Salt Lake Community College political science student Jackson Lewis is easily Canyons School District’s youngest board of education member in the District’s 15 year history. He may be the state’s youngest elected official ever.

At 19, he was elected to office. Two months later, in January, at age 20, he will be sworn in.

The last time Lewis was elected to office was as a second grader at Canyon Rim Academy in Millcreek, when his class was learning about government.

He has been in meeting after meeting since being elected. Recently, in a meeting with other school board members, state legislators and city officials, he learned about gang behavior in schools from local law enforcement officers.

“There's an issue with our schools now, specifically with THC (vaping) cartridges, and it’s what gangs are doing to recruit in schools along the Wasatch Front,” he said.

As a 2023 graduate, he isn’t far removed from walking into the high school bathroom, smelling weed.

“I’m grateful to be able to sit in on this meeting because I'm elected to serve a constituency, and I was sitting there brainstorming the entire time, ‘how are we going to work to make it better?’” he said. “I live right next to Union Park, so I see kids hanging out at the pavilion often with drugs; they should be in school.”

He realizes he’s more under a microscope as the youngster on the school board unlike Katie Dahle, who also was elected for the first time this term or re-elected member Holly Neibaur. He plans to use his fresh, firsthand experience as a recent student to address issues important to current students and educators.

“During my campaign, I talked about chronic absenteeism because I had firsthand issues with it so I'm bringing that perspective to the board, where we can address these issues,” he said.

It was during high school when he attended Skyline High that he had some family issues which impacted him.

“I struggled a lot with my mental health,” he said, adding it continued when he transferred to Hillcrest his senior year and where his sister now is a senior. “There was a period of my high school time, particularly senior year, where I was absent for a good chunk of it.”

Lewis said by “endlessly” talking to his Hillcrest counselor, Kimberly Walters, they found a way to get him motivated to return to school. 

“I started the school day at 9 (a.m.) so I got the sleep I needed. Instead of starting the day in a lecture-based classroom or sitting there doing a worksheet, I started in weight training. As a teenage male, I love going to the gym, and that brought me into the school building; it got me to graduate,” he said.

Now, Lewis wants the school board to focus on the issue.

“We need to meet students where they are, find what makes students excited to go to school, and focus on getting kids to school. A lot of students have a big issue with getting out of bed and going to school every day. It's a post-COVID world. It's not just here; it’s a nationwide issue. We need to find a way to make sure students want to be in school and it will pull a lot of kids out of chronic absenteeism,” he said.

It won’t happen with one big “swoosh,” said former Alta High history and government teacher Rique Ochoa, who has analyzed campaigns and elections with his students. 

“It’s a good thing he's being more specific, but does he have a plan to solve chronic absenteeism?” Ochoa said. “He's going to have to institute small solutions initially to get people on board. Once he gets that and it’s moderately successful, he needs to look at ‘How will we expand this?’ He can’t expect change to be immediate; it’s going to be small, incremental steps, and then get a broader picture later. At 19, you come in with a lot of inexperience and a lot of great ideas, but practicality also has to come into play.”

As a teenager who prefers riding a scooter to driving, Lewis advocates for the best routes for students and pedestrians, wanting to move the Safe Walking Routes away from busy arterial roads into neighborhood streets with lower speed limits. He wants students to be able to ride UTA transit for free and supports UDOT’s proposed bike freeway.

“I want to create a partnership between the District, Salt Lake County, local city governments and the state department of transportation so when new infrastructure projects go up in this area…we design new pedestrian pathways…in a way students also can use them. I want this to be a conversation over my upcoming term,” he said.

Lewis became curious about the school board during a college and career readiness day in Karla Moosman’s English language arts class. He remembers learning about education bills passed in the legislature and realizing how complicated it was for the school board to put some in place because “they don’t get the resources they need from the state.”

At that point, he looked up who his board member was and the 18 years old age requirement, which then he hadn’t reached. Later in the year, he worked for the Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel when the local democratic party offered their support for him to run.

“I was running for my community. I popped into the race expecting to lose to (then incumbent) Mont (Millerberg). He was an extremely important and major community figure,” Lewis said.

Lewis will serve in District 1, where Millerberg, a longtime member and board vice president, served until his unexpected death in February 2024. Lewis beat out Millerberg’s wife, Kris, who served in the seat following her husband, and ran as a write-in candidate. He also beat candidate Rainer Lilbook.

Lewis thinks he resonated with voters partially because of his age.

“A lot of the conversations I had were about my age. The perspective I bring to the board is of a former Hillcrest High School student and a lifelong resident of Midvale. I offered a perspective that has direct impact over thousands of very young people. Quite a few times I was told by voters, ‘a 19 year old on a school board makes perfect sense.’ People are just ready for new, young perspective,” he said.

Ochoa believes Lewis won for three reasons.

“First of all, many people don’t know school board elections. It’s like when you get your ballot and see all the judges to retain or not. Some people don’t know anything about them and start alternating yes and no because they don’t know,” he said. “The same thing may be true with school board members’ elections. Many people don’t know the candidates. For those who do, I think he may have resonated because he gave specifics on his campaign. He's going to make a ripple right from the start, because he's talking about specific problems. Others, who just talk generically, can take pretty much any action they want and say it supports teachers, or it supports education. Their campaigns deal with generalities, because who's going to say they're against supporting education, against the teachers, nobody is.”

Having Kris Millerberg as a write-in candidate also likely impacted the vote, and split the vote, he said. 

In District 3, Dahle was elected to take the seat of longtime member and former board president Nancy Tingey, who is retiring. In District 7, Neibaur retained her seat on the board.

Canyons District Supt. Rick Robins said he welcomes the new board members and anticipates continued focus on students.

“I'm really excited for Jackson and for Kate, and I'm just so grateful to both of them for deciding to run for elected office,” he said. “The board has dynamics like a family as different people join. But our board has been great at assimilating and finding common ground and being able to stay focused on what's most important, students.”

That’s where Lewis is focused. 

“My plan right now is to serve this full term; if Jackson Lewis, a year ago, got to look at the world now, he would not have expected anything that had happened this last year to happen,” he said. “I've always had a strong sense of what is right and wrong. I've always been into politics, I love policy. I want to leave the world a better place than when I was born, that's why I know politics is my calling; a great vessel for change is through politics. As a school board member, I have goals; I have plans. Obviously, compromise is not the enemy of progress, and I am not going to step on the District’s feet or my own feet for some purity test. That's not the politics. That's not the kind of person I am, but I do want to make a difference.” λ