Site to let students' voices be heard

<p>Until recently, Dominic Duong's calls to some friends and family went unanswered.</p><p>He says they were afraid.</p><p>Last spring, 13-year-old Dominic -- slim and bespectacled with a patch of his short, black hair pointing straight up -- brought a pocket knife to his middle school.</p><p>The knife was discovered, and he was expelled.</p><p>"Everybody saw me as a good kid before I did it," he said Thursday at Airway Community School, a Santa Rosa campus for kids expelled from other schools. "Now, they are kind of scared of me -- they didn't know why I did it."</p><p>Dominic tells his story, about bullying, teasing and the knife, for a Web-based, statewide Right to Learn initiative to be launched Monday.</p><p>He hopes airing his story for the cyberworld to hear will help other students facing bullies or conflicts.</p><p>"This story is true," he said. "It really happened."</p><p>Based on the social networking models of Facebook and MySpace, the Right to Learn site will be a portal for video, audio and text testimonials about what students see lacking in California schools and their ideas for solutions.</p><p>Submissions will be loosely grouped in categories: career and college; safety and violence; teaching and learning; buildings and transportation; computers and books; and clubs and after-school programs.</p><p>The site, righttolearnca.org, also will display links to resources, fact sheets and advocacy groups students can turn to.</p><p>"California education is just not good enough, and it should be, and it once was," said Ginger Thomson, chief executive officer of Youth Noise, the initiative's parent organization. "Students have to get involved because they are the primary consumers."</p><p>"If we can get 25,000-50,000 kids engaged with this, we can have something to say," Thomson said. "What we are trying to do is get enough voices that Sacramento is forced to hear."</p><p>Monday's launch also will feature an audio clip from one of Dominic's Airway classmates, ninth-grader Antonio Moreno, who dreams of going to college.</p><p>Others stories are told by Airway students Brenda Rivera and Lupe Rivas on public perception of "community school kids," and Sam O'Neil on tedious school lunches. Rena Wang of Montgomery High speaks on the lack of political activism on her campus.</p><p>The clips were compiled through Voice of Youth, a program at KRCB, the Rohnert Park public radio and television station.</p><p>"These kids have been affected by the education system more than most kids," said Tatiana Harrison, the director of Voice of Youth.</p><p>In his clip, Moreno, who wants be a writer, says community school isn't challenging him and he doesn't feel as if he being prepared for college.</p><p>"College is like another country to me, where no one I know has ever been to," he says in his three-minute piece.</p><p>"Sometimes, when I'm mad at school, I start to believe that it doesn't make sense, that it's ripping me off, taking 12 years of my life," he says. "But when I'm not mad, I believe in it.</p><p>"If there is a hierarchy, there must be a low-archy. I must be the low-archy," he says.</p><p>Georgia Ioakimedes, principal for Airway and all of Sonoma County's community schools, said the stories told for Voice of Youth and now Right to Learn are "pretty powerful."</p><p>"We need to listen to who they are and where they come from," she said. "How else are we going to know what their concerns and issues are if they aren't able to voice them?"</p><p>Users of the Right to Learn site can join another student's cause, start their own campaign or offer advice to others seeking answers.</p><p>All of the local submissions close with the speakers urging students to send in their thoughts on school.</p><p>The submissions that garner the most attention and reaction from students could earn financial backing from Youth Noise.</p><p>The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization has financial backing from such philanthropic luminaries as the Carnegie, W.K. Kellogg and William and Flora Hewlett foundations.</p><p>The concept and the deadlines are on an uber-fast cyberschedule.</p><p>Launching Monday, organizers will cull the most popular and compelling ideas and solutions by mid-December. They hope to have action plans to take to Sacramento next spring.</p><p>Dominic said he understands that putting his story out in the public sphere means that people might judge, label and even condemn him and his actions.</p><p>He says he was driven by his belief that telling other students about what he went through might spur someone to make a different choice.</p><p>"It was a relief to tell people," he said.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat</p><p>.com.RIGHT</p><p>TO LEARN</p><p>Sam O'Neil, above, a student at Airway School in Santa Rosa, is part of a statewide campaign for students to voice their educational concerns while attending school. The initiative's Web site,</p><p>www.rightto</p><p>learnca.org, is slated to launch Monday.</p>