City Councilor Felix Arroyo Discusses Neighborhood Issues With Local Teens

City Councilor Felix Arroyo let members of the  ask him anything Tuesday afternoon as part of his tour of some 30 youth organizations across the city. Arroyo is city councilor at-large but he lives in Jamaica Plain.

So one by one, seven teenagers asked Arroyo, who presides over the council's committee on youth affairs, how he would support their work on a variety of issues. 

Here are some of the highlights from their discussion: 

Sexual education and condoms in high schools 

Shelia Ramirez, 14, asked Arroyo how he would support members of the Health Careers Ambassadors Program who are campaigning to get Boston Public Schools to teach students about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as provide them with condoms. 

Arroyo said he supported establishing sexual education classes in schools. 

"I think it's key," he said. "We shouldn’t be living under a rock about what’s happening to our young people." 

Improving the relations between youth and transit police

Adriana Snow, 16, asked Arroyo to push for the city to train transit police to handle conflicts with youth. 

Arroyo said that since Boston Public Schools students make up a large part of MBTA ridership, he supported their goal. 

He said that when he was a teenager, transit police once ordered him off a train stopped at Downtown Crossing and frisked him on the platform. They didn't find anything illegal and let him go. 

“To this day, that was one of the weirdest exchanges for me.” 

How to get back jobs for youth lost to budget cuts

The Hyde Square Task Force couldn't afford to hire as many teenagers this summer as last year, said staff member Carla Poulos. 

That prompted Wilmin Jimenez, 14, to ask for an update on the availability of summer jobs for youth. 

The city provided 1,000 fewer jobs to Boston youth this summer because of federal and state cuts to the city budget, Arroyo said. Originally, he said, the city was only going to be able to fund 7,400 jobs for youth, but the council found enough money to pay for 9,000. 

"We need to start strategizing now to figure out how to get the federal government back in the business of investing," he said. 

Deporting non-violent, undocumented immigrants

Frank Perez, 16, asked Arroyo what he thought of Boston's cooperation with the federal Secure Communities program, which requires that authorities reference fingerprints from arrests with federal immigration databases. 

Arroyo said that the federal government intended the program to enable authorities to deport undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes like murder or rape. But he said that instead, the program has led to the deportation of people who committed non-violent crimes. 

A child of Puerto Rican immigrants, Arroyo said government officials and the public should consider the country's origins to better sympathize with foreigners. 

"Maybe not just young people, but everybody, needs to get back to the conversation of what a country of immigrants means," he said. 

According to the Boston Globe, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has threatened to quit the federal program unless it deports only undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes.

So he asked the teens to talk about that idea. And after discussing a few other issues, Arroyo invited the group to visit him in his , anytime.