County Wide Youth Forum Not Taking Summer Off, But Attendance Down

Andrew Trzaska | June 17, 2011

Muskegon’s County Wide Youth Forum (CWYF) will not be taking the summer off as previously proposed, but will instead be using the summer months to focus its goals and building relationships with other local groups.

Commissioner Shepherd and the CWYF are coming off a successful End of School Bash for students who got out of school last Thursday.

The Bash has happened on the last day of school for Muskegon Public Schools for a decade now, and this year’s attendance was over 300 people.

After that, however, not much appeared to be on the group’s agenda for the immediate future.  In fact, Thursday’s meeting almost didn’t happen.

At last month’s meeting, Commissioner Clara Shepherd, the driving force in forming the group, offered the students involved the opportunity to take three months off from their work for summer vacation.

The students chose to keep meeting all summer.

Overall attendance at the meeting this month was down – usually over a dozen representatives from different school districts show up at the monthly full meeting, held on the third Thursday of the month.

However, last night’s meeting only had four students present and two adult representatives.  They did not meet the quorum needed required to vote on anything, so the meeting was limited to discussion, but and no decisions were made.

The meeting focused instead on what they might be able to accomplish in next month’s meeting.  The CWYF also began to foster a relationship with the Kiwanis Club after meeting one of their members spoke at Thursday’s full group meeting.

The student members of the forum appear unphased by the June meeting’s low attendance; several of the students there said they wanted to reach out to students from all school districts in the county. Currently only some of the districts in the county are represented, with the districts around the edges of the county unrepresented.

Whether the group’s attendance will rebound at next month’s meeting remains to be seen; the next meeting, fully open to all who want to attend, will take place at Muskegon City Hall in the council chambers at 5:30 on Thursday, July 21.