Students at John Jay Talk Politics with the Mayor
- What would it be like to be the Mayor of your town for a day?
- How do you keep a community safe?
- How do you decide who to hire to work with you in a government position?
The inquiring minds of second graders at John Jay Elementary pondered these questions and invited their local mayor to personally answer them. Mayor Arlene A. Juracek of Mount Prospect graciously accepted the offer and visited with students on Friday, January 29.
To begin, each question that was prepared by students in advance of her arrival was answered by Mayor Juracek. She then opened up discussion with a Q&A session.
Mayor Juracek good-naturedly fielded questions such as:
- “Do you build big houses?
- “How old were you when you became Mayor?”
- “Do you have a lot of security cameras?” and
- “Why do we clean the streets?”
The visit concluded with her reading to students one of her favorite books, “Mister Dog” by Margaret Wise Brown.
She praised the students for their awareness of the importance of building a good community.
“I could see they were very concerned about peaceful neighbor relations…there were a lot of remarks about safety and peacefulness and not being mean to each other, and being respectful, responsible, safe, and ready,” she said. “It wasn’t just one child thinking about these larger issues, but they all in some way thought about the good of the community and why we need rules. How what you do affects other people.”