We are teens voting for the first time, and we have one question for the mayoral candidates

We are four of the thousands of Philly teens who will vote for the first time in this election. For the people vying to be the next mayor, we have one question:

If you get the job, will your top priority be the futures of young people like us, who will spend many more years in this city than you will?

To us, the only acceptable answer is: Yes.

That core question underlies the Kids’ Campaign, a collaborative effort among more than 70 local youth-serving organizations to make sure children and youth get the attention they deserve during this election. All four of us are deeply engaged in that campaign through our work with Children First, which helps organize the campaign.

The Kids’ Campaign has 12 basic goals to support the education, health, safety, and emotional welfare of young Philadelphians like us. It asks the mayoral candidates to pledge to pursue those goals. So far, eight of them have signed the pledge.

Based on our experiences growing up in Philadelphia, we believe these goals are the most critical:

That’s not a lot to ask. Unfortunately, the city is far from meeting these goals.

Because we care about our education — and our parents do too — we all attend public magnet schools a good distance from where we live. None of us believed we would get a sufficient education at our local schools.

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Unlike in the suburbs, no cute yellow buses pull up to our houses each morning to take us to school. All of us rely on SEPTA. So we often start our day with a heavy dose of public transit anxiety — and sometimes outright fear. We’ve seen it all — needles, bullying, getting threatened for money, disturbed people doing disturbing things, and violence. All before first period. One of us now drives to school because her parents bought her a car after another teen was shot steps from her bus stop.

Kids shouldn’t have to worry about whether they can return home from school without getting shot or beat up. Safety and education go hand in hand. The chaos in transit can destroy your day before you even get to your first class; it can affect your concentration as you try to do your homework.

We love our schools, but they don’t always feel like safe havens either. Just this week, a 15-year-old was killed on his way to school, fatally shot just two blocks from Simon Gratz High School Mastery Charter.

We love our schools, but they don’t always feel like safe havens.

The importance of rec centers and other places where kids can spend productive time in a safe environment really hits home for us. What does a rec center with yellow police tape around it say to kids about what kind of neighborhood they live in, and what kind of concern their city has for them?

Don’t get us wrong, some of us love to play hoops at our rec center, but those places shouldn’t just be about sports. They should have programs for kids with all kinds of interests. Just as they do in the suburbs.

We’re young, but we’ve lived long enough in Philadelphia to see how and why kids’ needs get put on the back burner again and again: Politicians focus on the needs of the people who can vote.

Well, we are now old enough to vote. And we’re going to be voters in this city for a long time.

We are looking forward to showing that our voices count, that everyone — no matter how young — matters.

As you may have noticed, this mayoral race has a bunch of candidates. It gets confusing trying to figure out the pros and cons of each. We know candidates often say what they think people want to hear, shading the truth about what they really intend to do.

That’s why we’re not just tracking what the candidates say — we’re looking hard at what they’ve each done in the past. We know everyone makes mistakes; we’re asking: “Did you learn from that mistake? Did you change and grow? Do you really listen when people tell you what they need?” We’re looking at all that to figure out for ourselves who’s legit.

Trust us, when May 16 rolls around, those of us teenagers who are eligible to vote will be at the polls, casting a ballot informed by our work on the Kids’ Campaign. And we’ll be back on Nov. 7 to vote again. And then again and again for the rest of our time in Philadelphia.

We look forward to holding the new mayor and the new City Council to the high but necessary standards that our city and our city’s children deserve.

Mikayla Jones is a student at Central High School, Fatoumata Sidibe is at Bodine High School, and Damani Morgan and Claude Wheeler are at Parkway Central Northwest High School.