This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Student Union isn’t a kid in the organizing world any more.
The youth-run group that organizes young people to transform their schools into safer, better-equipped and more academically rigorous places recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary.
A celebration and fundraiser titled “Living the Change We Wish to See” took place at The Enterprise Center in West Philadelphia on November 15. Another milestone for the group was its farewell to founder and executive director Eric Braxton, who helped start the group when he joined with 11 other students in 1995 to challenge the poor quality of education in Philadelphia high schools.
The students initially convinced White Dog Café, a West Philadelphia-based eatery, to sponsor a leadership development program. A year later, the students started the Student Union, which became a project of the White Dog’s nonprofit arm, Urban Retrievers.
Today, the Student Union boasts seven high school chapters (Bartram, West Philadelphia, Central, Gratz, Masterman, Girls, and Sayre) and counts among its accomplishments creating Student Success Centers in 10 schools, playing a leading role in limiting privatization of schools in the School District, and influencing the District to double its number of high school counselors.
In addition, the organization has established and campaigned successfully for its positions on public school funding, small schools, teacher quality, student involvement in decision-making, an interactive curriculum, school safety, public transportation, multicultural education, and more.
Helping to guide the youth organizing work in the next decade for the group will be a team of staffers: Taina Asili is the director of organizing, Sheddy Rollins is the director of leadership, and Courtney Lewis is the director of finance.
"One of the things I’m most proud of is the foundation that we’ve laid for a movement around broader social justice issues as well as for educational change," Braxton commented. “There are hundreds of students who have come through the organization who will go on to be lifelong community leaders.”