On Nov. 5, 364,959 eligible voters living in San Francisco voted in the 2024 United States election. The San Francisco ballot held the presidential election, mayoral election and 15 local ballot measures. With such a wide-reaching election, students have found ways to get involved with the election both inside and outside of school.
Since the beginning of 2024, students and teachers have posted opportunities for students to become involved in the election on Schoology. One of these opportunities included serving as a poll worker. “When I saw Charlotte [Worsley’s] Schoology post [about working in the polls], I thought it would [be] a fun opportunity to [immerse] myself in the election this year,” Olivia Krassner ’27 said. “I’m helping other poll workers and working as more of an assistant to them by helping set up and making sure everything runs smoothly on election day.”
Jin Valencia-Tow ’25 has worked on campaigns since his first year at Urban. This year, he campaigned for District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan’s reelection campaign and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin’s campaign for mayor. Additionally, he worked with District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar. “The most rewarding part for me is being able to talk to [people] about why it’s important [and why] they should care,” Valencia-Tow said. “A lot of people don’t really want to put in work because it takes effort to research [specific policies].”
Valencia-Tow understands he cannot change every voter’s mind, so he sets out with a different goal. “I look at it like [this]: I may not be able to change their minds to vote, but … if [people] walk away knowing who their supervisor is, at the end of the day, that’s a small win,” he said. “I feel like it does make a difference, but it’s definitely an uphill battle.”
Students involved with election work often have the goal of educating peers and community members. “[Giving] people an opportunity to learn about what’s going on in an accessible way … matters, [and it is something] I’ve always been interested in,” Kavir Greenwood ’26 said.
Students from various clubs and affinity spaces also held events within Urban to help peers get involved in the election process. Students helped others to pre-register, wrote letters to prospective voters and helped the Urban community understand what was on the San Francisco ballot.
Greenwood co-led an Urban event centered around how different propositions might impact the school community. “[Propositions are] pretty loaded. There’s a lot of hidden stuff, … [and] people are kind of manipulating [voters] into voting for them,” he said. “So, we [want] to kind of talk about … what [the propositions] actually mean.”
Students for Women’s Equality and Rights (SWEAR) co-leader RaeLynn Smith ’27 co-led Urban’s letter-writing event on Sept. 25. The event was in partnership with Vote Forward, a nonprofit organization where volunteers send handwritten letters encouraging eligible voters to cast their vote. “Writing a letter to someone you don’t know at a school event [could] help them understand that [their] voice matters,” she said. “Just making [people] aware that you do have a choice, … I wanted to be a part of that.”
Smith said, “[Writing a letter] was a ‘why not’ sort of thing. It’s not going to hurt anyone … but it may change someone’s opinion and may get people to think [more deeply] … when it comes to voting.”
Hayden Hu ’28, a student who attended the letter-writing event, said, “I don’t think I’m very involved [with the election]. I went [to the event] because it seemed like a lot of people were doing it and it seemed like a fun thing to do.”
Hu reflected on the election after attending election-related events at school. “Upon participating in the letter-writing event, subconsciously, I was becoming more interested in the election. … I rewatched the [presidential] debate after [attending the event],” Hu said.
Planning events like these take a large commitment from those holding the event, especially when there is not much planning time. “We had two weeks to put [the proposition event] together,” Greenwood said. “We [were] on a time crunch, and given that we [were] outsourcing part of this to the community, the logistics [were] challenging.”
Smith’s event also had many moving pieces to put together. “[The letter writing event] took … a lot of little things … like setting up in the garden and making sure the letters had the right addresses,” Smith said.
Writing letters to eligible voters helped some students realize the impact they have as individuals. “[The fact that] I’m actually writing to real people never struck me until I saw the addresses,” Hu said. “It felt like I was making more of an effort to contribute to the election. Even by [doing] a really tiny bit I was able to change some parts of it.”
“We are the people of the future, as youth,” Smith said. “[So] we should be a part of what is happening to our country, what is going to happen to us and what is going to affect us.”
