My grandparents opened a restaurant in 1989 in the corner of a small shopping plaza at the center of Madera, California. Since then, my grandma has opened up the lacy curtains to reveal the restaurant’s red interior and simple oriental lanterns every morning with a small smile and wrinkled hands. My mom and her sisters have fond memories of waiting tables, while my grandpa and grandma coaxed hot oil into woks and threw savory spices into the mix.

...

It all started with a t-shirt.

I was at the mall, and I saw a shirt I knew I had to buy.

It said “NOBODY KNOWS I’M A LESBIAN.” It made me laugh because pretty much everybody knows I’m a lesbian.

I came out a year ago, when I was in tenth grade. My friends at school are great. ...

In a letter to the local newspaper, two Columbus, MT students argue that building a school auditorium should be a priority for the local school district. The writers use coherent and logical reasoning, specifically a cost-benefit analysis, to demonstrate how a new auditorium would benefit the community. To address their principal’s concerns about cost the writers argue, “While it is true that an auditorium is a costly project, we have an idea to cut the cost tremendously. Instead of building an entirely new foundation, we could repurpose a current structure.” They also draw on a community survey to emphasize the project’s...

Colson Cowger, a tenth-grader in Columbus, MT, wrote a letter to the editor of the Stillwater County News, advocating for creating an Advanced Life Support District to serve outlying rural communities. His letter set the wheels in motion for a ballot initiative that passed in May 2017. This letter effectively raises awareness about the precarious state of funding for the rural county’s emergency ambulance services and makes a case that taxpayers should have the opportunity to vote on whether to pay for the district with a slight tax increase. “Taxpayers should have the opportunity to vote for the creation of this ambulance district because the ambulance needs funding to pay for the life-saving...

To: [Superintendent] of all OUSD Schools.

The issue that we are facing is the rising dropout rates in Oakland Public High Schools. Since the year of 2005, the dropout rate at Oakland Public High Schools has begun to rise. It’s begun to rise so much that within the state of California, Oakland Public High Schools have the highest dropout rate compared to all other California cities. Students have been dropping out of high school for all different kinds of reason, yet through research and surveys we have found that the most prominent reasons why students have been dropping out of high school is because of poverty either within their family or neighborhood, violence, and drugs. Kids who have grown up in poverty usually grow up in bad neighborhoods. This then leads to kids either dropping out of school to support themselves or their family, or them dropping out to join gangs as they...