyone who is willing to help the Steering Committee to work on the next Summit is welcome to contact Dr. Nathalia Rogers at rogersn@dowling.edu or 631-244-3116. The Steering Committee of the 2011 LIYS, the teachers, experts, and students who participated in the Summit would like to thank our lead sponsor, North Shore-LIJ Health System:
Our sponsors H2M, Renaissance Downtowns, and Posillico:
All photo images © Stephen Lang |
The Summit started with a keynote speech delivered by Adrienne Esposito, the Executive Director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment (CCE). Ms. Esposito spoke about the importance of preserving environment globally and locally. She drew on a number of examples of environmental pollution that critically affect climate change and pose toxic hazards to humans and animals. From enormous numbers of plastic bags polluting our oceans to the toxic red algae in the Northport Harbor to sewage pollution of Western Bays by Bay Park sewage treatment plant, the environment and human health on Long Island are under constant threat. Ms. Esposito emphasized the importance of learning about environmental pollution and engaging in timely action to save the environment.
Kelly Douglas, a West Islip High School Senior, and Eric Alexander, Executive Director of Vision Long Island addressed the students during the awards ceremony. Kelly spoke of the importance of having forums such as the Long Island Youth Summit to give voice to the young generation of Long Islanders. Young people love Long Island and want to stay on Long Island and the future of the region is important to them. They are willing to use their energy to make Long Island a great place to live and work, according to Kelly.
Eric Alexander, Executive Director of Vision Long Island, continued the theme of keeping young people on Long Island. He described the efforts of Vision Long Island to advocate for housing that young people and seniors will be able to afford as well as transit oriented development that would allow these Long Islanders to move around without using cars. Mr. Alexander encouraged young people to become active in advocating for construction of alternative housing and creation and retention of jobs on Long Island.
The importance of staying on Long Island and increasing its beauty, diversity, and economic strength was the message of the Summit’s concluding speech given by Diana Coleman, a life-long community activist from Roosevelt. Ms. Coleman spoke of the role that the new generation of Long Islanders could play in challenging existing social and economic inequalities and working towards a stronger Long Island. She encouraged young people to stay on Long Island and to take an active role in sharing in its governance and economic development.
The workshop Environment 1: Open Space Preservation and Protection of Water was led by Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment (CCE), Tara Bono, Program Coordinator for CCE, Dennis Kelleher of H2M, and Dr. John Tanacredi, Professor of Earth and Marine Sciences and the Director of the Center for Estuarine, Environmental and Coastal Oceans Monitoring at Dowling College. The group of students recommended that plastic bags be banned on Long Island or stores should institute a 5 cent charge for each plastic bag; to encourage the use of reusable stainless steel bottles and to install water refill stations in all high schools so that the students could get rid of their plastic bottle habits; such water stations could be installed throughout Long Island: in parks, malls, downtowns; to have beach and park clean up days once a month so that high school students can volunteer to clean up their neighborhoods; to update Long Island sewage treatment systems with the best available technology; to install nitrogen filters on all systems to prevent excess nutrients from entering surrounding ecosystems; to reuse the effluent so that the water can recharge aquifers instead of being discharged in bays and estuaries; to preserve open space to protect wildlife and to help recharge groundwater resources; to advance the environmental education and to promote community involvement in environmental issues through continuing environmental sciences classes in high schools and holding community environmental awareness meetings.
Participants of the Transportation workshop focused on dealing with the issues of traffic congestion and public transportation cuts on Long Island. Ryan Lynch, Senior Transportation Planner for the Tri-state Transportation Campaign (TSTC), and Lowell Wolf, Transportation Planner for Nassau County, served as experts for the workshop. Among the proposed transportation solutions were: creation of more bicycle and pedestrian lanes in order to promote the “Complete Streets” approach to major roads such as Route 347; introduction of “Choice Buses” in addition to standard buses currently in service, choice buses would provide premium services such as limited stops, more comfortable seats, and other amenities at a premium bus fare; creating bus rapid transit (BRT) to complement Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) service, BRT will provide quick, flexible, and accessible public transit through North-South corridors; to create dedicated freight truck lanes, where tractor trailers have their own highway lanes to operate, possibly during off-peak hours, reducing large vehicle traffic during peak traffic hours. Additional long term goals developed by students in the workshop included: creation of skywalks to reduce the danger to pedestrians on the roads and to promote walkable communities; engaging in Transit Oriented Development (TOD) of communities that would result in creation of walkable downtown communities located near intermodal transit centers; creation of North-South light rail system along heavily used transit corridors such as Route 110.
The Socio-Medical Issues: Bullying and Violence workshop was moderated by Dr. Peter D’Amico, Director of Child and Adolescent Psychology at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center at the North Shore-LIJ Health System. Participants of the workshop focused on strategies to prevent bullying and violence in Long Island high schools. Students recommended that: stereotypes of bullying need to be broken: mass media depicts only severe sensationalized events that often do not picture the day to day insidious nature of bullying; anti-bullying education and curricula should start in earlier grades, preferably from kindergarten, with a special emphasis on middle school where bullying is at its peak; adult authority figures need to be more accountable in recognition of bullying, responding to student reports of bullying, and educating students about bullying in a realistic way; successful intervention needs to target all forms of bullying, i.e. not only severe bullying, and must reach every corner of the school culture, since bullying often happens out of sight of adults and beyond their immediate scope of influence; we need to find school and community leaders who will make time for and pay attention to this important issue making it a true priority.
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