When I think back to the start of You+Lead in Palm Beach County, what stands out most is how quickly students proved what many adults had overlooked for years. Given the chance, the structure, and the invitation, they were ready to lead real school improvement. They didn’t need to be convinced of their own agency. They needed adults to listen.
In 2022, as Palm Beach County adopted a new Strategic Plan, student voice became a central pillar of the district’s vision. That plan called for students to have a meaningful role in decision making, which isn’t something you can achieve through symbolic structures alone. At the same time, Impact Florida was beginning the Youth Participatory Evaluation pilot with Palm Beach and Pasco Counties. The timing created a rare opportunity to test what genuine, student led school improvement could look like in a large, diverse district.
The premise of You+Lead is simple. Ask students what stands in the way of them having the school experience they want. Teach them how to develop a research question based on what they hear. Show them how to gather data from their peers, analyze that data, and present recommendations to adults who can act on it. The process is participatory by design. Students are the researchers and the drivers of change, not the subjects of a prewritten survey.
From the beginning, I stressed to schools that this could not just be a repackaged student council. We needed intentionally diverse teams that included the students who are too often unheard. And when those students stepped into leadership roles, something shifted. Adults who had previously underestimated them found themselves surprised by their clarity, seriousness, and insight. Teachers told me over and over that they hadn’t realized students thought so deeply about the issues shaping their school experience.
That realization mattered, especially as the district reviewed its School Evaluation Questionnaire data. Students rated areas like peer relationships and bullying far lower than teachers and parents did. Adults believed conditions were strong. Students did not. The disconnect was clear, and You+Lead offered a way to understand why.
From Four Schools to a Third of the District
Our pilot year involved just two schools in Palm Beach County. But when the Palm Beach team presented the work at a principals meeting at the end of that year, the momentum was immediate. Students and youth advisors shared their experiences directly, and the authenticity of their voices was powerful. Soon after, plans began to replicate the work of the pilot teams in schools across the district the following year.
Building a Structure that Empowers Students
In the 2023 to 2024 school year, Palm Beach County expanded the work to 48 schools. Each Student Voice team chose a project that reflected their school community’s priorities. Some painted murals or built Kindness Boards to strengthen culture. Others proposed adjustments to academic structures or even uniform policies. What mattered wasn’t the specific project. What mattered was that students were learning how to identify issues, gather input, synthesize findings, and advocate for change.
That voluntary uptake told me two things. First, teachers wanted to empower students and were willing to try something new once they understood the process. Second, students were hungry for the chance to shape their school lives in ways that felt real, not performative.
To support the work at scale, the district created a Student Voice website, a bulletin for advisors, a playbook aligned with our You+Lead resources, and a series of structures that offered real support: monthly office hours, self paced learning modules, and a full professional development day for youth advisors. Recognition played a role too. The district highlighted student work at Board meetings, through district communications, and at the first FutureMakers Forum in February 2024, where students shared their projects and learned from peers. Seeing students celebrated publicly reinforced the message that their contributions mattered.
Districtwide Scale
By the start of the 2024 to 2025 school year, every school in Palm Beach County had a Student Voice team. A federal wellness grant funded stipends for advisors, which helped formalize expectations and added a layer of accountability. Schools were required to meet monthly and upload agendas, a simple but important mechanism to ensure the work stayed active.
Now, at all 185 school sites in Palm Beach County, students now meet monthly, choose issues that matter to them, conduct research, and collaborate on solutions that improve their schools. Their work has grown into podcasts, videos, and lessons on respect and community building.
For me, the lesson has always been the same. Students can take the lead, but adults must respond. When students see that their research leads to real action, they develop a durable sense of agency. When adults see the depth of what students can do, they begin to rethink what leadership looks like in a school building. Those shifts change culture.
What Palm Beach County has accomplished is extraordinary. A small pilot turned into a districtwide movement, grounded in authentic student voice and supported by a system committed to listening. And it proves a simple truth. If we believe students deserve a role in shaping the places where they spend their days, then we must create structures that make their voice impossible to ignore.
Palm Beach County chose to do exactly that. And the results speak for themselves.