From the Editors: September 2025
Listening ears
Summer is ending – can you feel it? The cicadas are humming, the migratory birds start their remarkable treks south, greens turn to golds, asters and phlox come into bloom, and America's children inevitably return to school.
From the way our elected leaders speak, one would think that children are our greatest priority here in America. Republicans want more babies and they are seemingly trying to increase the birth rate: enacting abortion bans and limiting access to birth control. But what will happen to these children once they're born? Those in power may speak about their love of children, but do they show it through their actions?
Not even a day into the new school year, and we're already reckoning with a deadly school shooting, stealing the lives of children as they were praying in their church. And in its wake, our leaders show us that they continue to value guns more than children with their inaction, their continued scapegoating of mental illness, and their ignorance of the root of the issue – guns, in fact, kill people. Guns, in this case and in so many others, kill children.
Leaders continue to discount and disbelieve the words of women who were abused as children speaking out on their experiences and calling for justice and change. We continue to protect the politically powerful at the expense of the mental and physical safety of teenage girls.
Lawmakers celebrate the slashing of SNAP benefits, cuts to Medicaid and CHIP programs, eliminating free school meals and community-based health care initiatives.
Our leaders have effectively shut down the Department of Education, which had, up until now, worked towards ensuring that all kids have fair and equal access to a quality public education. The dramatic rise in school-mandated book bans mean our school children will inevitably have a smaller worldview and fewer critical thinking skills.
Vaccine access for children to avoid the flu and COVID this season is a challenge – meaning more mid-year sicknesses, forcing parents to max out excused absences and children missing more classroom days. Not to mention the potential resurgence of previously eradicated childhood diseases like polio and measles in Florida (and beyond).
It seems like we actually don't really care about children at all.
If we actually cared about children, we would listen to them, believe them, and work as hard as we possibly can to keep them safe, healthy, fed, and educated. As it stands, many folks in Erie are taking these matters into their own hands.
The Erie School District, helmed by new superintendent Dr. Natalyn Gibbs and School Board President Jay Breneman, are actively listening to students and parents, and then holding school leadership and governance accountable for outcomes. Read more about their approach in their jointly written op-ed within.
Children themselves are taking responsibility for filling in the gaps in educational leadership as well as public health. Read more about the budding (and award-winning) Erie School District Student Leadership Program, as well as a Fairview student group's Youth Health Knowledge Association, helping to make healthcare education more accessible in the local community.
The Lake Erie Lit Fest is taking on the book-banning trend by hosting their first ever Banned Book giveaway during their annual event at Frontier Park. Anyone attending is welcome to take a banned book from their selection and get those critical thinking muscles working.
The United Way, always at the helm of student support, are doubling down their efforts at keeping children safe as they expand their Safe Walking Routes initiative's reach.
Read about all of these stories and more, within.
Do we have our listening ears on? Our children do. They are listening and learning from the choices that adults make every single day and they will be living the consequences of those choices long after those who made them are gone.
