Santa Cruz Kids Take the Mic: Elementary Schoolers to Question Mayoral Candidates
Image curtesy of Santa Cruz Local
What if the toughest questions at a political forum came from a ten-year-old?
Santa Cruz is about to find out. On Saturday, May 30, 2026, from 11:00 AM to noon, the city will host its first-ever mayoral forum where the questioners aren't journalists or political insiders — they're elementary school students ages 8 to 12.
Held at DeLaveaga Elementary and livestreamed free on YouTube, the event is open to anyone, anywhere in the world, with no registration required. Mayor Fred Keeley will moderate, making sure every young voice gets heard. Community members can submit questions online, the top-voted questions will be selected for the live forum.
Five candidates are participating:
Ryan Coonerty (Former Mayor and County Supervisor)
Ami Chen Mills (UCSC Lecturer and Community Organizer)
Joy Schendledecker (Community Organizer and Artist)
Gillian Greensite(Environmental Advocate)
Chris Krohn (Former Mayor and City Councilmember).
Each will open with a two-to-three minute introduction — no prepared speeches — focused specifically on their vision for Santa Cruz's kids.
The questions come from the 3DE (3D Entrepreneurs) Club, a nonprofit after-school program that teaches Gen Alpha kids to design, 3D-print, and sell their own products. The organization's mission is to make entrepreneurship education accessible and relevant for a generation growing up alongside artificial intelligence.
The format is deliberately nonpartisan: all candidates receive identical time and identical rules. The full forum will be professionally recorded and permanently archived as a civic record.
Community partners promoting the event include Santa Cruz Works, the Democratic Women's Club, and the SC Chamber of Commerce.
After the forum, audiences can vote online for the candidate who communicated most clearly and respectfully with the young people in the room.
Sometimes it takes a child to ask the question everyone else forgot to.
