Val Hunt was aggravated. On her daily walks through Del Rey
Park, she saw a never-ending stream of beer cans, cigarette butts
and graffiti tags. But what really got her goat was the carvings:
vandalized trees.
Gilroy – Val Hunt was aggravated. On her daily walks through Del Rey Park, she saw a never-ending stream of beer cans, cigarette butts and graffiti tags. But what really got her goat was the carvings: vandalized trees.
Hunt, a Gilroy High School teacher, sees that litter as “evidence of our inability as a community … to provide useful and safe outlets for our teens to gather,” she wrote in a letter to the Dispatch.
So did her teen students – and they decided to act. Roughly one dozen juniors in Hunt’s Advancement Via Individual Determination class, an elective leadership course, are dreaming up a teen center in Gilroy, a space for teens to hang out, do homework and have fun.
To plan it, they’re surveying their peers about what kind of hangout they’d want, using their own school as a test kitchen for the plan.
Their goal: To get the center going by their graduation date, in less than two years.
“There isn’t a place for kids our age,” said Remedios Garcia, a GHS junior. The Gilroy Youth Center, located at Sixth and Railroad streets, is geared toward younger kids, she explained.
School clubs mostly meet at lunch, and not everyone can make a sports team – or wants to. Without things to do, Gilroy teens end up causing trouble, she said. “And it’s hard when you see close friends get in trouble for smoking, or relatives getting shot because they’re in a gang. You can’t help but see it.”
Next to her, another student murmured, “That just happened to me.”
What would the center look like? Who would run it? What would happen there? All those questions are still up in the air, said the students.
In Hunt’s AVID class, the teens bat ideas back and forth: A swimming pool, said one. A computer lab, added Karen Hernandez – for research and the occasional Myspace message.
“We want a fun place, like a YMCA,” said Garcia. “Free of charge, and for us.”
Anyone interested in getting involved can contact Val Hunt at te***********@***oo.com.
