In this episode, Dr. Kamille Beye discuss with Dr. Tara Bartlett about the School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) project in Arizona. Dr. Bartlett explains that School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) empowers students by giving them control over a real part of their school’s budget. This hands-on process fosters civic engagement, critical thinking, and collaboration. By proposing and voting on projects that matter to them, students learn their voice is consequential. This model, which started in Arizona, directly connects students with democratic action, building their agency and shaping a more inclusive school culture. School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) moves civic education from theory to practice by engaging students in real-world decision-making. The process teaches essential skills like budgeting, empathy, and civil discourse, while empowering students to tackle social justice issues in their own community. It validates student voices and creates tangible outcomes—from new equipment to policy changes—proving that their participation is a vital part of democracy and creating a lasting impact on their civic identity.
In this episode, Dr. Tara Bartlett details School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) as a transformative democratic process where students decide how a portion of their school’s public budget is spent. Originating in the US in Arizona, this initiative provides students with tangible experience in civic decision-making, moving beyond theoretical education. The process is designed to be inclusive, intentionally engaging students who are not the “usual suspects” in leadership to build their agency and confidence. By taking part in needs assessments, proposal development, and voting, students develop critical 21st-century skills like budgeting, collaboration, and civil discourse. Dr. Bartlett emphasizes that SPB functions as a real-world application of democratic principles, demonstrating to young people that their participation can lead to meaningful improvements in their communities and foster a culture of active, engaged citizenship.
The practical impact of School Participatory Budgeting extends far beyond the allocation of funds; it cultivates a deep sense of social justice and civic responsibility among students. Dr. Bartlett shares powerful examples, including elementary students advocating for ADA-accessible playground equipment and high school students successfully lobbying to remove a vendor using prison labor from the district’s approved list. The process also creates direct pathways to wider civic life by partnering with local agencies to register eligible students to vote during SPB election days. This connection between school-level action and formal democratic participation is key. By involving students, parents, and educators, SPB strengthens the entire school ecosystem, breaking down silos and proving that collective, democratic engagement can create more equitable and responsive institutions.
This episode is hosted by Dr. Kamille Beye. Please subscribe to the podcast through Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or Audible. You may also follow @c4cpodcast.bsky.social on Bluesky. We look forward to hearing your feedback. If you would like to explore participating in our podcast and submit your blog post to the C4C, do not hesitate to reach out through the online participation form or email us at conversations4citizenship@gmail.com
If you are curious about School Participatory Budgeting (SPB), check out her new book, 'Educating for Democracy' and visit the Center for the Future of Arizona's website linked below.
Kamille Beye 03:14
Hello everyone, welcome to the Conversations4citizenship podcast. I am your host, Kamille Beye from University College London. Today, we are exploring how young people can exercise their agency by making budget recommendations through a process called School Participatory Budgeting (SPB). Rooted in democratic principles and community input, SPB brings students into decision-making at all levels of education. Joining us is Dr. Tara Bartlett, a leading expert in participatory research and youth civic engagement, to discuss how SPB is implemented and the impact it has on students and school communities.
Dr. Bartletts’ work on PBR has been used throughout Arizona in addition to California, Illinois, and New York. She has also worked on international programs that promote cross-cultural learning. As a former social studies teacher, Dr. Bartlett’s passion for civic engagement has led to the coordination of projects such as Project Citizen, Kids Voting, and We the People. In Dr. Barlett’s recent book collaboration, entitled, Educating for Democracy: The Case for Participatory Budgeting in Schools, she and Dr. Daniel Schugurensky use global case studies to highlight the impact of SPB on civic education and school communities. Currently, Dr. Bartlett serves as Co-Director of the Arizona Civic Coalition, where she provides civic learning opportunities for educators and community members alike. Her passion for community-based research that teaches young people about their civic agency and engages them in consequential aspects of school decision making serves as a platform for future participation into civic life. It's a pleasure to have you with us today, Dr. Bartlett. How are you doing?
Tara Bartlett 05:18
Thank you for having me. I'm doing really well, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation that we're about to have today.
Kamille Beye 05:23
That's wonderful. I'm really excited to dive into your insights on why SPB is important and how its effects have impacted civic participation among youth in Arizona and beyond. With many in the US wondering if democracy is teetering into autocracy, your work on civic engagement and youth agency as future changemakers is important, not only in America, but I would argue, globally. It is a pleasure to have you here to provide us with how to see and help young people see their agency as an initial step into further civic participation. Let's get started. So the first question I want to ask you is, can you just please introduce yourself and explain why you're interested in democratic innovation, community-based research, and participatory action research?
Tara Bartlett 06:13
Absolutely. I think a lot of my initial interest around these three key areas really derived from my teaching background. So I taught in Title I Schools for 15 years within the state of Arizona, and just thinking about my experience working with young people—and they were ages from sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, so about 11 to 14 years old—it was a very integral time in their life of self-discovery, of self-efficacy, political efficacy, and also issues around social justice. And so a lot of the programs that I championed as an educator alongside students were, in of themselves, democratic innovations. And really early in my career, I wasn't aware of this. I just thought it was something that I saw that worked really well with my students in class was oftentimes sharing power, centering their voice, ensuring that their lived experiences were accounted for, while at the same time, a lot of the community-based research aspect, right, was thinking about how do these young people's voices fit into the broader school community and then also our broader community, and researching issues that they were interested in. And then, of course, the participatory action research followed, and that we would do, you know, project-based learning civic action projects. So without knowing I was doing these things early on in my career, I just naturally gravitated to them and began to realize, after doing my master's degree, that these actually had a research name to them, right? And as I went back into teaching after finishing my master's degree, I really started to pay attention more to what impacts and effects these programs were having on students. So not only school participatory budgeting but also Project Citizen, which is more of a participatory policy-making project that students can be a part of at schools, even Kids Voting. So getting students kind of versed in the electoral process and then doing a mock voting kind of process at schools. So doing all of these things, I really had this desire to study this more, and that's when I jumped into doing a PhD around student voice and democratic innovations, specifically within school communities.
Kamille Beye 08:23
That's very interesting for our global audience. Can you please just give a little bit more about what Title I Schools make? They may not understand.
Tara Bartlett 08:31
Absolutely. Title I Schools are schools that have more than half of students that live below what's titled the federal policy or the federal poverty line. So the United States each year does kind of chart what is, you know, the poverty income for specific families, and students that fall within that poverty income, schools are given extra funds to be able to support, you know, school lunches, oftentimes extra programs like tutoring and other kind of support structures within those schools. And so those were the types of schools that I had worked in.
Kamille Beye 09:08
Okay, thank you so much. And just to tie that into the next question, since you said that you were working in Title I Schools, can you give the audience a sense of what was going on in Arizona to even think that this civic space education for students in these schools in particular was something that needed to happen or needed to be thought out, and I guess engaged in in some kind of way?
Tara Bartlett 09:32
Absolutely. I will start off by saying, and this may come as a surprise for folks that know Arizona across the United States landscape, but Arizona has actually been at the forefront of a lot of civic education innovations. Some are, I would say, more desirable than others. So just one example to start off with that I think is a little less desirable: Arizona was the first state within the United States to adopt the civics exam as an exit exam for high school students, and it's actually based off of the naturalization exam that new citizens to the US take. So currently, there's 34 states that, through policy diffusion, have adopted that same kind of practice of a civics exam. Now in practice, it does obviously show students knowledge, but that's kind of where it ends. And so that's not necessarily a great policy innovation if you're looking holistically at civic education, but it was a step, I think, in the right direction of putting Arizona on the map for civics, and a step in the right direction of trying to capture at least the knowledge aspect of civics. But to follow that, Arizona's had some really great innovations. One of them was Kids Voting. I was born here, so again, that's kind of that mock voting process that schools can participate in, and there's a whole curriculum that supports schools to be able to do. So Arizona was also the second state to adopt what's called the Civics Seal, which is a graduation seal that can be on a student's diploma that shows a number of, you know, volunteer hours, a number of community service kind of activism projects or engaging in extracurricular activities in their school community. So I think that kind of opens up the, again, that kind of more holistic approach to civic learning.
And then, of course, believe it or not, school participatory budgeting was born here in Arizona as well. There was a principal at a high school called BioScience High School in Phoenix, Arizona in 2013 who took a class at Arizona State University with my now colleague, Danielle Suggs. And Danielle had a long history of doing participatory budgeting within communities, so oftentimes in housing projects or just at the city level, in different communities all the way from Brazil to Mexico to Canada. And this particular principal, Quinton Boyce, thought, why are we not doing this in schools? So he really was that kind of first champion to re-envision how participatory budgeting could become school participatory budgeting. He did do a few iterations at his high school a bit. And then the entire district, Phoenix Union High School District, which is the largest high school-only district within our state of Arizona, eventually adopted this throughout their entire district, so all 22 of their schools. From there, just again through like word of mouth and other school districts seeing what the largest high school district was doing, other school districts began to pick this up. And so I think inherently, this is already being recognized school participatory budgeting as a best practice around embedding civic education and engagement in schools. And I think that Arizona does already, again, have kind of that ecosystem of being at the forefront of civic education.
Kamille Beye
I think it's amazing. I did not know that Arizona was the birthplace, well, of this type of movement in the United States, which is really good. And I was thinking about it in terms of the politics of the country today. And I just wanted to tie into how the demographics of Arizona play a part in not only how they help students vote, but also how they participate in some of these student-based programs. So could you give us a little bit of information about that?
Tara Bartlett
Absolutely. So Arizona also has really interesting student demographics. In comparison to a lot of the adult or older generation demographics, we have over 1 million students. It's about 1.1 million students enrolled in our public and charter school systems, and nearly half, 48%, actually identify as Hispanic and Latino, Latina. 34% identify as white, 6% identify as Black, 4% identify as Native American or Alaskan Native, 3% identify as Asian/Pacific Islander, and then amongst those races, 4% identify as two or more. 15% of our students actually identify as having a disability of some nature, and we have about 11% multilingual learners. So as you think about that number within our schools of that 1.1 million, and how it allocates within to those different percentages, we actually have very diverse student populations across our state now. Of course, there are pockets of more diversity than others, but we've also seen this increase of shifts again, through these younger generation demographics as they're entering voting age. And I think that's something also to really think about, Kamille, to your point of how this bubbles up to what we're seeing in voter trends and with more representation and not only who's actually showing up to vote, but also who's running for office and getting elected. So as a side note, we've actually had a lot of Gen Z young people run for different office positions across our state in Arizona, including from school board level all the way up to Congress. And we actually have someone who's running in one of our southern districts in our state for a current open position in Congress, who's a very prominent Gen Z figure, especially on her socials. And so I think it's very exciting to see this kind of shift into what, you know, Arizona, potentially, will be, I think.
Kamille Beye 15:02
It's amazing. But I would also think, because the students are already familiar with the democratic process, they're really involved in the civic portion of it, and they're doing community service, the idea of public service, it resonates. I think it would resonate stronger. And I guess with that, I'm just curious as to, do you guys have information about how the student budgeting programs help students to register to vote?
Tara Bartlett 15:28
Yes, we actually have a very exciting model that we've tried to share with partners in other states across the nation, as well as international partners. So I guess I should kind of back up so I can couch this phase of the process into the greater process of school participatory budgeting. So first and foremost, in that process, right, schools agree to essentially adopt a model in which they allocate a portion of their public budget for students to be able to decide. From there, students are brought into the fold of letting them know, like, "Hey, you're going to have anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 to be able to spend within your school campus during this academic year, and it's going to be up to you to follow this democratic process and really lead your peers throughout the process." The first step that students then take is really a landscape analysis or even a needs assessment across their schools. So they'll look to see, you know, what is it that potentially could be a great project to spend this budget on? Either one large project that spends the entire amount of the budget dollars or multiple smaller projects that add up to those budget dollars. Sometimes in some of our larger high schools, because we have high schools that sometimes are up to 4,000 students, if you even think one student, each student put in an idea, right? We're looking at thousands of ideas. And so sometimes, schools will often put in a primary vote, or they'll take some of those ideas, and maybe there's, like, you know, 100 or 200 viable ideas, and they put those forth in a primary vote and try to whittle those down before a final vote. If students don't do that, they do try to collapse those ideas into viable projects. Schools often use a rubric to be able to decide which ideas move from that idea ideation phase into the next phase. And those rubrics are often themes like, you know, the timeline for that project to be implemented, the impact—so if you're just putting up basketball hoops in the gym, is that really going to impact your greater student body, right?—so thinking about who's going to be most impacted. In that project, sustainability. Is this something that's going to be a one-off and that's going to be a continuing investment that's going to need to be had to keep whatever that project or program is running? Or could this be something that's sustainable over the long term, but also green sustainability, right? We live in Arizona, we are very entrenched in a lot of the climate change issues, and so students have oftentimes gravitated to including sustainability in that lens as well.
And so they go through these different ideas, and they apply this rubric. Any idea that makes it through then goes through the proposal development stage, and oftentimes that includes going to governing board members, going to different, you know, facilities people within the district to figure out, how can we make this idea actually happen? Like, who needs to be in the know? What other information do we need to gather? And they put together a full-blown project proposal that's oftentimes then delivered publicly, either to their school community, sometimes at governing board meetings, to site administrators, and after that, schools will vote. And that comes back to the question you originally had asked, Kamille, is this voting piece? So in our high schools, we partner with our local county agencies that run the voting processes across our state. These are governmental institutions, so they are non-partisan. They are the ones that are often managing a lot of the voter registration records already, and have trained volunteers and staff that help people to fill out those forms correctly. So there's room for, you know, less room for error, in a sense. And so they come out on these vote days, and so students walk into whatever that common space might be to cast their ballot for their school project, while at the same time, if they're going to be eligible for that next election, they then could register to vote. Now an exciting facet of this is our county recorders have started training young people to be those junior deputy registrars through a very robust training in which they then know how to help people fill out that form. Because research has shown, from peer to peer, if young people can hear from a peer why it's important to not only register to vote, but then eventually follow through, they are more likely to do that instead of just registering to vote by maybe being approached by an adult. And so that peer-to-peer influence has been really influential.
Kamille Beye
That sounds amazing. And I was just thinking as I was working in the polls last week, we had a number of young people come in and say, "Oh, my goodness, this is so easy. I had no idea." And so I can just imagine speaking to your friend at school like, "You know, why can't you? Let's vote." "Well, it's x, y, z," and they do it, and it's just, you're right. The peer-to-peer is such an important piece of it. I think that's wonderful. And can I ask you a question as a follow-up? So some of these schools, I'm sorry, yeah, absolutely. So I'm thinking about high school, and I know that most high schools have student governments, and so when the idea about a project is put forth by the students, does it have to go through the high school or the school student government body, or can any student anywhere just pitch it and then maybe find some way to broadcast that to the larger student body?
Tara Bartlett
I'm so glad you asked that clarifying question, because I did fail to kind of contextualize which students are essentially shepherding or holding a little bit more power throughout this entire process. And our team really tries to emphasize with school partners not to have the usual suspects as the folks that are leading this process within a school campus, right? So we actually try to encourage not student government leaders, but rather thinking about other students who really haven't just had an opportunity in leadership, and how to bring them into the fold, not only because we want to increase the opportunities for more students to be able to shepherd leadership processes and decision-making processes on their school, but oftentimes those students that have historically not been part of those spaces are the ones that need it the most, right? They need that experience the most, just in general, for their own efficacy, but also perhaps long-term in their own careers and their own civic health. And so thinking about who's brought into that fold. So to your question, any student can put in an idea, but there's often a small subset of students that, through different models... Some schools have it as like a teacher recommendation model. Some schools have it as an opt-in model, where it's just students who volunteer to be part of this kind of smaller subset group. We've had schools do kind of a mini-public model where they'll look at their demographics of the school campus and select students that align with those demographics. So there's that kind of mini-public representation on the student steering committee. And so different models, different schools pick up, but there is a subset of students that shepherds this process. So they would be the ones that, after ideas are collected, they help lead some of those rubric decisions. After those proposals are created, they're the ones that are often, you know, presenting to governing board members or coordinating vote day activities. And so there is a little bit of leadership built into that group.
Kamille Beye 22:27
I think it's amazing because one is teaching critical thinking skills, is teaching analyzation skills, and the idea of, you know, prioritizing what's really necessary. And as you're talking about sustainability, you know, what's going to give us something that's not just good for us while we're here in the school this school year, but something that can last. You know, that true value for the money, I think that's really great. And like you said before, if we're talking about students who are not necessarily always involved in the process, it speaks to a larger issue of bringing in confidence, building up confidence, and taking those same skills back to their community. So as we talked about a moment ago, about this peer-to-peer, it's also peer-to-family, so these skills that they're learning in school can easily be transferred and talked about at the home, so that people might get involved in the democratic process if they weren't already.
Tara Bartlett 23:15
There. I am so happy you brought up that point. There is an author that I absolutely adore, one of her books that really, I think, speaks to this. Ann Ishimaru wrote a book titled "Just Schools," and really talks about exactly what you discussed, Kamille, in that to have, like, a really strong justice ecosystem within your school, you have to not only have students and the teachers and administrators, but also parents, right, playing a key role. One of the cool things that we've seen a lot of our school partners do is have either the teachers on campus participate in vote days. So of course, they are voting, but they're still voting on the student ideas that were formulated. And also, some campuses have had parents come in and vote. Some schools have had, you know, really looking at the parent vote, almost exact same outcomes in terms of preference, which has been interesting, because then the ideas of what parents want and students want are actually converging, right?
Kamille Beye 24:18
I think that's amazing. And I'm thinking, too, maybe some parents may be more intimidated by a PTA-type atmosphere, but this gives them a way to get their voices heard and be seen, and actually see what their child is doing as well, which is also good on a different learning level. So yeah, that's really good. I want to ask you more about the SPB, particularly because I know that you guys are using it in Arizona, but can you give us a little bit of history of how SPB started? And then I want to know if you have faced any obstacles to trying to implement this in some of the schools in Arizona, and if you have, what did you guys do to overcome those obstacles?
Tara Bartlett 24:59
Yeah, absolutely. So I think in terms of where it started, we know the Arizona story, and we know that Arizona, at least, was the first site within North America to adopt the participatory budgeting model within schools. The just kind of participatory budgeting model, the one that isn't inherent to schools and young people, started in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989. And that has gone through different iterations over different kind of leadership roles of, you know, who's making decisions and who's elected into some of those decision-making powers within and across that country. So some of it's been at the national level, some has been only in certain regions over time, but those have really shown at the municipal level in Brazil really great outcomes in terms of maternal health, reduced poverty, increased access to food—so less, you know, food deserts—and so some of those lessons that came out of Brazil have obviously blossomed across the globe. We know that there's over 11,000 regions or municipalities or just areas across the globe that are doing participatory budgeting. And so within that, the school version is very, a very small subset. Within the US, we only have maybe about four or five states that have taken it up, and it's not something that's ever that we've seen yet adopted statewide. It's more so of, you know, pockets of interest, because it's very much a volunteer-in type of program, right? It takes really a school leader or a teacher. We had our first case of a student this year actually bring this to her campus. And so it really takes kind of a champion to want to be able to do this.
Our global leaders that we've seen leading this process in their countries and regions have experienced very much the same. I would say that the most institutionalized process of school participatory budgeting is in Portugal, where they've actually allocated one euro per student into each of their schools to be able to do this process. Other countries within Europe have similar processes, but not necessarily at a national level. And so we've seen a lot of excitement and growth, I think, across the board. And interesting enough, a lot of our challenges, I think, are the same. And it really whittles down to two specific themes, one being this idea of power dynamics and silos. And so really thinking about in schools themselves, how these archaic systems and designs have been built around a lot of assumptions that maybe no longer exist, or really never existed at all. Right, that this is really how education, in of itself, is still being run. And that's not inherent, again, to the US by any means. And so really thinking about how processes like school participatory budgeting and other democratic innovations, if they exist and they're adopted with fidelity within a school community, you are breaking down those power structures. People are no longer working in silos. And I think that even goes back to what you were saying before, Kamille, even about, you know, the parent community, and thinking about how these designs of actual schools are more of the hindrance.
The other thing that I think has been a common theme, and it does derive, I think, from power dynamics, is this idea of student voice. And that has been, you know, kind of researched, I would say, you know, maybe the past two to three decades. And there's pockets of programs, there's pockets of kind of like ideologies, you would say, of teachers and school leaders that really champion student voice, but there hasn't been anything that's actually ever ingrained within a policy, per se, or anything that's adopted at any type of nationalistic or holistic level. And so student voice is very much a one-off. And I think that that really can be seen in a lot of what you know, within maybe civic or citizenship education is what we have, like these gaps, and they're opportunity gaps, right? They're not achievement gaps, because you can't achieve what you don't already have an opportunity to be a part of. And so these opportunity gaps around civic education student voice that doesn't go away over time, that is actually shaping young people's experiences and their views of the world, and also how they as human beings are being told to exist. And so I think how we can reimagine those power dynamics, reimagine some of these silos and archaic designs, that's really where we're going to see change.
Kamille Beye
Yes, I keep thinking about this idea of how the power and student voice go together, because they keep thinking about, you know, when you're young, people always say, "Do as I say, not as I do." Or, you know, there's this idea that young people should be silent while adults are talking. And so it takes—because it takes root in education, too—because obviously an adult says, "I know best, and I know how you can you." And young people are saying, "No, no, no, there's another way." And I think that's what you're talking about, this idea of one, of giving them some power and some ability and platform to speak what they know their truth is, or how they learn best and how they want to be involved in the learning process. And I was like, anyway, I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about all these different ties to just like, just culture, you know, and how it doesn't matter the background. It's just this idea that children should be silent, and just giving them this idea that they can participate. And I think about when I was teaching in Ethiopia, we tried to do some student-centered activities, and it was a very tough time, because it was like, "How can I give a student part of the time to speak when I have a degree in X?" And so, you know, everybody has something that we can learn from another. So that's really interesting. So I thought that was great, but I want to ask you to just take this a little bit further. We talked a little bit about the inequity of certain people having access to these teachable moments, and you guys are providing this through the student participatory budgeting process. And I wanted to know, do you think that the current students' perceptions of injustice, especially in light of what's going on in our country with immigration and just some of the more political, politically charged events in the world, do you think that it's hindering or making students more desiring the participation in SPB programs?
Tara Bartlett 31:31
I think in general, we're seeing young people wanting to engage more, and whether that's within SPB or just their school community, broadly, I've seen several instances in school participatory budgeting that really has forefronted a desire for social justice. One of those was actually in an elementary school, and students did a needs assessment and looked at their playground, and their playground equipment was not accessible for a lot of the students that needed ADA access. And so that's the Americans with Disability Act, you know, folks that might need a ramp or, you know, things that are just make spaces more accessible for them. And they had proposed, as one of their ideas, it's kind of a swing that allows for a student who might be in a wheelchair to be able to access that swing much more easily than maybe your, you know, traditionally belt swing on a school campus. And so I think that really shows that, you know, as elementary school students—I mean, we're talking six through, you know, 10 or 10 years old—that they're looking through their lens in their very small ecosystem at why things might not be fair for their friends. And I think that's so foundational to start building at that age because then we've seen instances of high school students doing school participatory budgeting. One school actually had voted as their winning idea, one of them, to install all-school benches. And they went through and got the different vendor quotes that were required. They were required to get three different vendor quotes, right. And they noticed, why is one vendor quote so substantially less than these other two vendor quotes? And they did a little digging—well, that particular vendor used prison labor to build those benches. And those students, after finding that out, didn't just say, "Okay, we're not going with that vendor. We're going to go with one of the other ones, right?" No, they actually then went to their governing board and lobbied to get that particular vendor taken off the approved vendors list for their school district.
Kamille Beye
That's amazing. Yes, not only are they like looking at that through, again, like a lens of what's most fair for my friends, but like, what is an actual human rights injustice that we're noticing? And what can we do more than just the school PB process about it?
Kamille Beye 33:56
It's like they're learning ethics, they're learning empathy on top of all the other stuff. But just, you know, the idea that everyone's a person, right, with rights, that's amazing. You think about it. You know, most people are not going to be talking about imprisoned people on a daily basis, you know. So just to understand that, you know, this labor is gained, I would say, I don't say illegal, because he obviously has something, but it's not gained in the best way, the most just way. And it's amazing that they were able to see that and then, you know, make some noise about it. Yes, yes, that's so good. So I want to ask you, since the students are working in these student participatory budgeting activities, are you able to correlate that to where there's a lack of this kind of participation among students and communities? It's like when you're talking to participants, sorry, when you're talking to partners or potential funders...
Tara Bartlett 34:54
Yeah, and I should probably give a little context around the team that we work with, too. That also, I think, will add some layers to this response. So thinking about the team, I'm housed within a university setting. So I'm at Arizona State University in the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation, which is our teachers college. My partner, Danielle Suggs, is actually housed at another ASU college, the College of Public Service and School of Public Affairs, and we work very closely with a local nonprofit, again, specific to our state where our work is housed. This nonprofit is titled The Center for the Future of Arizona, and we've worked with them now for 10-plus years, partnering with schools around this idea of, you know, schools as spaces as they exist, in general, need to be more democratic. And that particular nonprofit does have a wide span of school partners because they offer several different educational programming opportunities. They have, you know, a leadership kind of experience fellowship for principals. They have a fellowship that allows for schools to dive into, you know, data and much more equitable and just ways and make decisions around that. And so this was a natural fit to partner with this particular nonprofit. And what the work looks like amongst us is, you know, we both have a share in partnership development with school partners, but the Center provides, you know, technical support and a lot of resources in terms of items that they might need to do the project with. So not the budget for the actual project, but you know, if they need chart paper or markers, or, you know, any type of resource to do the actual process itself. And then Danielle and I, we really lead on kind of this broader policy ecosystem of what, you know, this process can add to in terms of educational policy, democratic values. And then we bring in the evaluation work. I think, through even our evaluations that we've done through school participatory budgeting, we've been able to provide schools a lot of recommendations through the process as they're implementing it. And that even goes back to what we talked about before, was looking at, you know, giving students who are in Student Council the power to do this process in of itself, or, you know, not even collecting ideas from outside that student government space. You know, those are things that early adopters—so schools that maybe, you know, in their first or second year, and they're kind of just trying to get their feet wet and figure out what is this school participatory, you know, budgeting process look like—they might allocate that decision-making power right to an existing structure like that. And so a lot of times, in our evaluation and communication with schools at the end of their process for feedback, we really hone in on how that's actually not inclusive participation and that this process is not going to, you know, be led with fidelity or sustainability and really that greater buy-in.
Kamille Beye 38:03
It sounds like you guys are doing like civic wraparound services, you know, professional development, engaging the students, engaging with the parents, you know, getting this buy-in from all aspects, but then also supporting them as they go through. It seems like a safe process, you know, in a realistic process, which is great. Yep. So then, can I ask you about some of the lessons that we can draw? You know, how can we think about like John Dewey and this idea of reviving democracy in light of our, I guess, even global politics? What's going on? How do we get young people involved? And how do we expand this conversation?
Tara Bartlett 38:42
I know it's crazy to think about that, you know, 100-plus years ago, early 1900s, like John Dewey's writing about this already, you know, and this whole, like, even intersect of democracy and education of his book. So it is kind of wild to think about, we're still having these conversations. And I do agree school participatory budgeting is that proof of concept of what Dewey talked about. Participation is at the core of democracy. Like you do not have democracy if you do not have participation. And I'm not even talking about just voting, right? Like you need to have participation in all aspects of life, even from something as what you might view as small as knowing your neighbors, but that is key to a democracy of just, you know, knowing your neighbors and knowing your community and being involved. And I think to your point, Kamille, bringing in empathy and, you know, critical thinking and social justice around those small issues that might be happening in your community, but that really bubbles up over time. And so that, I think, is needing to be transferred within these educational spaces. And that really is what school participatory budgeting brings. There's kind of this framework that's, you know, the virtuous circle of democracy, that's this, you know, participation piece, and then the democratic kind of values that you bring within that, and hone in on that and continue to develop. But if you continue to develop those, and you're given the space and opportunity to do so, you naturally are then enhancing democracy. And so it's that participation and those designs that we talked about, and the opportunities that, if that is provided, then you are able to, you know, actually have that democracy. And you can't really have one without the other. And so, I think, you know, what Dewey talked about was really that that participation piece is so core, and so the more you participate, the better your democracy is.
Kamille Beye 40:38
Do you think that with social media, how do you get the kids or the students—I don't want to say kids—how do you get the students to get engaged when they're constantly on their phones like this is something that they see as important to their life? Are they able to, I don't know, merge this idea of the social media aspect and how it is distracting and taking so much of their attention away from the process of being a neighbor or understanding what's going on in their community, or even participating in this process of deciding what to spend money on at their school?
Tara Bartlett 41:17
Yeah, and I think that's really been channelled down to the educators, who are the ones that work most closely with the students on their campus. And you know, a lot of our what you pointed out before, the teacher training and kind of, you know, providing teachers not only lesson plans to do the process, but lesson plans that actually link this process to, like the state standards, which are the, you know, requirements of different subject areas that need to be taught. Those, in of themselves, also include things like technology use, you know, digital citizenship standards, those media literacy standards. And so we've been able to really talk to teachers about how this process could lend into those standards. And we've seen some schools do a really nice job of, you know, being able to research some of these greater issues and talk about, you know, if you're reading this article, that misinformation, disinformation... We've also seen schools embrace social media, where they've had students put their project proposal videos online, either on their school website, or they have them recorded for their governing board meetings, and then they're put out on YouTube. And so I think it's more of that bringing in the challenge, repurposing and repositioning the challenge to something that could be of tangible use for the process.
Kamille Beye 42:37
It sounds like you're not only teaching them for the civics portion of their academics, but also just they're giving them the skills to transfer to other aspects of their life. You know, it's not just there, but not just in the civics class, but I feel like they're these 21st Century skills. We talked about analyzation and critical thinking, but I would add budgeting. We talked about soft skills. Is there anything I'm missing that you think that we could add to this list?
Tara Bartlett 43:03
Yeah, and I think you're spot on. This is, like, not a one-off experience, right? Like these are transferable skills to the classroom, learning, to the broader school community, participation, but even beyond their, like, K-12, you know, required schooling experience, if they choose to pursue, you know, higher education, those spaces, they're going to be using these same skills if they jump right into the workforce. I mean, think about workplace culture, right? Like you need to have that kind of democracy underlay even within workplace culture. And then thinking about communities, right? That civically healthy community, like, what does that look like? It encompasses all those skills. I think I would add in there. I mean, you said empathy earlier, even you know the decision-making aspect, like when you go through a process of making a decision, like weighing the various angles and sides, you know the pros, the cons, benefits, all of that. And then also, of course, you know, the civil discourse piece. So I think I had left that out a little bit of the design. But some schools actually will have, you know, the students present to other classes on campus, the different project ideas, and then field, kind of a Q&A with classes. You know, on the projects themselves, we've had a few schools do town halls around the different projects, where they do bring in, right, that greater community to talk about those different ideas that they may be having. They take into governing board meetings, and they have to answer the questions right from these adult leaders. And so all of this, really, I think, lends itself to what you said is those transferable skills.
Kamille Beye 44:39
I love it. I'm thinking about these students debating projects in the auditorium, whispering like, "This is not good. This is great." And that's good. We need dialogue and we need debate. Yes, yes, yeah. And that brings me to my next question. And so just thinking about the US and the idea of building and maintaining long-term relationships with neighbors or nations. Conversations. How do you think that participatory budgeting can help students rebuild trust in the future, or even extend the civic engagement conversation? And then I guess I would follow that up with, what do you see as promising signs as how communities can get more involved?
Tara Bartlett 45:19
Absolutely, and I know every time I do talk about, like, the exciting nature of school participatory budgeting, I mean, we do need a reality check, right? Unfortunately, I do think it's also important to emphasize that really, what we see going on, this is not only happening here in the US. You know, we're seeing the backsliding of democracy worldwide, even looking most recently at, you know, Poland's election. But then on the flip side, we have some really exciting elections that are proving us wrong, most recently, South Korea. So thinking about that, there are these bright spots, and that's what school participatory budgeting is, I think, in this kind of, you know, greater, this greater cloud of doom that we might be. You know, looking at that, there's great things that are happening, but I do think it's more important than ever. We have to forge these cross-national, cross-cultural relationships. And I do want to, I want to redefine culture for a moment in this conversation that we're having, right? And I'm using culture as a democratic culture, right, where you have these shared values, these expectations of norms, you have institutions that safeguard, you have systems of accountability. So those are the things that I think we need to find those neighbors that we do share these common threads with as culture, because that is really, I think, the underlying key.
I also want to say that, you know, school participatory budgeting as that one little bright spot is actually part of a larger ecosystem of what we're seeing, of democratic innovations happening. And these are things that can be scaled from a very micro-community level, like we see, you know, in one school, doing school participatory budgeting to possibly even at a national level, some of these democratic innovations. You know, yes, participatory budgeting, but also participatory policymaking, citizen or civic assemblies that are happening, legislative theatre, town halls, right? These are things that are exciting bright spots. They're kind of those stars that are, you know, shining in the dark sky. And a lot of these have shown success across the globe in varying contexts and to varying degrees. Ireland actually used a citizens' assembly to solidify the right to abortion a few years ago. And so these are things that at a national level could have really great impacts, but even at a micro level, what we had as a conversation today around school participatory budgeting, right? So some of these, you know, maybe stars or more constellations, but it's still, still a bright spot. I will make a shameless plug if anyone's interested in finding out more across the globe of what's happening in these really exciting democratic innovation spaces. I encourage you to check out an organization called People Powered, and their focus is really on everything you just asked about, Kamille, that kind of bridge-building between common, democratic cultures, and they offer a lot of mentorship, connections, in-person, online gatherings. And they're growing this network across the globe. And I think it's more important than ever to find these spaces and find these people that we want to be a part of this greater movement.
Kamille Beye 48:27
I totally agree. I think that I have many more questions that I would love to ask, but I know Stella wants to jump in here, so I'm going to turn it over to Stella, but I want to say, thank you so much, and Stella, please, if you have any questions, I'm turning it over to you.
Stella Micheong Cheong 48:43
Thank you so much. Camille and Tara, wow. This just blew my mind. Wow, yeah. SPB sounds a really community-based and democratic research and also education. So, I'd like a lot of question, but always, always having the constraint of time. And I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to give a three-question to you. So in Korea, in South Korea, unfortunately, there is no way for students to participate in school policy or budgeting. So I'm very interested in SPB. So in terms of implementation, how does implementing SPB program transform the overall school culture, moving beyond just a budgeting decision, to foster a more democratic, inclusive, and student-centered learning environment, considering places like South Korea where students don't really have a way to engage with school policy? So what advice do you have for applying an approach like SPB?
Tara Bartlett 50:06
Absolutely. I'm going to talk a little bit about the first part of your question around the data that has shown the success of the program. So the evaluation that we do, we actually partner with schools to decide what do they want to measure through their evaluation, right? We do have a subset of survey questions that we share with schools. They can choose to add additional survey questions, change language, but these survey questions are delivered at the end of the process as a coincidental pre and post. So what we found early on—and this was if you ask students, especially younger students, because our work is through K-12, so you know, all the way from six to 18-year-olds—especially with the younger students, at the beginning of the process, if you ask these pre-questions, they have that kind of Dunning-Kruger effect of they don't know what they don't know, and they'll score themselves very high, and then at the end they'll be like, "Oh, wait, I actually wasn't that high. But I don't know what to do now." So we've actually done the pre-post together at the end, and we'll ask them questions like, you know, do you feel more empowered to, you know, make decisions within your community? Do you know more adults on your school campus? And so again, kind of measuring that growth through the pre and post. And we've seen exciting results. I mean, our biggest one last year, so this was year '23-'24, was actually knowing more about how to participate in a democracy. And we had some schools that had a 20% gain of students reporting that they knew more about how to participate in a democracy, from budgets to meetings to working with others to, you know, project management. So that's all really exciting, I think, in spaces where this is starting up.
And thinking about the advocacy piece it does take, I would say, a little bit of rethinking around what budgets actually mean. Danielle, my colleague, always says, you know, budgets are a statement of values, and if spaces actually value young people's voice and choice, they might actually take up then school participatory budgeting and offer a portion of the budget, and it doesn't have to be large. We've also had schools who did the process and had students think of things that wouldn't cost extra money, or just some type of, you know, on-campus programming or policy that could easily be changed. A small example of this was a school that played music between the different class periods in middle school when students were switching classes. Students just wanted a different playlist. That was all, but the fact that they had the opportunity to voice that and the leaders on their school agreed—think about how validated and efficacious students then felt and really felt more engaged within their community because they felt like they were listened to. So it doesn't always have to be, you know, a large, $20,000 budget. It could be small, or it could be something that's just a simple change within a school community.
Stella Micheong Cheong 52:55
Wow, wow, wow. This is really, thank you for informative advice. It's really effective. And you know, we are living in the era of AI, Artificial Intelligence. So while you're talking about misinformation on SNS, I thought about technology. So how has increasing integration of technology influenced SPB implementation and student participation? Or are these digital tools or AI-powered tools you'd like to develop or design yourself as part of your project? If so, would you like to share your ideas with us?
Tara Bartlett 53:45
Yes, I'm going to say both and for this. So it's been wonderful seeing schools take up the use of technology within their processes. Some schools have moved away entirely from paper ballots and have simply done the digital aspect of ballots, which is interesting when you think about other spaces across the globe have already moved to that, right? So getting students to transition into thinking that voting is not something that needs to also be an archaic system, that you can actually vote online and it can be safe, and you can validate your vote through that quick kind of count at the end. It does save the students time and counting ballots as well, I should say, so it's been great to see schools take up some of these technology components. Another school district opened up a platform that allowed students to weigh in on the project ideas online before also they went to a vote. So that was interesting, to be able to have students actually type in some type of feedback for these projects into this platform, and be able to provide that so that when the students went to a final vote and those projects were further developed, they included other students' voice and ideas as well. I will say, one of the ideas I've had around AI is creating some type of language learning model that students might be able to plug in their project idea, and that language learning model will then prompt them to think through different aspects of the project that maybe they didn't already think of or cover or just kind of probe their thinking further around that project. Oftentimes, students might work in student groups, you know, around one particular project here, and another student group around a different particular project there, and they might get some feedback from, you know, the educator that's working with them or other peers. But it's not necessarily as robust as maybe it could be. And so, you know, before going to the governing board, or before taking an idea to a vote, and then maybe having a few details that were overlooked, having that language model, a learning language model, walk them through that kind of ideation around the project idea, I think would be amazing.
Stella Micheong Cheong 55:51
Oh yeah, yeah, this was, it was amazing, fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing your idea. Actually, I have another question, but I better wrap up this session. So Tara, would you like to share with our listener a little bit about your current research, currently working on?
Tara Bartlett 56:15
Absolutely. So still, considering, you know, working with our school PB team every single year, that's a lot of my summer work. So students fill out those surveys. And, you know, sometimes we do focus groups with schools, sometimes we do those with educators, students, and I get all the data over summertime. So that's what my summer project is right now, is putting that data together. Our Center partners put together one-pager reports that are specific to school sites, then gives those back to schools so that they can see, based upon the evaluation that they designed, co-designed with us, this were, you know, these were the results, and they can use those then to really share with their broader school community around the cool things they're doing. Beyond that, we're really looking at in my other line of work, young people's Youth Activism, and so I've been working a lot with some Gen Z, you know, electees or folks that have run for office, to really think about, you know, what their political motivations were, what their experiences in schools were that got them to the point that they are today. So that we can think about what in school then needs to be amplified, you know, those schooling experiences, to be able to have more young people be part of those spaces. So that's a little bit of my research work, yep, that I'm working on now.
Stella Micheong Cheong 57:29
Oh, wow. Thank you so much again. Dr. Bartlett, many thanks for your time and your insight. Today's conversation has not only illuminated the practical mechanism of school participatory budgeting but has also powerfully articulated its transformative potential in cultivating the next generation of engaged citizens. I think that your dedicated work goes far beyond allocating funds; it's about instilling a profound sense of agency and fostering critical thinking and equipping young people with essential tools to actively shape their communities and strengthen democratic principle. Thank you so much for sharing your invaluable expertise and passion. I love your passion, and this conversation has been truly inspiring and will undoubtedly leave a lasting impression on our listeners. I'm closing the episode. I'm Stella Micheong Cheong. Thanks for listening to Conversations4Citizenship. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to Conversations4Citizenship and look for us on X, @C4C_Ed. A transcript of today's conversation with Dr. Tara Bartlett can be found at www.conversationsforcitizenship.com. This episode of Conversations for Citizenship was produced by Kamille Beye and Stella Micheong Cheong, recorded and sound mixed by Stella Micheong Cheong. Many thanks. Take good care. Bye, bye.