Teen Think Tanks of America, Inc. 501(c)(3)

Huntsville/Madison Teen Think Tank
Community Partnership For Youth
October 1998

Executive Summary

Community Partnership for Youth conducted a Teen Think Tank in late fall to learn from the teens of Huntsville. The carefully selected sample, representing many different types of teens included (average, at-risk and high achievers).

**Participants: Age and Ethnic Background**
Under 15 years	12	Caucasian	69
15 years old	15	African-American	20
16 years old	20	Asian	5
17 years old	40	Black/White	1
18 years old	10	Hispanic	1
19 years old	1	Unknown	2

Sex		School Districts
Males	43	Huntsville City Schools	57
Females	55	Madison County Schools	21
		Madison City Schools	20

Using computers to record and tabulate their results under the guidance of Brice Marsh, Electronic Meeting System specialist, the almost 100 teens responded to two questions: “What are the most pressing issues facing teens in our community?” and “If you were Mayor, what would you do about those issues?”

A lot of valuable information from the teens was generated during the four repeated two-hour sessions. When summarized, top concerns can be displayed in several ways:

**Prioritization of Concerns by Degree of Agreement**
**Across Four Separate Session**
Rank	Session 1	Session 2	Session 3	Session 4
1	Families	Rape	Child abuse	Premarital sex
2	Drugs	Child abuse	Teenage sex	Teenage pregnancy
3	Schools don't care about students	Sexual harrassment	Child abuse	Premarital sex
4	Violence	Racism	Teen pregnancy	Violence
5	Teen suicide	Abuse (physical and mental)	Abuse	Rape
6	Rape	Killing	Rape	Alcohol abuse
7	Sexually transmitted diseases	Racism by peers	Suicide	Violence
8	Lack of love by family	Communication with parents	Prejudice	Sex
9	Educational costs	Hate	Getting killed	Killing
10	Being able to afford college tuition	Teacher and principals who are unconcerned	Racism	Teen violence

**Top Concerns by Frequency of Comments Across All Sessions**
Rank	Concern	Frequency
1	Sexual concerns	36
2	Violence	33
3	Families	27
3	Stress/Depression	27
5	Future	20
6	Racial Issues	19
7	Drugs/Alcohol	18
8	Education	15
9	Respect	12

**Top Comments Included in Each Category**
1	Sex	STD’s, Teen pregnancy, pre-marital sex, teen birth control, abortion, having sex, sexual harassment, sex crimes
2	Violence	Weapons in school, crime, gangs, rape, suicide, kids killing kids
3	Families	Help for family problems, divorced families, lack of parental concerns, parental abuse, child abuse, problems at home, parental neglect
3	Stress/Depression	Needing help and not being able to get it, self confidence, nobody to talk to, dealing with losses
4	Future	Education cost, will I reach my goals, what happens after high school, pressure of succeeding in life, lack of opportunities
5	Racial/Hate Crimes	Fights, hate crimes, prejudicial, stereotyping certain students, racism by peers, people hating you
6	Drugs/Alcohol	No specific comments
7	Education	Schools that don’t care, teachers that can’t teach, inactive teachers, uniform delegation of tax for schools
8	Respect	Discrimination from adults, abuse and prejudice by cops, not trust

Solutions

After students listed their top concerns, they were asked to respond to a second question requiring students to suggest solutions, If I were Mayor. While many solutions were given the most frequently cited solutions can be summarized as:

1	Give us somewhere safe to go / Give us more activities	60
2	Better schools / Teachers / Curricula / Standards	34
3	Respect for kids / Listen to us / Give us a role	33
4	Better Policing / Police relations	31