NEWARK, NJ — The following op-ed comes courtesy of Ronald Johnson, a high school teacher in Newark. Find out how to post announcements or events to your local Patch site.
Last week, my students at Weequahic High School researched the candidates running for the Newark Board of Education. What should have been a straightforward civic learning experience became something else: a lesson in how hard it is to find clear, unbiased information about the people seeking power over public schools.
My students were surprised to learn that a person does not need a high school diploma to be elected to the Newark Board of Education. Yet once elected, that person can help shape policy, direction, and oversight for the largest school district in New Jersey and one of the largest public education budgets in the region.
That discovery alone sparked serious discussion. But what troubled my students even more was how little public information they could find about where candidates actually stand.
We were not looking for campaign slogans. We were not looking for gossip, endorsements, or social media arguments. We were looking for something much simpler: unbiased, accessible information about candidates’ positions on issues that directly affect students.
My students identified six priorities that matter most to them:
Those are not abstract concerns. They are the daily reality of student life.
Yet when students tried to research where candidates stood on these issues, they ran into a wall. They found incomplete candidate surveys, limited reporting, scattered social media, and little else. Some candidates had almost no public issue-based information available at all. For young people trying to take civic participation seriously, that is discouraging.
We say we want young people to be engaged. We say we want students to care about public life, to vote, to lead, and to participate in their communities. Newark has even taken the significant step of allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in school board elections. But voting rights alone are not enough. Participation requires information. Students cannot become informed civic actors if the information environment around them is thin, inconsistent, or inaccessible.
If we are serious about civic education, then students should not have to work harder to find unbiased information about school board candidates than they do to find coverage of car-jacking, violent crime, drama/scandal, or NBA Youngboy.
This is not simply a problem for students. It is a problem for the city.
When voters do not know where candidates stand, elections become driven by slate loyalty, name recognition, insider networks, or guesswork. That weakens accountability. It also discourages broader participation, because people are less likely to show up when they feel uninformed, disconnected, or unconvinced that their vote is meaningful.
This is bigger than one media source, one election cycle, or one class project. It is about whether we want a city where young people are trained to consume politics as spectacle, or one where they are equipped with the tools to evaluate leadership thoughtfully and independently.
My students did learn something important from their assignment. They learned that democracy is not just about the right to vote. It is also about whether the public is given enough trustworthy information to digest, to use that right well. That is the job, in part of a responsible and unbiased media. Please get on it.
Newark students are paying attention. They are asking serious questions. They deserve serious answers.
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